tailieunhanh - Lecture Literary criticism - Lecture 30: Objective co-relative

The concept of objective co-relative is casually used by Eliot in his essay”Hamlet and his problem”.he never knew that the concept will gain so much importance in the future. It gained much more currency far beyond what the author could have expected or intended. He writes in his essay “the only way of expressing emotions in the form of art is by finding an objective co-relative. | OBJECTIVE CO-RELATIVE The concept of objective co-relative is casually used by Eliot in his essay”Hamlet and his problem”.he never knew that the concept will gain so much importance in the future. It gained much more currency far beyond what the author could have expected or intended. He writes in his essay “the only way of expressing emotions in the form of art is by finding an objective co-relative . In other words , set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts , which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. If we examine any of Shakespeare’s more successful tragedies , we will find this exact equivalence;; we will find the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has been communicated by skilful accumulation of imagined sensory impressions; the words of Macbeth on hearing of his wife’s death strike us as if, given the sequence of events, . | OBJECTIVE CO-RELATIVE The concept of objective co-relative is casually used by Eliot in his essay”Hamlet and his problem”.he never knew that the concept will gain so much importance in the future. It gained much more currency far beyond what the author could have expected or intended. He writes in his essay “the only way of expressing emotions in the form of art is by finding an objective co-relative . In other words , set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts , which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. If we examine any of Shakespeare’s more successful tragedies , we will find this exact equivalence;; we will find the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has been communicated by skilful accumulation of imagined sensory impressions; the words of Macbeth on hearing of his wife’s death strike us as if, given the sequence of events, these words are automatically released by the last series. The artistic inevitability lies in in this complete adequacy of external to the emotional and this is precisely what is deficient in Hamlet. Hamlet the man is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they the supposed identity of Hamlet with his author is genuine to this point: that Hamlet baffles at the absence of objective equivalent to his feelings is a prolongation of the bafflement of his creator in face of his artistic problem. Hamlet is up against the difficulty that his disgust is occasioned by his mother, but that his mother is not an adequate equivalent for it. Has disgust envelopes and exceeds her. it is thus a feeling he cannot understand he cannot objectify , and therefore remains to poison his life; and nothing that Shakespeare can do with the plot can express Hamlet for him. To have heightened the criminality of Gertrude would have provided the formula for