Response based on Liberal humanistic approach applied to Edgar Allan Poe’s , ‘The Oval potrait’.

Liberal Humanistic approach, was a traditional approach used by a group of Cambridge scholars in 1920s, namely   I.A Richards,William Empson and  F.R Leavis, to understand a literay text. Literary milestones achieved by these scholars- Development of Practical Critisicm, Seven Types of Ambiguity,1930 and Scrutiny,1930 formed the framework for the ten characteristic tenets of the theory.

On analyzing Poe’s tale, ‘The Oval Potrait’, based on  the guidelines followed by Liberal Humanists , I found the following instances  worthy  of discussion. The story is is a framed narrative of a wounded soldier, who takes refuge in an abandoned yet heavily furnished chateau. Decked with Old paintings and armor  , the soldier happens to come across an oval portrait of a lady. Awestruck by the effect of the painting and the beauty of the maiden he reaches out for the description of the portrait and finds that the portrait was of a young bride who married a painter. The painter wished to paint his young bride’s portrait for which the obidient young lady sat long hours. The painter got into cynically obsessed with the piece of art that he surpassed the emotions of his new bride and ended up making a life-like portrait on the cost of his bride’s life.

The obvious conflict which arises after reading this story  is the moralist argument that whether life lies in the lived experience of life or the canvas which tries to surpass reality by its conviction. It also questions  artists’ sensibilities that he chose art over humanity; art has been used as a means to amuse human beings and not the visa-versa. This leads me to substantiate this instance with the sixth tenet of the theory of liberal humanism which emphasizes that the purpose of literature is essentially the enhancement of  life and propagation of human values; but not in a programmatic way. The story’s plot  emphasizes the value of ‘humaneness’, which was ultimately  lost in a futile attempt by the painter to fuel the painting with the same virtue. The message of the piece is explicit here but it does not revolve around a particular religious or political ideology or emphasizes an individual- specific argument. The message is universal, objective and all- encompassing. Thus the piece holds this inherent quality of influencing our views or if not influence, at least makes us think about it.

Another tenet from the theory which strongly supports the justification of the piece through a liberal humanistic lens, is the second tenet which states that literary text contains its own meaning within itself and dosent require an elaborate process of placing it within a context. In the story, the description of the socio-political setting, precisely the war which wounds the soldier and due to which he takes refuge is rendered insignificant by the author . The reason clearly being the self-sufficiency of ‘the words on page’ to speak for themselves.  This also brings about extension of the above stated  idea that placing the text in a particular setting will evoke prior assumptions and biases in the readers mind, hindering the process of “seeing the object as in itself…”.

The first tenet that literature is of timeless significance is purely liberal humanistic in nature . The reader would notice that  human emotions, as a recurring motif in the story , are not age or time-specific. The dialectics of human mind, the work-life imbalance, the fatal mistakes we commit are  characteristic to our human lives and constitute an inseparable part of us. Hence the pathos and the emotions  generated by this particular story are ‘not for an age, but for all the time’.

Through all the above stated examples,we saw that the liberal humanistic approach towards the text is more content specific, giving much less importance to form and structure.  Such criticism is justifiable, keeping in mind the times when literature as an academic discipline was developing in England. But for the scrutiny of structure and form, one needs a more structure- specific approach, which is able to do justice to not only to the meaning of the written word but the written word itself.