Touchstone Method. Matthew Arnold

To find which poetry is the best, Arnold suggests a method known as touchstone method. This method was introduced into literature by Matthew Arnold in his work “The Study of Poetry”. Touchstone is a stone on which gold is rubbed to test its quality. In a metaphorical usage Arnold says that the great masters of the past are suitable touchstones to test the quality of the poems of the coming generations. Some model lines from Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton will be used as touchstones to test new poems. It uses the method of comparing and evaluating. The lines may be different but there is one thing common in them, “the very highest poetic quality”.

He quotes, from Homer: “In his will is our peace”. From Shakespeare, “If though didst ever held me in thy heart/Absent thee from felicity awhile, /And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain/To tell my story….. :(Dying words of Hamlet to Horatio) and from Milton, “And the courage never to submit or yield/And what is else not to be overcome….” (Paradise Lost Book,) etc.

These few lines can guide us properly to judge our own and others poems properly. From these great masters we can understand how they beautifully express the meaning in fine structure and diction.

Thus according to this method Chaucer, Dryden, Pope and Shelley fall short of the best, because they lack high seriousness. Arnold’s ideal poets are Homer and Sophocles in the ancient world, Dante and Milton and among moderns Goethe and Wordsworth. He puts Wordsworth in the front rank not for his poetry but for his criticism of life.

Carpe diem

The meaning of this Latin term is ‘Seize the Day’. It is taken from book 1 of Horace’s Odes. It says that future is unforeseen and that one should not leave to chance future happenings, but rather one should do all one can today to make one’s future better.

Unlike the Epicurean ideas Carpe diem never ignores future, but rather not to trust that everything is going to fall into place for you and taking action for the future today. The following are some related expressions of Carpe diem:

“And if not now, then when”,

“You only live once”

Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress is best recognized as a Carpe diem poem

But at my back I always hear

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Roman a clef (Novel with a Key)

Roman a clef is a French phrase meaning novel with a key. In a Roman a clef real people or events are described in fictional guise.  The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the key is the relationship between the non-fiction and the fiction. The term is believed to be created by the French writer Madeleine de Scudery. The reason for writing such a novel can be many such as

1. Satire
2. Writing about controversial topics
3. Information on scandals
4. Autobiographical elements without revealing the author

Examples

Point Counter Point (Aldous Huxley):  novel on D.H. Lawrence and Middleton Murray

The Sun also Rises (Hemingway): disguised life of the author in Paris

Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare’s Love Life (Anthony Burges) fictional biography of Shakespeare 

Four Humors of the Body

The four bodily humors were part of Shakespearean cosmology attributed from the Ancient Greek Philosophers Aristotle, Hippocrates etc. they are formed around the four elements of earth water, air, fire and earth, the four qualities of cold, hot, moist and dry and the four humors. These physical qualities determine the behavior of all created thing. The different personality types of the characters are also arranged in accordance with these humors.

Humors	Element	Season	Qualities
Melancholic	Earth	Winter	Cold & Dry
Phlegmatic	Water	Autumn	Cold & Moist
Choleric	Fire	Summer	Hot & Dry
Sanguine	Air	Spring	Hot & Moist

The Jacobean's thought of themselves as especially prone to Melancholy

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

The idea is proposed by Coleridge as a formula for justifying the use of fantastic or non-realistic elements in literature. To believe the supernatural and unbelievable, the spectator or reader suspends his critical faculties. In other words it’s a Sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment.

Coleridge suggested that if a writer could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative”

Examples

Life of Pi: Pi Patel has two stories to offer about what happened at the Pacific Ocean. The first story tells of a boy named Pi Patel, who survives on a life boat at Pacific Ocean with a Bengal Tiger, called Richard Parker. In the second story he replaces all the animals with humans, including his mother. The first story is a better story, but the second is the reasonable. The very structure of the story itself is designed to force the reader or viewer to subconsciously choose whether they are prepared to walk away from the “reasonable” to accept the better story.  If the reader or the audience is ready to suspend their ‘disbelieve’ the first story can be taken into account.

Superman: The storyteller tells the audience that, in this story, a man can fly and he comes from a distant planet called Krypton.  The audience suspends their disbelief and prepares themselves to enjoy the story.

Dante Alighieri's Four Senses of Allegory

Allegory is a figure of speech in which abstract ideas and principles are described in terms of a story, picture or a poem.

E.g. Shakespeare’s The Tempest: a fight between good and evil on a deserted island

Orwell- Animal Farm: Pigs stand for political figures of the Russian revolution

Allegory is integral to the work of Dante. In his work The Banquet (1306-1309) he states that allegory has four senses, which he explains as follows:

1. Literal: this is the sense that doesn’t go beyond the surface of the letter, as in the fables of the poets.
2.   Allegorical: this is the one that is hidden beneath the literal meaning of a fable. It expresses the hidden truth behind a story. As an example for this Dante offers Ovid’s account of Orpheus taming the wild beasts. The allegorical meaning of this, according to Dante, is the wise man makes cruel heart grow tender and humble.
3.  Moral: moral sense is illustrated by the Gospel account of Christ’s ascending the mountain to be transfigured.  Among the 12 disciples he chose only three to accompany him. The moral idea is that in matter of great secrecy we should have few companions.
4. Anagogical: ie. Beyond the sense. This occurs when a scripture is expounded in a spiritual sense more than its literal sense. Dante recalls Psalm 114 (the Bible) which states when the people of Israel left Egypt “Judea was made whole and free”. It means, for Dante, when the soul departs from sin it is made whole and free in its power. Egypt is seen as ‘sin’ or ‘evil’ and the Israel people is the soul’

Dante insisted that the literal meaning always comes first. He pictures the literal meaning as being on the outside, enclosing the other senses, which are within. By insisting on allegory and its senses Dante was partly reacting against the definition of allegory and metaphor by classical rhetoricians as just a mere substitution of one set of terms for another. He inculcate that allegory is a powerful tool to express the ‘dark’ subjects otherwise forbidden especially concerning God and eternity. 

The Three Laws of Robotics and Zeroth Law

The Three Laws of Robotics are a set of rules devised by Isaac Asimov, one of the most famous science fiction authors. The rules were introduced in his 1942 short story Runaround. The Three Laws are:

• A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

• A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where   such orders would conflict with the First Law.

• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These form an organizing principle and unifying theme for Asimov's robotic - based fictions, including his Robot series. Many of Asimov's robot-focused stories involve robots behaving in unusual and counter-intuitive ways as an unintended consequence of how the robot applies the Three Laws to the situation in which it finds itself. Other authors working in Asimov's fictional universe have adopted them and references, often parodic, appear throughout science fiction as well as in other genres.

The original laws have been altered and elaborated on by Asimov and other authors. Asimov himself made slight modifications to the first three in various books and short stories to further develop how robots would interact with humans and each other. In later fiction where robots had taken responsibility for government of whole planets and human civilizations, Asimov also added a fourth, or zeroth law, to precede the others:

The 0th Law

In the chapter "The Duel" in Robots and Empire, Asimov first presents another law, which he calls the Zeroth Law of Robotics, and adjusts the other ones accordingly:

0. A robot may not harm humanity, or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm.

1. A robot may not harm a human, or through inaction allow a human to come to harm, unless this interferes with the zeroth law.

2. A robot must obey orders given to it by a human being unless such orders interfere with the zeroth or first laws.

3. A robot must defend its own existence unless such defense interferes with the zeroth, first or second laws.

The Three Laws, and the zeroth, have pervaded science fiction and are referred to in many books, films, and other media.