Stuart Woods Books

By the utilitarian perspective, the author means action and knowledge, the practical life, the world of perceptions – signs we may ignore because they are only a means towards knowledge and action. The utilitarian perspective does not actually pay too much attention to the world in general. On the contrary, it envisions the world from a rather deforming perspective. Delacroix states that we must animate the world in order to get in touch with it. And without art, man would be deprived of an entire world. Art is a sort of pause in the blind march which can cancel our interior or exterior perception in favor of what that march stands for or represents.

Art can be seen as the world in its concrete realization, integrated within the spirit in its whole capacity to act and to perceive. And the utilitarian perspective only represents a deviation of this, based on the biological or social utility. Art can bring man back to the path from which the social or biological utility had taken him away. Art can awaken a very powerful kind of virtual world, which life itself had canceled. Our consciousness is apparently organized by organizing in itself creatures and things, starting from an undifferentiated chaos in which the virtual variants of the ego and the non-ego get mixed up. Delacroix also says that we are not closed inside our very own practical ego. Sympathy is possible because we hold on to things because we hold on to ourselves. That is because we are what we are not, just because we are. Furthermore, our creating capacities and energies exceed the useful appearances to which they may seem to be reduced.

The thing art does is to re-shape and re-construct the spiritual energy or substance it has already sent to the outside world. Art needs a spiritual world, in fact in needs the whole world to be as a common spirit. The world of art is a creation of the spirit and in it the harmony of the spiritual life can manifest.

According to Delacroix, aesthetics of life can be unsatisfying. Everybody agrees to the fact that art is a manifestation of energies. Also, we all may share the idea that beauty can stimulate and entertain life, that there is in art a certain degree of spending and also something related to the idea of hierarchy of things according to the aesthetic principles. In certain ages, this doctrine of exuberance and spontaneity happily opposes the schematics and dryness which characterized conventions and academic spirit.

However, the doctrines of life often got lost in confusion and vagueness, and in order to signify something, they need to be defined. Thus, the feeling of life always had to be defined in order for it to gain an aesthetic value. Art is a way of thinking which can be realized and accomplished and not merely an expanding fecundity, not just an impulse, a lawless invention. We can animate things by our very own life and at the same time, we animate ourselves when coming into contact with things, we submit ourselves to their power of suggestion. It is a game of ego and non-ego, of constraints and freedom.

Reality never offers us an already shaped and constructed aesthetic fact which we would only have to extract from it. Delacroix stresses the idea that art is fabrication and artifice. Thus, it is quite distinct from what we call the real world. It is a construction of obedient and expressive forms.

What oft was thought, but never so well expressed ~ Alexander Pope

Neoclassicism emerged immediately after the restoration in 1660, covering a time span of about 140 years. “Neo” means new. The writers of this age were determined to bring something new, at the same time acquiring or carrying forward some of the classical traits because, they were influenced by the writers of the classic age. They turned especially towards the Latin writers for inspiration and guidance. It is prominently found in the writings of John Dryden and Alexander Pope. They also tried to imitate the French writers. Charles II, when he returned to England after his exile in France, brought new admiration for French literature. The French and Classical models were fused together to form a new type called as the heroic play. This type was well represented in Dryden’s Tyrannic Love. Let us now try to grasp something from the above quotation by Alexander Pope. The quote is quite clear in expressing the presence of powerful thoughts in the neoclassic writers, but lacks proper execution. The words were lacking in their expression because their dependence on the classics had made them conservative. The Elizabethans also took inspiration from the classics but, unlike the neoclassicals, used it liberally and joyously, molding the works according to their will. The school of Pope abandoned the freedom altogether and came up with a set of rules based on the style of the classics.

Romanticism (1790-1830)

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility ~ William Wordsworth

Let me elaborate on the above famous quote by William Wordsworth so that it will be easier for you to distinguish between romanticism and neoclassicism. According to the romantic writers, poetry was created out of feelings and emotions and that too from a spontaneous flow of those feelings. His poem Daffodils is the best example to explain his views. One day he wandered lonely through a forest and saw a vast flower bed of daffodils. He watched them and felt joyous and happy and moved on. He came back home and relaxed on his couch. While he was relaxing with his eyes closed, the sight of the golden daffodils appeared in front of his eyes; the feelings and happy emotions of the daffodils started pouring in his mind in tranquility which flowed on paper immediately. In the romantic era, emotions were held higher than thought and reason. Wordsworth believed and also reflected in his writings, the rustic life of common man. He has expressed this thought in his Lyrical Ballads which was written in collaboration with S.T. Coleridge’s four poems. S.T. Coleridge also made crucial contribution to the romantic era. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the most noteworthy of the four poems contained in the Lyrical Ballads. Other writers like Byron, Shelley and Keats also had a major share in blossoming the age.