I found Cleanth Brooks to be a breath of fresh air after having read some of the other formalist critics. I enjoy his style of argumentation because, rather than deny the obvious objections that people might have to the ideals of formalist criticism, he raises these concerns himself and provides a convincing defense of formalism. Just as I felt myself objecting to what he had written, Brooks seemed to always say something like, "But some readers might object to this because..." He points out that non-formalist critics might be scandalized by what seems to be a "bloodless and hollow" severance from the author and the reader but affirms the formalist belief that consideration of the author or the reader's response does not allow for true criticism. Additionally, his writing style is very clear and concrete, and I did not find myself struggling to understand as I so often did while reading Wimsatt and Beardsley. I have wondered in previous posts about the formalists' opinion of whether or not literature should serve as a tool in helping us to understand the human condition, and Brooks seems to directly address this issue:
"It is unfortunate if this playing down of such responses seems to deny humanity to either writer or reader. The critic may enjoy certain works very much and may be indeed intensely moved by them. I am, and I have no embarrassment admitting to the fact; but a detailed description of my emotional state on reading certain works has little to do with indicating to an interested reader what the work is and how parts of it are related."
The responses that Brooks references are critical responses that would take into account an author's "sincerity" (or the intensity of his feeling as he or she composed a work) and also the intensity of a reader's reaction when reading a work. Once again, the Formalists acknowledge the validity of an author's experience or a reader's emotional response but deny their objectivity in determining the meaning of a work. Judging by Brooks' writing, it seems that he might suggest that literature does promote understanding of the human condition but that this understanding is perhaps beyond or beneath the realm of formal criticism.
I found Brooks' assertions about the necessity of formalist criticism above any other school of criticism to be interesting. He writes that all critics are "forced to adopt" formalist criticism and consider only the work itself given the "desperate" alternatives:
"Either we say that one person's reading is as good as another's and equate those readings on a basis of absolute equality and thus deny the possibility of any standard reading. Or else we take a lowest common denominator of the various readings that have been made; that is, we frankly move from literary criticism into socio-psychology. To propose taking a consensus of the opinions of "qualified" readers is simply to split the ideal reader into a group of ideal readers."
Are these really the only alternatives? Must criticism only consider the work alone lest it become totally subjective, stripping the text of any objective meaning to be derived? Is any one reader's take on the meaning of a poem equivalent to any other reader's take, barring the existence of an "ideal reader?" In our class discussion of some of these questions in relationship to how we read the bible as a work of literature, I think that instinctively many of us wanted to believe that both an informed and uninformed reader could come to the bible and derive significant meaning. This instinctual response represents our collective world view as members of an egalitarian, postmodern society. Yet, maybe we must seek out some sort of "ideal" reader or student of the text in our pursuit of either biblical or more general literary criticism. Or perhaps we must categorize the types of meaning that can be derived from criticism: objective, subjective, personal, societal, historical, psychological, sociological, etc. Perhaps the Formalists do make a good argument that the best sort of criticism focuses upon a text's unity between its form and content and that this type of criticism must remove itself from the subjective concerns of an author's intention or biography and a reader's response. Perhaps.
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