"The Heresy of Paraphrase" (1947)
1. What becomes of the poem, according to Brooks, unless we assert "the primacy of the pattern"? What does he say that this pattern or structure is not? By what is this structure "conditioned"? What indeed is the "structure meant"?
2. How does Brooks describe "the principle of unity" which "informs" this structure? What sorts of things does it unite? What sort of unity is achieved?
3. From what formula do most of the "common heresies" about poetry derive? What are the two "horns of the dilemma" that this formula leads to?
4. What happens if we try to incorporate the meaning of the poem in a statement? What happens to our statement, or proposition, "as it approaches adequacy"?
5. What do the phrases "so wore night" and "thus night passed" have in common, and what do they not have in common?
6. What are some of the consequences of allowing ourselves to be misled by "the heresy of paraphrase"?
7. What three analogies does Brooks offer for "the essential structure of a poem"? What is the point of each analogy?
8. In what does "the characteristic unity" of a poem lie? What is the "conclusion" of the poem? By what kind of process is the unity of the poem achieved?
9. Why don't the "meanderings of a good poem" have to be excused? What is the point of its "apparent irrelevancies"?
10. What is the difference between the "terms of science" and the "terms of a poem"? What is the difference between the words of the "ideal language" and words as poets use them?
11. What is there about the poet's task that has "induced poet after poet to choose ambiguity and paradox"?
"The Intentional Fallacy"
Section I
1. According to Wimsatt and Beardsley, why isn't the author's intention a legitimate standard of judment for the objective critic?
2. How do W & B defend their borrowing from Archibald Macleish of the line "a poem should not mean, but be"? What is the "being" of a poem?
3. In what sense does the poem belong to the public?
Section II
4. What arguments do W & B offer against the objectivism of Benedetto Croce and the intentionalism of I.A. Richards?
Section III
5. How much faith, according to W & B, should be accord to the poet's own judgment of a given work?
Section IV
6. What argument do W & B set forth against literary biography? How can the internal be "public" at the same time, and why is it illegitimate to explain a poem on the basis of an author's private associations?
7. How do W & B establish that a poem has an "inside" and an "outside"? On 1382, for example, what do they say must be the case before we can properly talk about anything concerning a poem?
Section V
8. What role do "allusions" play in the interpretation of poetry?
"The Affective Fallacy"
1. What is the affective fallacy, and what effect does it have on literary criticism?
Section I
2. What criticism do W & B make of Charles Stevenson's explanation of the individual reader's emotions in relation to literary criticism?
3. Why, according to W & B, does theoretical or scientific affective criticism appeal to so many of their contemporaries, even though impressionistic varieties of affective criticism are treated with contempt?
Section II
4. What is the "physiological" version of affective criticism?
Section III
5. W & B quote Thomas Mann's saying that "art is a cold sphere." How is their formalism indebted to Kantian aesthetics? Why, that is, can't a critic take emotions directly into account when interpreting a poem?
6. How is it nonetheless possible for an objective critic to deal with emotion? How is emotion "translateable" into a form that the critic can and should discuss?
Section IV
7. How do W & B define "metaphor," and why is it such an important device to them?
8. What, according to W & B, does poetry preserve from past cultures, and how can objective critics and their audience investigate what is preserved? To what extent are W & B making an argument in favor of art's "cognitive significance" or general social importance when they discuss art as a preserving force?
*Edition: The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 1st. edition. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York: Norton, 2001.
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