Literary Theory Today

Discussion

DISCUSSION OF WAI-LIM YIP'S PAPER Yin仲hsiung Cho~: If poetics can be described as a systematic study of '1iterature (in contrast to interpretation which seeks 1:0 elucldate individual texts), and if comparative 1iterature can be defined as a disclpline dealing with 1iterature on a cross岫cul tural basis with a view to ascertaining the universal, then this paper is a briJliant example in the field of comparative poetics. It is, moreover, a perceptive statement of the similarities and differences between the East and the West and can be seen as an interesting rebuttal of A. Owen AJdridge's argum,ent in his "Universal Uterature, Yes; Common Poetics, NO."l One of the major concerns of the speaker is with "the anxiety of the speaking subject over the inadequacy of language in authenticating the original world." There are, in other words, two issues involved: (1) the anxlety of self; (2) the inadequacy of grammatical devices. 1 shall comment on the two issues by supplying a brief historical survey of the defence of poetry and also by rehearsin忍 some of the dlfferent steps in which grammar surfaces from a basic.. communicative need and becomes speclfic linguistic feafures. 入5 Terry Eagleton has rightly pointed out, al1 1iterary criticlsms are ideologically grounded. Uterary criticlsms are basical1y the products of history, as are 1iterary works themselves. Any daims of universality need to be careful1y scrutinized. Wai心im Yip's dichotomy is made in the context of the history of ideas since Plato in the West and the Taoist outJook on nature in the East. It is perhaps unnecessary to restate Plato's prejudice against poets on moral 皂rounds， but one can not deny that his criticism in a way dictates what direction literary criticlsm in the West would take for the next two and a half thousand years. There was, on.the one hand, a view of literature as lTamkang Review, 10, Nos.l & 2 (1979), 17-33. 178 fu1fil1ing mimetic or even didactic purposes. This contrasted withanother view which saw literature as justifiable in its own right. The critical pendulum swung to the former in the c1assical1y oriented periods and to the latter in the romantically inc1ined ones. To greatly simplify the polarity, the swing of langua惡e moved between the object and the subject. By contras沁抖。u Chien argues that Chinese critics followed a Confucian line of thinking and never felt it necessary to defend literature. Literature has aJl along been incorporated into China's educational system and can be right1y c1assified as a branch of the dominant ideology. Now in a society which deemphasized individuaJity and encouraged cooporation, se1f was expected to develop itself but, of course, in the end only to serve, or better stiH, to identify with society. In other words, what at first looks 1ike expressiveness eventually leads to mimesis and even didacticism. It provides, one must 純仇 a more uninterrupted view of the relation between the subject and the object. In this perspective, one could perhaps gain extra insight into the polarity of positions in the West and the absence of polarity in China. As for the relationship between â line and a mind, it is necessary to m~ntion in passing the Sapir枷 Whorf hypothesis that rea1ity is 1n one way or another pr• coded, by the language through which rea1ity is perceived. In this line of thinking, the language one uses predetermines one's outlook on rea1ity. However, the way poetic langua草e determines our outlook must in my opinion go through a process of mediation as follows: A. Before the enunciation of an utterance, there is the so-called discourse pragmatics which 1s identical to one's basic communication need, but which is yet to be pronounced in a socially accepted format, i.e. a gram幣 matically correct utterance. B. From disccurse pragmatics, the next step is syn欄 tact1cization. Different languages go through different degrees of syntacticization with different degrees of redundancy. It is generalJy agreed that Chinese is a more paratactic language than Eng1ish and contains fewer 179 redundancy features. C. In the hístorical evolution of languages, it has been argued that parataxis eventual1y gives way to hypotaxís. Yet one could also argue that there 訟re other linguistic devices which can be employed to make up for the lack in syntacticization. One of these devices is colJocation. Because of the relative absence of the ri在id parts of speech, collocations...