REALITY AND REPRESENTATIONshodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/29149/7/07_chapter 1.pdf ·...

Chapter I

REALITY AND REPRESENTATION

REALITY AND REpRESElfTATION

The earliest theory of art as propounded by Plato and Aristotle was

that art was mimesis, imitation of reality. The concept of mimesis,

broadly defined as imitation, reflection or representation has since,

over a period of more than two thousand years, enjoyed wide

currency and acceptance as an effort to theorise the various forms

of Western literature, especially theater and drama. Inspite of the

famous difference between Plato and Aristotle about the utility of

art, - the basic 'assumption was the same, that art mirrored reality

and that art represented reality.

To begin the debate, one must realise that in modem literary theory

mimesis as a critical concept has for some time now being

dismissed. The age of Erich Auerbach, who could canonically

subsume all western literature, ~nder the umbrella of mimesis

seems to be "long over. With the shift of literary theory towards

po structuralism and deconstruction this theory of mimesis has

been not only dismantled but also rejected. There has been a shift

away from the priority and the precedence given to the imitated over

imitation, The referent over the signifier. Instead there has been a

fore grounding of the medium of signification, the actual material by

which the mirror image is being constructed and transmitted,

which not merely conveys meaning but produces itl.

Reality and Representation

There is yet another aspect of this problem, wherein the social

reality that art mirrors, is itself being considered as a construct.

The form of social control, which in turn, changes the shapes and

contours of reality, the dominant power politics of a society, which

both marginalises and promotes certain representation provokes

several questions regarding the nature of mimesis. For eg: who is

holding the mirror, who determines the angle and focus of

reflection? What is the nature of the mirror and what kind of

refraction and reflection does it allow? The question of power, the

dominating discourse engrained in the process of signification, and

the language used for communication, all together effect the

mimetic functions of art. However in the arena of cultural theory

mimesis is being invested with a new critical power. According to a

cultural theorist Michael Taussig, representations assume the

character and power of the original referent, once represented.

These representations or mimesis unleash a dual and ambiguous

power to both mirror and falsify, pose and mask reality 2.

Aristotle in Poetics had already laid down the blueprint for mimesis,

which distinguished between art forms by the virtue of the medium

of representation they used, the aspects of real and imaginary life

they represented, and finally the manner of representation:

(i) The means of imitation (the medium such as painting or

language).

(ii) The object of imitation (some aspect of human action) and,

(iii) The mode of imitation (how something is imitated).

29

Reality and Representation .

Aristotle isolates the possible modes of representation thus: -

(i) The poet may imitate by narration- either take another

personality or speak in his own voice.

(ii) Or the poet may present all his character as living and

moving before us.

Hence the modes of narration differ in terms of telling or showing.

While the Diegetic theories conceive of a narration as a verbal

activity or telling, Mimetic theories conceive of narration as the

presentation of spectacle.

When Aristotle spoke of mimesis, he was referring to poetry, fine art

and drama, which were the main art forms of the day. The

principles of mimetic analysis apply to most types of films as well,

however this analysis gets complicated once it is applied to

documentary film, cartoon animation, science fiction or the Classic

Hollywood narrative. Each of these could be said to use different

forms of representation. They interact with reality differently.

'Theories of Realism and Cinema" stretch back to Sergei Eisenstein

in the 1920's and were a key part of Italian neo-realism for directors

such as Vittorio De-Sica and Pasolini in the 1940's. Film theorists,

Verkov and Andre Bazin argued that film had to imitate life as

precisely as possible as if it was the divine mission of film to move

towards verisimilitude. The essence of pure mimetic Cinema would

perhaps be to turn on the camera and record the real time and

space endlessly, very similar to static cameras in a departmental

30


store focused on various areas in the store recording the movement

of the customers.

Keeping this backdrop in mind we will try and trace the debate on

mimesis to contextualise our area of study. Miming no doubt had

preliterate origins in rituals and imitation of nature. 'The Theory of

Mimesis' has immediate application to visual arts but was primarily

used to evaluate the poetic arts of the day. Plato who was the most

influential classical exponent of mimetic theory used it to condemn

art. _ Th~ works of art according to Plato were thrice removed from

reality i.e. the ' ideas'. According to him since art only imitates, it

has no substance or subject of its own and is misleading. Artists

are merely knowledgeable in matters of medicine, music and sports

and have no originality of their own. Plato thus deprives art of its

autonomy. Art is to be judged by criteria like how true it is? What is

its relation to the original instead of the inspiration and the

creativity that led to that form of art? For Plato, art should

correspond to the idea, a standard to which all human endeavor

aspires. Since art appealed to the senses and not so much a

product of the intellect, it was an inferior form of representation of

human reality .•

Interestingly however the most obvious example from Plato's

writings which is pertinent to Cinema, is the imagery displayed in

the allegory of the cave. The 'oi polloi' chained in the cave and

directed towards the shadows dancing on the wall, could be

31


construed as a cinematic rendering of certain social, educational,

ontological, epistemological, and political concems3 . Plato's concern

is how to distinguish between the real philosopher and his copy the

sophist. Among the mUltiplicity of images cast onto the wall, the 'oi

polloi' are incapable of distinguishing between the "good" and the

"bad". This concern anticipates the postmodernist situation, where

the contemporary society is Plato's concern. He felt that society

would get divorced from reality and anarchy would reign. Cinema in

that context would be simulacra -a space of total illusion.

In Plato's cave, those that cast the shadows, had the power to

project the icons before the fire. In his portrayal of the 'Philosopher

King', Plato wanted to ensure that the philosopher king will have

the power to formulate the images that will constitute the 'good

myth, the noble lie'. This formulation pre-supposes the present day

film director who has a greater control not only in formation of

images but can ensure that his audience will view things from an

angle and point -of-view from which he wishes them to. With this,

we once again reach the question of power ingrained in the process

of representation which consequently effects the mimetic functions

of art.

Plato maintained that art with its given appeal to the senses, was

an inferior representation of reality. Jacques Derrida rationalised

Plato's objection to art in the twentieth century. He said that

human beings are unable to tolerate the loss of an original reality

32


against which they measure themselves to understand their place

in the world. If the image replaces the reality then it would result in

confusion and dislocation. Derrida writes:

The reflection, the image, the double, splits what it doubles. The origin of the speculation becomes a difference. What can look ai: itself is not one; and the law of the addition of the origin to its representation, of the thing to its image, is that one plus one makes at least three. 4

What arises from this argument is that on one hand we need to

know that the world has a single definable origin, which can be

anticipated. On the other hand the artist with its images of the

world reminds us that it is possible to add, supplement, and

fragment that world.

Aristotle set out to reclaim mimesis as a viable theory of art in his

seminal work. After distinguishing between poetic and musical

arts, he focused on the object of mimesis or imitation. "What can be

the possible object of imitation?" Aristotle in Chapter-II of Poetics

says that it is possible to imitate "men either as better than in real

life, or as worse, or as they are"s. Again in Chapter-XXV, he

enlarges the scope of imitation and the range of the artist when he

says that artist imitates one of the three objects. "things as they are

or were, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they

ought to be"6. Thus the test of mimetic skill is not historical

accuracy but instead the skill of the poet to mimic probable human

behaviour. The world of poetry is thus the world of fiction; world of

illusions and fantasies, of airy nothing and is not bound by the

33


dimensions of time and place. In this sense, imitation for Aristotle is

an image-making faculty. Poetry thus does not represent mere facts

but reality based on probability. Imitation in Aristotle therefore

means an idealised representation of human life.

Poetics was edited and translated by sixteenth century Italian

humanists, and hence Sir. Philip Sydney received Aristotle's

comments in a context, which gave them a meaning rather different

from anything, Aristotle had intended. According to Sidney,

imaginative literature can be justified if it communicates historical

or philosophical or moral truths in a lively pleasing manner, and if

this means telling things which are not literally true, the untruths

can either be "interpreted allegorically as ways of representing an

underlying general truth or in the case of the historical poet, as

plausible reconstruction of what might well have occurred". 7

The poet according to Sidney does not imitate or represent or

express things, which already exists; he invents new things. He

further says in his Defense of Poesy (1595) that the world invented

or created by the poet is a better world than the real one. It is not

the mere exercise of his imagination that justifies the poet, but the

exercise of his imagination in order to create this better world, the

real world "is brasen, the poets only deliuer a golden"B. Only the

poet can, by his invention, produce something that goes beyond

nature. In creating this better world, the poet has in view the idea

(in the Platonic sense) of the quality he is representing; he is not

34


imitating the idea as reflected palely in real life, but IS directly

embodying his own vision of the ideal.

This development in argument leads Sidney away from the

Aristotelian notion of imitation. He almost proceeds to develop a

theory of "ideal imitation", the notion that the poet imitates not the

mere appearances of actuality but the hidden reality behind them,

and maintains that the poet creates a better world than the one we

actually live in. The ideal world of the poet is presented in such a

way that the reader is stimulated to try and imitate it in his own

practice. Thus the Aristotelian notion of imitation is transferred

from the poet to the reader. The poet does not imitate but creates: it

is the reader who imitates what the poet creates. Taking from the

Roman poet Horace the view that the poet both delights and

teaches, Sidney goes on to show that the poet teaches by presenting

an ideal world for the imitation of the reader. The perfection of the

poet's world does not consist in its being peopled with wholly

virtuous characters, but his heroes are always perfect in behaviour

and successful in fortune and its villains thoroughly villainous

doomed to a certain bad end. It's a world where the righteous

always prospers and the wicked are never left unpunished. It is

from this conception that we get the term 'poetic justice'.

For Plato, the poet's world was second-hand imitation of reality and

therefore of no value. For Aristotle, the poet could, by proper

selection and organisation of incident achieve a reality more

35


profound than the actual; for Sidney, the poet creates a world

morally better than the real word, for the moral edification and

improvement of th~ reader. None of these critics however suggest

that the poet would do well to describe life merely as he finds it as

in Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesie (1668), a dialogue on the

nature of poetic drama and the respective merits of classical,

modern French, Elizabethan and Restoration plays. Dryden defines

a play as "A just and lively image of human nature, representing its

passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is

subject for the delight and instruction ofmankind"9.

Dryden agrees with Aristotle in describing poetry as a process of

imitation but he lays particular emphasis on the fact that a poet

can imitate things also as they are said to be or thought to be. He

follows Sidney, in his belief that poetry is an imitation not only of

nature but also of the best in nature and that poetry by a happy

chemistry unites all the scattered beauties of nature without its

deformities or faults. In other words like Plato he believes that

poetry does not merely imitate things as they are but the ideal

pattern behind the appearances and therefore is higher than

history. Dryden was fully aware of the fact that instruction, delight

and transport had been variously proposed as the function of poetry

by various critics. Dryden was clearly of the view that poetry only

instructs as it delights. According to Dryden the function of poetry

is not only to imitate well but also to affect the soul, to excite the

36


passions and to move admiration. To do this poetry does not merely

make a copy of nature but it gives only as much resemblances of

nature as would produce beautiful and harmonious picture; it

heightens the beauties of nature and conceals its deformities. The

poet therefore is neither merely a teacher nor an imitator but

essentially a creator and like Coleridge, Dryden believed that

imagination and fancy are the faculties that breathe life into the

poet's world.

According to Dryden poetry is the image of human nature that is, it

is the representation of how men behave, a representation of their

passions and their states of mind. By the phrase, ' changes of

fortunes to which it is subject', Dryden actually means human

nature as it reveals itself under trying and testing circumstances

because men best reveal themselves only when they meet with

critical conditions in life:

If Hamlet's father had not been murdered by his uncle and his

mother had not married that same uncle, Hamlet would never have

been driven to exhibit the true image of his nature. 10

One wonders whether Dryden is saying that the aim of poetry is

'Psychological Realism', that is to reveal human nature as it is, to

describe the human passions and human states of mind. Plato

objected to poetry because according to him it is an imitation of an

imitation and therefore twice removed from reality. Aristotle on the

other hand believed that, the reality that poetry represents is more

37


philosophical and profound because it represents not the factual

but the universal and the probable. Poetry in other words aims at

representing the ideal truth. However for Philip Sidney the world

that poetry represents is not the world as it is but is a morally

better world, in which the characters are more virtuous and actions

more noble. But Dryden would say that poetry is the image of

human nature that is, it is the representation of how men behave a

representation of their passions and their states of mind.

Dav~d Daiches says, "that all this representation according to

Dryden is done for the delight and instruction of mankind"ll. The

delight comes from the liveliness with which human nature is

represented, and from the pleasure, which comes from recognising

in fictional characters and fundamental psychological truths. The

instruction is not the moral instruction but instruction in the facts

of human nature. But the 'recognition' that delights is like Keats'

coinage of the word Remembrance. Keats wrote in one of his letters,

"Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest

thoughts and appear almost as a Remembrance" 12. Thus when

Dryden says "a just and lively imitation of human nature" delights

and instructs us, the delight is not because of recognising examples

of the familiar or the unfamiliar but it is the new knowledge. The

implication of Dryden's definition is that, literature is a form of

knowledge. The knowledge pleases partly because it is pleasant to

38


increase our awareness and partly because of the delightful manner

in which it is conveyed.

One must consider Dr. Johnson VIews on poetry to understand

Dryden's argument. In his Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare

(1765) Dr. Johnson praises the playwright because he fulfils

precisely Dryden's requirement of a "just and lively image of human

nature". Dr. Johnson lays down the general principle that "nothing

can ple::l.se many and please long but just representation of human

nat'l:lre". The qualitY of justness brings out this adherence to the

truth of nature. Shakespeare is, above all writers, 'a poet of nature'

by which Dr. Johnson means that he holds up to his readers a

faithful mirror of manners and a life'. So the first quality is the

quality of verisimilitude, the quality of life likeness, the quality of

faithful adherence to the truth of nature. Dr. Johnson says that a

character in other writers is often an individual; in 'Shakespeare it

is commonly a species. Thus just representation of human nature

also means the representation of the universal element in human

nature. Shakespeare achieved the justness of representation not

only in his characters but also in his dialogues so much so that

they hardly seemed to be the product of fiction but they seemed to

have been gleaned with diligent selection out of day to day

conversation. It is true that Shakespeare represents the universal in

human nature and yet Shakespeare has the singular merit of

endowing each one of his characters with a distinct individuality.

39


Dr. Johnson says that:

Shakespeare has no heroes, his scenes are occupied by speakers who act and speak as the reader thinks that he himself would have acted and spoken on the same occasion. 13

Not only this, even in his supernatural he approximates the remote

and familiarises the wonderful, so that if such creatures did exist

they would have probably behaved as he has described them. This

incidentally brings out two other important qualities of poetry; first,

that poetry has two fold function of making familiar unfamiliar by

addi_ng a certain novelty to it and unfamiliar familiar by adherence

to the truth of nature.

Dr. Johnson then talks of Shakespeare's weaknesses as a

dramatist. According to him Shakespeare often sacrifices virtue to

convenience. Shakespeare is so much more careful to please than

to instruct that he often seems to write without any moral purpose.

It is possible to construct a system of social order and duty from his

writings because he who thinks reasonably must also think

morally, but his precepts drop only casually. Moreover, in his plays

there is no just distribution of reward and punishment to good and

evil and he does not always show in the virtuous a disapprobation

of wickedness. Dr. Johnson believes that it is the writer's duty to

make the world better and this does not seem to have been a very

serious concern with Shakespeare. Secondly, his plots are loosely

formed and often carelessly persued and the end of the plots are not

always satisfactory. Thirdly, In Shakespeare the correct

40


correspondence of diction to things is often neglected and trivial

sentiments and vulgar ideas are often expressed through sonorous

epithets and swelling figures. Fourthly, a quibble or a pun is to

Shakespeare 'what vapors are to the traveler'. A quibble is the

golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career or

stoop from his elevation. These according to Dr. Johnson are some

of the glaring defects of Shakespeare's dramas.

While talking about unites in Shakespeare Dr. Johnson says that

his histories have only the unities of chronicles but in his tragedies

and comedies he has well preserved the unity of action. His plots as

Aristotle demands have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the

events are logically linked together and the conclusion follows by an

easy consequence. To the unities of time and place Shakespeare .

shows no regard and rightly so because they have given more

trou1;Jle to the poet than pleasure to the reader. According to Dr.

Johnson the necessity of observing the unities of time and place

arises from the supposed necessity of making the drama credible.

The critics believe that it is impossible that an action of months and

years should be supposed to pass in three hours nor can the

spectator believe the characters to pass from one place to another

in the duration of the same period and therefore they argue that the

mind revolts from evident falsehood. Dr. Johnson however argues

that it is a mistake to believe that a dramatic representation is ever

taken for reality:

41


No spectator when he goes to the theater and finds the first scene opening in Alexandria believes that his walk to the theater is a voyage to Egypt, nor does he believe that he is living in the days of Antony and Ceasar, but if the spectator at one time takes the stage for Alexandria, there is no reason why a mind wandering in imagination should court the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field. 14

Dr. Johnson therefore argues that the spectators are always in their

senses. They know that a stage is a stage and the player a mere

actor and therefore there is nothing absurd In the stage

representing Sicily at one time and Athens at another, since the

spe~tator knows that it is neither Sicily nor Athens but only the

stage. Similarly there is no absurdity in compressing a long passage

of time in a short duration, since time is most congenial to

imagination and a lapse of years can be easily conceived as a

passage of hours. We do not take drama for reality but we are

moved because i,t is the just representation of the original and the

spectator feels the drama to be a truthful picture of what he himself

would feel or do. We do not take the evils in drama for real evils but

we are moved because we feel there are evils to which we may be

exposed. Dr. Johnson concludes that imitation produces pain or

pleasure not because it seeks representation of realities but

because it brings them to our mind. Dr. Johnson tested literature

by its capacity to appeal to the deepest moral needs. One of the

sternest Augustan doctrines was his credo, 'that imaginative writing

must appeal to what is general in human experience, not what is

particular'. In his Preface to his edition of Shakespeare he says:

42


Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature. Particular manners can be known to few, and therefore few only . can judge how nearly they are copies. The irregular combinations of fanciful invention may delight awhile, by that novelty of which the common satiety of life sends us all in quest; but the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth. 1s

Dr. Johnson thus implicitly accepted the Aristotelian doctrine that

art is an imitation. The Augustan dislike of eccentricity in art and

faith in the stability of truth were however the mainstay of his

thesis. In the above remark there is firstly an emphasis on

representational or mimetic nature of poetry, and secondly, there is

an emphasis on the fuzziness of representation. For Dr. Johnson

Shakespeare's characters are not unreal abstractions. They are real

people acting as they do in real life, while at the same time their

behaviour illuminates those general aspects of human nature

which, according to Dr. Johnson, are the true concerns of the poet.

When Johnson says that "Shakespeare has no heroes" he does not

mean that none of his characters are heroic in character or

behaviour or impressive in the strength of personality: he means

that his heroes illustrate and act according to general laws of

human nature. They are not demi-gods or supermen, but men,

whom we recognise as fellow human beings. Johnson's praise of

Shakespeare's 'Psychological Realism' is by implication recognition

of the importance of the particular, through which the general must

be presented. No character in a work of fiction or drama can appear

real if he is not individualised. According to David Daiches:

43


For Johnson like Dryden, literature is a form of knowledge, which is valuable for its illustration, and illumination of human nature. We derive pleasure from seeing human nature thus illustrated and illuminated and not from the incidental beauties of expression the author employs. Johnson is clearer than Dryden on the question of whether what we learn about human nature is new knowledge or simply a lively illustration of what we already know. It is in essence what observant and thoughtful people already know conveyed through unknown examples to the reader.16

The pleasure the reader gets derives from his recognition of general

human nature. But. for Dr. Johnson poetry besides providing

recognition must also provide moral instruction. Thus the Neo-

classical critics like Dryden and Johnson moved away from Aristotle

in their insistence on moral instruction. For them poetry was

illustrative and exploratory in nature and hence the representation

of life was not revealing but merely evoked recognition so as to

instruct.

Mimesis continued to be a viable theory of poetic invention through

the Renaissance and beyond, into the eighteenth century. However

with the advent of Romantic Criticism, the emphasis on originality

and on the poets' genius became the major thesis of the era. Poetry

was "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" the poetic

process, the craft was not so essential to the production of art. In

his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1798) Wordsworth spoke at length

on the emotional state of the poet's mind rather than the means

with which he creates his work. According to Tillotson, the poet was

like an inspired Old Testament prophet who wrote the inspired

poem 17. Coleridge's Kubla Khan is an appropriate example of this.

The overt interest in mimesis was marginalised and poetry, as a

44


reflection of poet's mind and soul was considered as the repository

of highest truth. For Wordsworth, the object of poetry was truth, for

Shelley poetry was the very image of life expressed in its eternal

truth. For John Stuart Mill, poetry was truth and the truth of

poetry was to paint the human soul. Derrida noticed an inevitable

hierarchy in Romantic literary theory which by positioning the poet

as a special being, endowed him with creative imagination and lively

sensibility, in short a comprehensive soul, made the literary

discourse superior to other sorts of discourse.

Wordsworth was aware that he was living In a world of rapid

historical change and the society was under constant transition

under these forces of change unleashed by industrialisation. He

along with Coleridge believed that society could be purified, but for

that the poets should tap the elemental forces in human beings and

their surroundings. This necessarily meant a new kind of poetry

and criticism. For the Augustan the task of the critics and the

philosopher was to maintain a clear vision so as to sustain and

refine the civilisation they inherited. The task of imaginative writer

was to renew the emotional freshness by his wit and invention.

Wordsworth however, tea~hes in his Preface that the educated

vision is not enough; simplest men are more likely to be aware of

their deep resources of life.

In the Preface Wordsworth continues with Aristotle's doctrine that

poetry is imitation, and he agrees with Johnson that its object is

45


general not individual and particular. Poetry was the image of man

and nature. Wordsworth was trying to awaken the reader to a new

conception of poetry by conveying how the poet's mind operates. For

Wordsworth, the poet's mind 'recollects' and contemplates like a

chemical process of emotions; the mind is the spectator, and it is

emotion that is active.

With Coleridge's Biographia Literaria (1817) German thought

propounded by, Fichte, Schelling and Kant became predominant in

English Romanticism between 1800 and 1850. It ended the reign of

reason over imagination in literary thought. It broke the frontiers of

life and art and art was no longer thought of so much as highly

skilled profession, but more as a way of life. The critic became an

interpreter rather than an evaluator, and the imaginative writer

became the man living out human problems in imaginative terms,

rather . than the poet holding a mirror up to nature for the

judgement of reason. "Reason", Shelley was to write in A Defence of

Poetry (1821), "is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as

the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance" 18. With the

Romantics the audience gradually receded in the background giving

place to the poet himself, and his own mental powers and emotional

needs. With the shift in focus of critical interests, the expressive

theory of art came into' being. Coleridge was the first critic to show

that no theory of artistic creation was valid unless it showed how

the artist was totally involved in the process of creation as man.

46


This of course, demanded a total response by the reader: "The poet

brings the whole soul of man into activity" (Biographia Literana

Chap-XIV).

Coleridge begins his argument with eighteenth century assumption

basic to Hartley, that, in any theory of knowledge, there must be

subject and object, known and unknown, man and nature. He goes

on to argue that behind this duality there must be a unity neither

subject nor an object, but a principle of being which manifests itself

in the sum or 'I am'. This is God the infinite creative, unifying power

for which he invents the adjective 'essemplastic' (shaping into one).

Coleridge declares that this infinitive creative power, which he

terms the primary imagination', manifests itself as the secondary

imagination' in acts of creation. It differs from 'Fancy', which

hitherto had loosely been regarded as synonymous with

imagination, because 'Fanc;y' is merely a mode of memory with no

capacity to recreate, but only to combine images in associations,

whereas the 'imagination dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to

re-create'.

Thus in Coleridge's terms, it becomes difficult any longer to think of

the poet as making Aristotelian imitations of nature, for this implies

judgement of the poem in the light of the nature regarded as an

object. For Coleridge poetic truth is not that of the object, but a

union between the subject and the ojbect; of a union of the poet

and the nature; general and the concrete; the idea with the image;

47


the individual and the representative. The poetry is thus

essemplatic, and creates new wholes out of discordant qUalities.

Coleridge's Biographia has had·more influence on twentieth century

critics than on the nineteenth century ones. It was the most

articulate expression of a spirit, which had been slowly taking

shape even within the Augustan Neo-Classic 18th century. Sense

(feeling) and sensibility (reason) became prominent in literary

currency. Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility (1811)

contrasts the two aspects of late Augustan period: admiration for

sound reason and cultivation of taste for the imaginative pleasures.

With Keats the Romantic thought reached its pinnacle of glory. This

development as a poet was also his spiritual development. This

struggle to experience truth in his poems was his singular

occupation and he invented the famous phrase 'Negative ,Capability'

i.e. 'where a man is capable of being in uncertainties, ,mysteries,

doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason'. The

union of thought and the sense constituted 'Beauty" for Keats. The

process of reconciling suffering and delight in 'Beauty' is the theme

of his great Odes 'what the imagination seizes as beauty must be

truth'. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats all in their own individual

ways saw poetry as an enlargement of the poet's and the reader's

personalities through the extension of their sympathies. This

concern with growth from within the personality was what

distinguished the Romantic period of 1790-1830 from the Augustan

48


period and it constituted a change of direction from the outer world

of society to inner world of spirit.

The Augustans were deeply critical of their society but were highly

optimistic that their society had all the regenerative resources to

reinvigorate human civilization. However the Romantics influenced

by the ferment of ideas unleashed by the French Revolution, and

under the onslaught of social ills ushered in by the Industrial

Revolution, felt that society denied essential human needs. Hence

the need for imaginative literature to nurture the inner lives of

individuals. For Sidney the world was by its nature a fallen one,

and for Shelley poetry was the supreme function of the mind, but

Arnold was specifically concerned with poetry as a remedy for the

ills of contemporary society. He felt that English life had lost the

spirit of culture and civilisation, which was so vital in the age of

Shakespeare. He made a plea not for poetry but for criticism, to

counter the ills of materialism. The essence of this critical function,

was "the idea of a disinterested endeavour to learn the best that is

known and felt in the world and to establish a current of fresh

ideas".

In the later half of the nineteenth century a two-fold process

unfolded itself. In creative poetry, it could be said that the Victorian

Age was a continuation of the Romantic Movement; it was the

overflow of the Romantic spirit. On the other hand in criticism there

was a re-establishment of many of the Neo-Classical principles. In

49


fact much of Arnold's criticism is only a re-statement of many

canons of Aristotle's theory of poetry. However, the Victorian Age

added a new dimension both to creative literature as well as to the

critical theory; and this was the dimension of social realism on the

one hand and social criticism on the other. In this area before

Arnold, Carlyle and Ruskin are important philosophers as they

helped to increase the social consciousness of both writers as well

as critics. Both Carlyle and Ruskin belonged to anti-philistine

movement. They were the crusaders against the materialistic

progress of the nineteenth century and the utilitarian philosophy of

the nineteenth century. Carlyle describes Economics as a dismal

science and Ruskin had a clear concept in his mind that we can not

serve two masters, we can either serve God or Mammon.

The critics of the later Victorian Age that is after, 1850, seem to be ,

more in ~greement with Aristotle, that it is possible for a poet to

imitate men 'as they are'. There was a difference however that while

in Dryden and Dr. Johnson the emphasis was on 'Psychological

Realism' in the Victorian critics the emphasis was on 'Imitation of

man not only as he is but in relation to society'. Thus, in Arnold the

social aspect of criticism becomes important. This is brought out

particularly by his great emphasis on 'Culture'. Arnold could not

speak of poetry or literature without at the same time speaking

about culture. For him 'Culture' was the context in which literature

was created and literature expressed the 'Culture' or the cultural

50


context in which that particular literature was created. It is for this

reason that he came out with a new idea in the second important

critical document called "The Function of Criticism At The Present

Time" (Essays in Criticism 1- 1865). This essay is less an essay in

literary criticism and more an essay in the relationship between

literary criticism and culture. It is in this essay that Arnold

introduces the very important term in his critical theory, namely the

concept of 'disinterestedness'. This concept of 'disinterestedness' is

closely allied to the concept of objectivity and it should be noted

that mimetic theory is essentially an objective theory of literature.

The Romantic theory on the other hand was a subjective theory, it

was concerned basically with 'ego' and 'self. Arnold believed that no

social or political reform could lead to a truly enlightened society, or

even understand the contemporary ills unless guided by 'Hellenic'

consciousness. He was impressed by the high level of culture in

contemporary France, with its governing academy and by the

success of Von Humboldt in the organising of Prussian education.

These examples of enlightened authority led him to declare in

Culture and Anarchy (1869) that the state must be made the

'expression of our best self. Central to Arnold is however his view

that poetry was a criticism of life and the greatness of a poet lies in

his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life. Arnold

rejected poets like Chaucer, Dryden, Pope and Burns for they

according to him did not exhibit high seriousness, unlike Dante,

Homer, Milton and Shakespeare.

51


It has the power of forming, sustaining and delighting us, as nothing else can. It is therefore essentially moral, not in the narrow didactic sense, but in the larger sense of conforming to the highest ideals of truth, goodness and Beauty .19

In Literature for T.S. Eliot it was necessary for the poet and critic to

owe an allegiance to what he named as tradition. Eliot is

particularly remembered in criticism for the varied importance and

meaning he gave to the concept of tradition. Secondly, he is

remembered for his impersonal theory of poetry. In both of these

there seems little connection with Aristotle. Nevertheless, Eliot in a

way- re-interprets some of the principles of Aristotle's Poetics and it

is not without significance that Eliot describes Aristotle as a perfect

critic:

The most important idea connected with the mimetic theory is Eliot's emphasis on objectivity. Just as Matthew Arnold is never tired of laying an emphasis on the importance of action in poetry, similarly, Eliot is never tired of laying an equal emphasis on the importance of 'objectivity' in a work of art. Eliot believed that a critic ought to be objective in his outlook. The mimetic theory of poetry is the most objective theory of poetry. In a way, the Imagist movement of poetry in England the credit for encouraging which goes to Eliot, is also a part of the mimetic theory of poetry, because even there the attempt is to present ideas and feelings in the form of concrete images, which is something objective. John Crowe Ransom calls the Imagist poetry a kind of physical poetry, that is it talks of things and, as he puts it, about their 'thinginess': .... The Imagists were important figures in the history of our poetry, and they were both theorists and creators. It was their intention to present things in their thinginess, ... and to such an extent had the public lost its sense of thinginess that their redirection was wholesome. What the public was inclined to seek in poetry was ideas, whether large ones or small ones; grand ones or pretty ones, certainly ideas to live by one die by, but what the Imagist identified with the stuff of poetry was, simply, things .... 20

Eliot is quite clear in his mind that if poetry has to be great then it

must be objective and it must be impersonal. T. S. Eliot therefore,

in his essay, "Tradition and Individual Talent" rejects Wordsworth's

52


expressive theory of poetry outright. He says that it is wrong to say

that poetry is 'emotions recollected in tranquility', because it is

neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, the state of mind in which

poetry is created can without distortion of meaning be called

tranquil. Later on he makes an even more powerful statement when

he says:

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from this things.21

In ather words according to Eliot, direct expression of emotion in

poetry is not possible. Poetry is not the spontaneous overflow of

powerful feelings. But poetry has to seek a medium through which

alone emotions can be expressed. Here we are reminded of

Aristotle's emphasis on action. According to Aristotle, vr'ragedy is an

imitation not of men but of action' and character comes in only as

subsiaiary to it. For Aristotle character includes feelings and

thought includes ideas. Eliot is more or less saying the same thing

as Aristotle when he invents the term 'objective correlative' which is

one of the terms which has become extremely popular in the

twentieth century criticism. Eliot uses this term when he talks

about Hamlet in his essay. The thesis Eliot wishes to bring out is

the emotion that Shakespeare sought to bring out in Hamlet could

not be properly expressed because he was not able to find an

outward framework of situation which would exactly correspond to

the emotion he had wanted to express:

53


The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are, given, the emotion is immediatelyevoked.22

In other words the failure of Hamlet is the failure of a proper

'objective correlative'. The idea that poetry should express itself in

the form of legends is only another expression of the emphasis on

'objective correlative'. Because 'image' IS the objective

correspondence to the idea, the feelings, the emotion that the poet

wishes to express. He no longer tries to express them through 'a

spontaneous overflow' but he presents an image which would

exactly correspond to the emotion that is sought to be expressed.

Hence 'image' in a poem on a minor scale is what 'objective

correlative' is in a drama. Objectification of one's personality alone

can render greatness to a work of art. Keats' 'Negative Capability'

where the poet must have the capacity of abnegation of his own self,

is reminiscent in this context.

In his essay "Tradition and Individual Talent"(1917), Eliot redefined

the term 'tradition' like Wordsworth had redefined the word 'nature'

in the beginning of nineteenth century. 'Nature' for Wordsworth was

not inanimate but active which provided emotional nourishment to

the humanity. Similarly for Eliot 'tradition' was not 'the dead hand

of past' forcing the present into conformity with it, but all that is

alive from the past capable of assimilation by the present, and

altered by it. Thus representation of reality for Eliot meant a

54


creative amalgamation of reality filtered through past and altered by

the present. For Eliot felt that a 'dissociation of sensibility' had

taken place with Milton and Dryden when the mind and emotion

separated. 'A thought to Donne was an experience, it modified his

sensibility', but that ended in the seventeenth century. While

talking about tradition Eliot gives a new meaning to the term

'history'. As Watson points out, it is a strange historical sense that

ignores the chronological sense of time:

And this historical sense is 'what makes a writer traditional'. But _ it is an odd historical sense that denies chronology and conceives

of the past as both 'the timeless and the temporal'. 23

In a way Eliot releases history from its historical context because in

talking about historical sense, he says it is a sense of the timeless

and of the temporal and of the timeless and temporal together.

Infact he introduces the concept of simultaneity of history. He says

all great poetry IS simultaneous, it IS a statement of .. ;:.

contemporaneity of all great poetry:

Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It can not be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional and it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity.24

55


In Aristotle this simultaneity is a part of the emphasis on the formal

element. Eliot is never tired of saying that we must consider a poem

free from its historical context as well as from the poet's biography.

This idea was put forth also by Arnold when he said that the real

estimate is that which is free of historical estimate and personal

estimate. In other words, as with Aristotle, for Eliot also a poem has

its meaning in itself and the meaning can be discovered only

through its form. The formal element is therefore the most

important element in a work of art. In fact, what makes a work of

art IS the formal element. This concern with the form is one of the

common elements between the twentieth century criticism and

Aristotle. Besides Eliot, a group of critics, who described themselves

as New Critics particularly in the United States, derived inspiration

both from Aristotle and Eliot.

With the Formalists the e,xpressive and mimetic definition of

literature were discarded. To see literature either as an expression

of an author's personality and world vision or as a mimetic

representation (realistic) of the world in which he lived was no more

valid. To see literary texts as an expression of author's personality

invariably would undermine the literary qualities of the text and

focus would be more on biography, psychology, history, politics,

and sociology. The Russian Formalists introduced the notion of

'defamiliarisation' i.e. reality presented in such a way so as to make

it strange. The concept of 'literariness' i.e. what makes a work

56


literary and the concept of 'differentiation' in which for e.g. poetry is

analysed only by a. comparison with what is not poetry are the

hallmarks of Formalists. Formalist theory reversed the priority of

content over form and devoted its attention exclusively to form.

Roland Barthes identified five major codes by which literature IS

constituted: - the semic, the symbolic, the proairetic, henneneutic

and the cultural code. These codes are shared by the author and

the reader and their role in the text is what makes it a text.

According to Barthes these codes form a network or a topos through

which the text passes, and these codes are not inherently literary

and function as a part of the general. Reality therefore is not

defined either concretely or semantically. Instead reality becomes a

kind of text itself, constituted by codes. To write about reality is

then not to relate word to thing, but text to text.

For the Marxi~~ theoretician George Lukacs, literature does not

reflect reality as a mirror reflects the objects placed in front of it.

Literature is knowledge of reality, and knowledge is not a matter of

making one to one correspondences between things in the world

outside and ideas in the heads, but it has shape. To be reflected in

literature, reality has to pass through the creative form giving work

of the writer. The 'correct form' for Lukacs is one, which reflects

reality in the most objective way. He feels Walter Scott, Balzac and

Leo Tolstoy's writings to be the most correct as they take into

account the contradictory nature of a capitalist society. Zola and

57


Proust on the other hand gave an inflated emphasis to one aspect of

reality at the expense of others i.e., unmediated totality. According

to Lukacs a properly 'mediated totality' by contrast, IS a

representation which reveals the true relationship between the

human subject and the objective world. The rest was a distorted

reality or ideological deformations of reality which failed to take into

account objective situation of a society founded on the contradiction

between classes.

The film theory draws upon the two principal traditions of narrative

representation: -

1. Mimetic: Narration as the presentation of spectacle, l.e.,

showing.

2. Diegetic: Narration in terms of a verbal activity, i.e. telling (oral

and written).

Aristotle's theory of mimesis applies primarily to theatrical

performances, however before him in Plato's time the term had been

stretched to include imitation in painting and sculpture. Mimetic

theories begin from the act of seeing or viewing; an object is

presented to the eye of the beholder. The Greek theater and

painting and later Renaissance arts were all guided by one central

characteristic of 'perception'. All representation in arts and all the

modes of representation struggled towards an accurate imitation so

as to provide an accurate perception. Aristotle's Greece had in it's

theater (theatron-seeing place) and painting an awareness of how to

58


calculate visual spectacle in relation to spectator's sight. In fact the

Greek theater had confronted the question of theater space and the

spectator in relation to it in the very beginning. Hence various

principles of perspective in painting influenced the Renaissance

stage, the proscenium framed the stage picture, concealed the back

stage and so on and so forth. The Renaissance church exploited the

perspective principles to paint the church walls and ceilings with

biblical and ecclesiastical stories. Even then the prime deciding

factor was the spectator's vision and the construction of an 'ideal

viewer' with an 'ideal vantage point'.

With the rise of the novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth century

all prose fiction came to be thought of in mimetic terms. Right from

George Eliot to Dryden everyone aimed for mastery of images and

pictures in their writings. Henry James considered the novel to be a

pictorial art and attempted a mimetic theory of literary narration.

According to James the writer's technical devices included 'framing'

and the 'point of view'. All film theory before 1960 is derived from

mimetic theories of narration. Film theorists like Hugo Munsterberg

and Rudolph Arnheim begin theorising from a basic hypothesis that

a film is a string of images. Andre Bazin acknowledges the centrality

of visual spectacle. According to him Cinema is like a photographed

play with the camera stressing and selecting certain details. Film

theory stresses the role of the camera and the camera lens becomes

the invisible or implied spectator. V.l. Pudovkin in his 1926

59


monograph Film Technique describes how the change of shot

conveys the impression of a spectator watching a street encounter

and casting his glance from one to the other. Pudovkin even

suggests that quickening the tempo of editing can replicate in the

viewer the mounting excitement of the implied viewer.

All film theorists readily accepted the invisible or implied viewer

theory and this model solved all the problems of space, storyteller,

point-of-view etc. This classical model assumed the invisible

witness rooted to the spot, on the same side of the axis of action or

"1800 Line". Continuity editing or cutting was the mainstay of this

classical model and could easily mimic ordinary experience. This

formulation however sprung a leak when this invisible witness was

to don an omniscient observer role and could view anything and

everything cutting through space and time. This could hardly be

justified as faithful rendition of invisible viewer's perception, hence,

the filmmake"rs and theorists decided that omniscience should be

limited and the invisible observer became the ideal implied viewer

without an obtrusive presence. However, there were other problems

to contend with, given the fact that the camera position and cutting

approximated the actual perception, the stylized technique likes

wipe outs, negative filming, jade out etc brought in psychological

aspects of the viewer beyond his viewing. Yasujiro Ozu, the famous

Japanese filmmaker always used low camera angles so as to

reproduce the perception of a seated guest. However, the viewing

60


would become disconcerting because the real viewer would always

find itself looking up. The classical model was useful for a very

basic narrative representation. Its emphasis upon the eye-camera

analogy however made it reductive. The narrational role of other

film techniques was reduced.

Eisenstein developed the mimetic theory further by including an

emotional aspect in the narration. He insisted that representation

involved not a simple and flat depiction but a heightening of the

import and emotion of what was depicted. He called it the

Expressive Movement and considered that representation should

affect the perceiver, something like Aristotle's Catharsis. Eisenstein

felt that this could be achieved through 'montage' the juxtaposition

of shots that would shock the spectator into a desired emotion. 'The

Agitprop Theater of Eisenstein's time left its mark. Representation I

was supposed to be an instrument affecting the perceiver in specific

ways. The expressionist emphasis in Eisenstein's theory implies the

shaping hand of a director. His theory of 'montage' and mise-en-

scene (all the physical properties that constitute a frame) all point

to the creative intervention of a maker of a film. His mimetic theory

of the Cinema now aimed at various techniques to articulate the

emotional essence of the reality and thus absorbing the spectator in

the narrative process itself.

Coming back to the question of narrative tradition propounded by

both Plato and Aristotle, we know that if Plato viewed narration as

61


fundamentally a linguistic activity, Aristotle laid emphasis In the

mimetic tradition of narrative representation. The film theory

borrowed heavily from such a conception and the 'film narrative'

was closely compared with language. This narrative tradition of

'telling' was called Diegesis. Diegesis now stands for the fictional

world depicted in a narrative. Diegesis became a popular concept

with the twentieth century literary theorists, for whom literature

was not merely mimesis but primarily a linguistic activity. In 1960's

Roland Barthes applied Ferdinand De Sassures' theory of

signification and Semiotics to non-linguistic systems like fashion

and advertisements, including media. All manner of cultural

phenomena like films thus came to be treated as analogous to

verbal activity.

The Semiologists wrote of painting and theater as language ,

systems. The Russian Formalists were the first to exploit the

analogies betWeen language and film in a detailed way. While a film

shot was compared to the line of verse, various other cinematic

equivalents for symbol metaphors and similes were sought

energetically. However it was only with the French Structuralists

and Semioticians that the lingusitic theory was applied to analyse

fil . .Hi

1 m narration.

Digital imaging technologies are rapidly transforming nearly all

aspects of contemporary film production. Computer manipulation of

images in films like Steven Speilberg's The Jurassic Park (1993),

62


Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) or the Hollywood blockbuster Terminator

II (1991), is so novel and its special effects so unprecedented that

the concepts of mimesis and representation in Cinema have to

readapt itself. In Spielberg's Jurassic Park viewers watched

photographic images of moving, breathing and chomping dinosaurs,

images which have no basis in any photographic reality but which

nevertheless seem realistic. In JFK the real life news footage of

President Kennedy's assassination and aftermath is so cleverly

juxtaposed with recreated shots and edited in such a manner that

the -thin line between reality and re-enacted reality gets blurred. To

match the black and white print of news footage the raw stock of

the film IS also black and white in places and hence the reality

imitated is merely a constructed reality. In the film Forest Gump

(1994), directed by Robert Zemeckis, President Kennedy is shown

speaking to actor Tom Hanks with dialogues provided by the

scriptwriter years after Kennedy is dead. Computer- imaging has

thus made it possible to create credible images and challenge the

traditional assumptions about realism and Cinema, which are

embodied in film theory.

From Charles Pierce to Roland Barthes, it was postulated that

photographs and their referents couldn't be separated.

I call photographic referent' not the optionally real thing to which an image or sign refers but the necessarily real thing which has been placed before the lens without which there would be no photograph. 26

63


Since Cinema was a photographic medium, film theorists based

their theories on the indexical status of the photographic sign.

While Andre Bazin went on to say that however distorted,

discoloured and howsoever lacking in documentary value the film

image may be, it was a reproduction and a mode1.2~ Siegfried

Kracauer also maintained that film image basically redeems

physical reality. However the technique of computer generated

images (CGI) by twisting, stretching, adding, deleting images mocks

the notion of indexical referentiality.

In film theory, the Formalist outlook propounded by Rudolph

Arnheim, Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, stresses Cinema's

capacity for reorganising and even countering and falsifying,

physical reality. This schism in classical film theory, which either

considers Cinema's capability to photographically copy reality, or to ,

stylisti~ally transcend that reality continues till date. However the

Semioticians feel that codes and discourse, in Cinema produce the

"reality" effect. Dudley Andrew explains:

The discovery that resemblance is coded and therefore learned was a tremendous and hard won victory for semiotics over those upholding a notion of naive perception in Cinema.2~

Representation in Cinema today is viewed as both indexical and

semiotical where Cinema is a discourse and realism is seen as one

discourse among many. In order to understand the nature of

representation through digital imaging technologies, one must

64


understand a correspondence-based model of cinematic

representation .2~ The synthetic realities produced by digital

imaging seem real because they include iconic and non-iconic social

cues, which are from the viewer's real world. These cues could be

visual, i.e., they approximate to real world features of shape-size,

contour, geography and monoloculur distance codes, these in turn

evoke comprehension among VIewers who recognIse the

experientially familiar objects. These visual cues are then

juxtaposed along with social behaviour like motive, intent. Hence

we see that cinematic representation operates through structured

correspondence between the images and the viewer's visual and

social world. These digital images can be called 'Perceptually

Realistic'. A 'Perceptually Realistic' image is one, which corresponds

to the viewer's audio-visual experience of the three-dimensional

space and may not have an exact referent in the real world29 •

Perceptually Realistic images may be unreal but they organise the

display of light, colour, texture, movement and sound in ways that

correspond with the viewer's own understanding of these

phenomena in daily life.

Perceptual Realism thus brings us into new realms of mimesis in

film theory. The theory of cinematic representation in the last

hundred years has moved from indexically based notions of realism

to realism as a discourse in Cinema to perceptual realism with no

referent in the real world.

65


Notes

1. Tobias Doring, "The Real Inspector Freud: Kim Morrisey, Terry Johnson and the Drama of Hysteria" in Contemporary Drama in English Vol. 3,1995 Drama and Reality, from Tobias Doring Website (online database).

2. Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity; A particular history of the senses (NY: London: Routledge, 1993), p.xiii.

3. Jack Purcell, 'Plato's Theory of film' Commentary Page, USA, 2000

in Cinemania

4. Jacques Derrida, of Grammotology, Trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976), pp.36-37.

5. _ S.H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (New Delhi: Kalyani Publishers, 1981), p.25

6. Ibid., p.27

7. Kapil Kapoor and Ranga Kapoor,ed. Canonical Texts of English Literary Criticism: With Selections From Classical Poeticians, (NewDelhi:Academic Foundation, 1995),p. 133.

8. Ibid.p, 133.

9. S.Ramaswami and V.S. Seturaman ed., The English Critical Tradition: An Anthology of English Literacy Criticism. Volume One (India: Macmillan, 1977) p.123.

10. Ibid., John Dryden, An Essay on Dramatic Poesie, p.170

11. David Daiches, Critical Approaches to Literature (U.K., Orient Longman, 1977), p. 79.

12. Obset Ramaswami, Sethuraman, ed. John Keats, 'From the Letters to John Taylor, 27th Feb 1818, p.369.

13. Ibid. Dr. Johnson's, A Preface to Shakespeare, p.249.

14. Ibid., p.258.

15. Ibid., p.247.

16. p.84.

66


17. Geoffrey Tillotson, 'Drewmar's Essay on Poetry an Exposition and Comment', in HenryLevin L, Perspectives on Criticism (NY: Russell and Russell, 1970), p.176.

18. Op.Cit. Ramaswami & Sethuraman, ed. Selections from Mathew Arnold, p.362.

19. Ibid., A Defence of Poetry by Shelley, p.290.

20. Op.Cit .David Daiches, p.288.

21. Shiv K. Kumar, Three Essays (Calcutta: O.U.P. 1994), p.25.

22. Ibid., p.27.

23. George Watson, The Literary Critics (Middlesex: Hammondsworth, Penguin Book Ltd., 1962), p.182.

24. Op. cit. David Daiches, p.288.

25. Ann Jefferson and David Robey ed. Modem Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction2nd ed.: (London: B.T. Basford Ltd., 1986), p.172.

26. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Trans. Richard Howard (NY: Hill and Wany, 1981), p.76.

27. Andre Bazin, What is Cinema? Vol. 1 Ed. and Trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967), p.14.

28. Dudley Andrew, Concepts in Film Theory (NY: Oxford University Press, 1984), p.25. .

29. Stephen Price, "True Lies: Perceptual realism digital images and film theory" in Film Quarterly .49.3 (Spring, 1996), pp.27-38.

67

Date post:	16-Feb-2019
Category:	Documents
Upload:	lamhuong
View:	213 times
Download:	0 times

REALITY AND REPRESENTATIONshodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/29149/7/07_chapter 1.pdf ·...

Documents