Timeless Poetry: Beyond Historical Context

A more formidable objection to the plan of the book might be that I have taken too little into account the historical backgrounds of the poems I have discussed. An adequate answer to this charge will have to be furnished by the book itself, but I should like to forestall some misapprehensions, here and now. If literary history has not been emphasized in the pages that follow, it is not because I discount its importance, or because I have failed to take it into account. It is rather that I have been anxious to see what residuum, if any, is left after we have referred the poem to its cultural matrix.

The temper of our times is strongly relativistic. We have had impressed upon us the necessity for reading a poem in terms of its historical context, and that kind of reading has been carried on so successfully that some of us have been tempted to feel that it is the only kind of reading possible. We tend to say that every poem is an expression of its age; that we must be careful to ask of it only what its own age asked; that we must judge it only by the canon of its age. Any attempt to view it sub specie aeternitatis, we feel, must result in illusion.

Perhaps it must. Yet, if poetry exists as poetry in any meaningful sense, the attempt must be made. Otherwise the poetry of the past becomes significant merely as cultural anthropology, and the poetry of the present, merely as political, or religious, or moral instruments.

Cleanth Brooks, Preface to The Well-Wrought Urn

Analysis of Cleanth Brooks' Preface

1) Translate...

That phrase means that being used to analyze literature in relation to its historical context, trying to analyze it outside its particular period is an atemporal way and is felt as something that does not lead to relevant interpretations but the main illusions.

2) Explain in your own words... What is Brooks' position?

In this fragment, Brooks explains why in his books he avoids referencing the historical backgrounds of poetry. Against the tendencies of the time, he seeks to interpret it on its own without referring to the context to give it importance not in relation to its period. He thinks that giving literature importance only in relation to the context means it is not treated as literature but as information of the historical period. He is against that.

We cannot know the meaning of a poem if we only focus on relating it to the context.

3) If the word of poetry is not gauged... What can happen in the...

The risk of giving importance to poetry only in relation to the context: past poetry is only considered important as cultural anthropology and present poetry is only considered important as a political, religious, or moral instrument, therefore seen as information of the historical period and not as literature.