After the fall of Greek theater, the great philosophers began to talk about it to understand it, what it was, what it should be. Plato was suspicious of the arts. It was imitation twice removed, it was not real. Aristotle found value in theater. Art is a craft and can be learned and improved upon. Poetry has rules that must be followed for it to be art. Poetry sharpens our view of reality. The emotional life is part of human reality; it teaches what is there. Poetry also is more philosophical than history. History deals with actions. Poetry universalized truths. Finally, poetry encourages the emotions for the sake of catharsis. A plot well put together will arouse the proper emotions from which we can learn and purify. Implicit in this idea is that actions or stories that are badly put together and badly done are dangerous. There is a bad way of telling a story. There is good art and bad art. There are good stories and bad stories. The effect of the good is to enlighten and elevate; the effect of bad art is to shock and revolt, and descends into dirtiness. Aristotle tells us there is moral order to art.
Tragedy is a drama between a hero and metaphysical forces. Through a tragic flaw in their character they make a fatal mistake from which they never recover. They are destroyed, they are crushed. The hero is always someone of authority, of power. Part of the fear in watching their fall is that if they can fall, we all can fall. The mistake is suffered by many. When one falls, many fall. Oedipus is the first murder mystery. He is both the protagonist and the antagonist. He is the murder, the detective, the judge, the jury and the executioner. He wants the truth; he does not want the truth. He rejects the truth when he first learns of it and then slowly accepts it, until he has to make the final decision to mete out justice. He killed his father the king and married his mother and had children with her. He has broken natural law. Aristotle said that Oedipus Rex is the highest form of tragedy because it is so well constructed and so intelligently designed. The fact that it is sill produced on modern stages is testament to its durability, to its timeliness. It was first performed n 427 BC!
A curious aspect of Oedipus Rex is the audience knows the truth of the play because they know the myth of Oedipus. The hero is blind to the truth and must have is own pride crushed before he will admit to it. The audience must suffer with his struggle as he cites excuse after excuse to reject the truth. There is disorder throughout. His pride keeps him blind. The price he pays for his blindness is blindness. There must be blood to appease the gods. The Greeks had a measure of wisdom in their culture. They developed a sense of logic and reason. And in that sense they sought universal truth. The question that perplexed them was what was the use of the greatness of man if it all comes to death. This is the question that must be answered. Their gods hated death but were powerless against it. Great suffering must take placed before wisdom is acquired. Sophocles must have had a special grace when writing this play, for in it he comes close to profound truths. That is why this play remains timeless. It would not be until the Incarnation that man would know these answers.
Dr. White’s deep love of Emily Dickinson is apparent in the very beginning of this lecture as he contrasts her humility and “littleness” with contemporary poet Walt Whitman’s overwhelming ego and sweeping lines. He covers the poet’s family as depicted in her letters, her isolation, the sheer volume of her poetry, and the harsh criticism she received from the publisher to which she submitted some of her poems. Dr. White explains and analyses several of her poems, both the popular and the little-known, including “Success is Counted Sweetest” and “I’m Nobody, Who Are You?.” The originality and peculiarities of her style, such as her use of dashes, unusual capitalization, and off rhymes, are pointed out and discussed. Finally, Dr. White speaks of the two gentleman whom she was close to and wrote to frequently, though her relationship with both progressed no further than exchanging letters.
In this lecture, Dr. White examines Shakespeare’s early comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost, unique because it does not give the ending expected of a comedy. The significance of language in the play is explained, with Dr. White demonstrating its obsession with language’s power and noting that the art of speaking is practically disappearing in the modern world. The beginning conflict between intellectualism and love is explained, but it is shown that the young men are doing it for the wrong reasons, simply in order to gain fame. Dr. White shows the contrast between women and men in the play: the women are sensible and practical, while the men are idealistic and rather foolish. He touches on the innocence and wisdom of Shakespeare’s women, and how these qualities make them hard to depict on modern stages. Finally, he explains how certain characters like Don Adriano de Armado are overdrawn to show what the rest of them could become if they do not reform themselves.
Dr. White refutes the the charges made against Emily Dickinson in recent years that she was a manic-depressive with deep mental issues, explaining that she simply knew the extremes of joy and sorrow and expressed them in her poetry and that she could never have kept house for her father so efficiently if she had had severe psychological issues. The inspiration of her verse from Protestant hymns, nursery rhymes, and folk songs is demonstrated, and specific poems read and analyzed, including “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” and “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed.” Dr. White demonstrates Dickinson’s grasp of nature’s place and criticism of the transcendentalism popular in her time, and discusses her struggle with religion as evident in the religious poetry that she wrote. Finally, he examines her attitude towards death and analyzes her famous poem “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.” These lectures are a beautiful tribute to one of America’s greatest and most humble poets.
