PERPETUAL PARADOXES: A NEW CRITICAL READING OF “THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE” AND “STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING”

G. M. Javed  Arif

doi:10.53808/KUS.2021.18.02.2118-ah

Authors

G. M. Javed Arif English Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna-9208, Bangladesh

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53808/KUS.2021.18.02.2118-ah

Keywords:

Poetry, theory, new criticism, paradox, close reading, poetic unity

Abstract

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by R. Frost and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by W. B. Yeats are two of the most representative poems of these poets. Part of their universal appeal lies in their messages and their craftsmanship, and both the qualities relate to the New Critical conception of poetry. Since New Criticism as a literary theory, originating in the early twentieth century, seeks to explore poems through some central points of references in a close reading, this present study takes paradoxes as a central point of reference for a close reading of the two poems and attempts to unveil their poetic enigma by examining what tensions the paradoxes create through the speakers’ grappling with the dilemmas they are facing, how the paradoxes are being resolved or left unresolved, what similarities the two poems share in this regard, and what poetic unity the poems ultimately attain through the development of these paradoxes.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Brooks, C. (1949). The well wrought urn: Studies in the structure of poetry. Dennis Dobson Ltd.

Brooks, C. (2001). The formalist critics. In V. B. Leitch, W. E. Cain, L. A. Finke, Johnson, B. E., J. McGowan, & J. J. Williams (Eds.), The Norton anthology of theory and criticism (1st ed., pp. 1366-1371). W. W. Norton & Company.

Culler, J. (2000). Literary theory: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

Leitch, V. B., Cain, W. E., Finke, Johnson, B. E., McGowan, J., & Williams, J. J. (Eds.). (2001). The Norton anthology of theory and criticism (1st. ed., pp. 1-28). W. W. Norton & Company.

Leitch, V. B., Cain, W. E., Finke, L. A., McGowan, J., Sharpley-Whiting, T.D., & Williams, J. J. (Eds.). (2018). The Norton anthology of theory and criticism (3rd ed., pp. 1-28). W. W. Norton & Company.

Matterson, S. (2006). The New Criticism. In P. Waugh (Ed.), Literary theory and criticism: An Oxford guide (pp. 166-176). Oxford University Press.

Merritt, H. (1998). Rising and going: The ‘nature’ of Yeats’s ‘The lake isle of Innisfree’. English: Journal of the English Association, 47(188),103-109. htts://doi.org/10.1093/english/47.188.103

Rice, P., & Waugh, P. (Eds.). (1992). Modern literary theory: A reader (2nd ed., pp. 1-4). Edward Arnold.

Waugh, P. (Ed.). (2006). Literary theory and criticism: An Oxford guide (pp. 1-31). Oxford University Press.

Wimsatt, W. K., Jr., & Beardsley, M. C. (1946, July-September). The intentional fallacy. The Sewanee Review, 54 (3), 468- 488. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27537676

Wimsatt, W. K., Jr., & Beardsley, M. C. (1949, Winter). The Affective fallacy. The Sewanee Review, 57 (1), 31-55. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27537883