Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)

ÉVA ANTAL The Rhetoric and Ethics of Reading

The Rhetoric and Ethics of Reading 59 reading", structure and irony. That is, according to the New Critics, the text and its language are to be considered without any interest in the author's age or life; for example, in a poem we should pay attention only to the usage of language and the structure created. The real meaning of a literary text is given by and in its semantic structure, which is, on the one hand, dynamic

—every poem is a little drama

—showing the reconciliation of opposites; and on the other hand organic, that is, nothing is irrelevant. Thus, every detail contributes to the whole. As in his article, "The Heresy of Paraphrase", Brooks describes: "the structure meant is a structure of meanings, evaluations and interpretations; and the principle of unity which informs it seems to be one of balancing and harmonizing connotations, attitudes and meanings" (195). This poetic structure and its desired unity is not rational or logical, but

—to use Brooksian similes

—it resembles that of architecture or painting, a ballet or musical composition based cm the "pattern of resolved stresses" (Brooks WWU, 203). In poems, tension, conflicts and stresses are given by the 'problematic' elements, such as metaphors, symbols, paradoxes and other figures of speech, because they easily get their connotative meanings from the context. For example, Wimsatt in The Verbal Icon says that in a good metaphor "two clearly and substantially named objects ... are brought into such a context that they face each other with fullest relevance and illumination" (111). In spite of the conflicting or opposing meanings by the end of the close reading, an equilibrium of forces, a unity is supposed to be given, and "this unity is not a unity of the sort to be achieved by the reduction and simplification appropriate to an algebraic formula. It is a positive unity, not a negative; it represents not a residue but an achieved harmony" (Wimsatt VI, 114115). Using the above mentioned drama-metaphor, it can be imagined as if the conflicting forces, more exactly the possible semantic (connotative) meanings of the words were fighting, and their tension resulted in a climax giving the theme, a leading idea or conclusion of a text. The whole process of close textual understanding is summarized in one word: irony. Nevertheless, in the modem New Criticism irony is overused. On the one hand, "it is the most general term that we have for the kind of qualification which, the various elements in a context receive from the context" (Brooks WWU, 209); that is, irony necessarily operates in every context and in every reading process. On the other hand, by the end of our close reading of a text we have to reveal the work's (possible) "invulnerability to irony". As Brooks introduces this idea in the wonderful arch-simile: Irony, then, in this further sense, is not only an acknowledgement of the pressures of a context. Invulnerability to irony is the stability of a context in which the internal pressures balance and mutually support