Taming the Chaos: English Poetic Diction Theory since the Renaissance by Emerson R. Marks (review)

Abstract

YES,31, 200 YES,31, 200 phenomenon in sexualpoliticswith a phenomenon in literaryhistory.Hoeveler has put together an original and exciting argument that engages with Naomi Woolf as much as with Bakhtin,but it is a discussionthat does not alwaysneed the extensive weight of critical reference with which we are supplied. The energetic ideas the author presents us with are often lost behind an awesome body of quotations, and the writing is frequentlyrestless,shiftingawkwardlyfrom colourfulanecdote to dry theoretical analysis, breaking from academic high seriousnessto jaunty conversational humour. None of these rhetoricaltricksstrengthensHoeveler's case, and nor do they need to: the thesisis good enough to speakfor itself. UNIVERSITY OF READING FRANCES WILSON Tamingthe Chaos: English Poetic Diction Theorysince the Renaissance. By EMERSON R. MARKS. Detroit, MI:Wayne State UniversityPress. I998. 413 PP. $39.95. This remarkable and thought-provoking work is perhaps not altogether as accurately entitled as it might have been. Somewhere in midstream, and quite understandably,the argument shiftsfrom its focus on diction to that of rhythmic (metrical)structureand the differencebetween prose and poetry. In the same way, an undercurrent that involves itself with aesthetic theory, surfaces and becomes recognizable as the realpoint of the exercise. The first third of the book is purposefully dry in its meticulous record of every possibleposition takenwith regardto poetic diction duringthe EnglishRenaissance and neoclassical periods. Relief, however, arriveswith the revolt of Romanticism, and one isobviouslyencouragedto cheerheartilyforWordsworth'srevolt,especially for Coleridge's correction of Wordsworth's wayward thought. It is, of course, Coleridge, as well as Eliot, who are the heroes of the piece, and they alone are awardedtwo chapterseach. The main argument is that Coleridge rightly recognized the poet as one who makes/creates order rather than merely recording external reality. A right understandingof mimesis is obviously at stake.The creative 'copy' is preferredover unengaged 'imitation'. The notion of tension, which became a touchstone for the New Criticism with its preference for such terms as 'ambiguity', 'conflict', and 'irony', is highly praised. 'The theory of poetic tension, part of the largeraesthetics of dynamic polarity, has long seemed to me to depend for its acceptance less upon logical exposition than upon confirmingexperience, the silent testimony of persons with the imaginative capacity for strenuousintrospection of theformtaken by their psychic transactionswith great art' (p. 153). Later on there is glowing approvalfor Mill's definitionof poetry as a psychic stateratherthan a compositionalform. Emerson R. Marksis alwayssubtleand perceptive, often illuminating,and never doctrinaire. He readily acknowledges the case 'for regarding free verse not as an abandonment of meter but a radical renovation of it to accommodate profound changes in the modern social psyche' (p. I87). In another context he quotes, for example, De Quincey's remarkthat that dictionWordsworthso much deploredwas obviously present in the finest passages of Dryden and Pope, not to mention Shakespeare and Milton. There are notable references to historical styles and relevantworldviews, yet he ispleased to endorse Eliot'sconfirmationof Coleridge's dynamic organicism (the concept of vital structure)as being a part of something universal in verse. A poem is created when ideas are transmuted into feeling (sensibility). Marks also writes admiringly of an ultra-lexical order of aesthetic communication. phenomenon in sexualpoliticswith a phenomenon in literaryhistory.Hoeveler has put together an original and exciting argument that engages with Naomi Woolf as much as with Bakhtin,but it is a discussionthat does not alwaysneed the extensive weight of critical reference with which we are supplied. The energetic ideas the author presents us with are often lost behind an awesome body of quotations, and the writing is frequentlyrestless,shiftingawkwardlyfrom colourfulanecdote to dry theoretical analysis, breaking from academic high seriousnessto jaunty conversational humour. None of these rhetoricaltricksstrengthensHoeveler's case, and nor do they need to: the thesisis good enough to speakfor itself. UNIVERSITY OF READING FRANCES WILSON Tamingthe Chaos: English Poetic Diction Theorysince the Renaissance. By EMERSON R. MARKS. Detroit, MI:Wayne State UniversityPress. I998. 413 PP. $39.95. This remarkable and thought-provoking work is perhaps not altogether as accurately entitled as it might have been. Somewhere in midstream, and quite understandably,the argument shiftsfrom its focus on diction to that of rhythmic (metrical)structureand the differencebetween prose and poetry. In the same way, an undercurrent...