The Study On Marshall Mcluhan's Media Poetics

As a world-renowned scholar,Marshall McLuhan proposed such media concepts as "media is message" and "media is the extension of man".These epigrams have been summarized as "The old three theories","the New Ten theories" and even refined into"38 theories".However,this inductive understanding fails to make a clear definition of McLuhan's thought.In addition,as McLuhan himself did not pay attention to the construction of theoretical system,his ideas can only exist in a loose structure.In this regard,some scholars have proposed that McLuhan's thought has gone beyond the common classification of disciplines,and is a field of thought composed of multiple disciplines.Through careful investigation and detection,scholars have discovered nearly twenty ideas from this field including mind-blowing insights as well as puzzling mysteries.This unique thought field may not only cause the comprehension obstacle to others,but also the stereotype impression of "technological determinism".However,as international scholars continue to excavate the humanistic tradition,McLuhan's thought is gradually redefined as a kind of technical humanism.To trace the origin,this way of understanding first appeared in the first research upsurge of Marshall Mcluhan in the 1960s.Thereinto,some scholars emphasized the importance of the Cambridge criticism tradition to McLuhan's thought.Then,in the second research upsurge in the 1990s,some scholars gradually formed a cultural criticism on modernity/post-modernity by analyzing the influence of modernist literature.Until,in the third research upsurge of this century,the Tivium(grammar,dialectics and rhetoric),together with the Cambridge criticism tradition and modernist literature,formed a poetic basis for understanding McLuhan's thoughts and formed a new way of understanding.Compared with other ways of understanding,which only grasp a small part of McLuhan's thought,the uniqueness of this new way is that it tries to discover the overall characteristics of the thought field by observing the relationship between media and liberal arts.In recent years,this new approach not only clearly reveals the theoretical extension of McLuhan's thought field,but also finds a kind of original poetics.Compared with the international academic community,although the domestic academic community has formed two ways of understanding,namely "The media McLuhan" and "The aesthetic McLuhan",the theoretical dialogue between the two ways is insufficient,so the integration of thoughts cannot be effectively realized.In order to solve this theoretical dilemma,the domestic academic circle needs a new way of understanding to rediscover McLuhan's thought.In addition,with the rapid development of current media technology,mobile Internet has continuously contributed to the rise of media culture,which has promoted the arrival of "an era of picture-reading ".Then,how will literature exist in media culture?This problem has become a difficult problem that must be solved in the current study of literary theory.This problem is not only the main reason for McLuhan's thought to change from literary criticism to cultural criticism,but also a key component weaving through his thought field.In order to better absorb McLuhan's thought,or to promote the development of domestic literary theory research,this paper chooses the relationship between media and liberal arts as the entry point,and tries to re-understand McLuhan's thought from the perspective of media poetics.Therefore,this paper firstly analyzes the diachronic development and synchronic structure of media poetics,and then carries out necessary theoretical reflection based on the overall characteristics of the poetics.In view of McLuhan's media poetics transcends the three fields of literary criticism,cultural criticism and media ecology research,this paper makes relevant explanations through the following five chapters.The first chapter is devoted to sorting out the formation and development of media poetics and explaining the three turning points of development.Then,from the second chapter to the fourth chapter,it discusses the literary criticism,cultural criticism and media ecological research of media poetics,in order to analyze the three main aspects of this poetics.Finally,the fifth chapter completes the relevant theoretical reflection by synthesizing the overall characteristics and comparative study of media poetics.The content of each chapter is as follows:The first chapter introduces the formation and development of McLuhan's media poetics and reviews McLuhan's academic path.He studied English at The University of Cambridge twice,taught English in the United States and Canada,and then studied media culture.Therefore,with the help of ecological metaphor,he not only proposed the law of media,but also completed the metaphysical thinking on media.In his research,he integrated a variety of disciplinary ideas,and through the dynamic observation of western culture and history,formed a kind of interdisciplinary open research.This kind of research always focuses on the relationship between media and liberal arts,and tries to find the effect of media from the western cultural history,so as to understand the media.However,in the process of understanding,the connotation of media is constantly expanded.It not only includes literary language and communication media,but also refers to all artificial creations,thus becoming a kind of "Pan-media".With the emergence of "Pan-media",media poetics not only turns from literary criticism to cultural criticism,but also from cultural criticism to media ecological research.The second chapter analyzes the literary criticism of McLuhan's media poetics.Influenced by the Tradition of Cambridge criticism and modernism literature,media poetics combines historical criticism with aesthetic criticism,and forms a kind of literary criticism integrating external research and internal research.On the one hand,this kind of literary criticism is based on Leavis's cultural poetics and Richards's practical criticism,and regards the history of "the Trivium" as the cultural background of literary texts.It integrates the Western literature into a unified tradition and divides the different historical periods of this literary tradition according to the internal relations of the "Trivium".It reveals that the history of the "Trivium" not only gave birth to the opposition between Grammarian and Dialecticians,but also gave birth to the differentiation between poetic language and scientific language in Western culture.This kind of differentiation leads to "the Culture and Civilization" in western modern culture,and leads to the separation of individual sensibility.On the other hand,influenced by modernist literature,this kind of literary criticism understands the aesthetic characteristics of poetry through criticism of imagery,and names the group image of poetry as "landscape".Then,according to the difference of aesthetic effect,this criticism not only divides the "exterior landscape" and the "Interior Landscape",but also reveals that the aesthetic characteristics of poetry have changed from the"exterior landscape" to the "Interior Landscape" since the romanticism poetry.Thus,this kind of literary criticism not only completes the stages of literary history,but also combines the external study and internal study of literary texts through the criticism of poetic images,so as to realize the basic goal of the Cambridge criticism tradition.The third chapter focuses on cultural criticism of McLuhan's media poetics.Based on the comprehensive consideration of literary and cultural contexts,media poetics focuses on the identity of language and media,and constructs a kind of cultural criticism based on "Pan-media".With the rapid development of industrial technology,modern media gradually infiltrated into daily life and gave birth to a large number of popular culture,which led to the marginalization of literature.In order to better understand this cultural context,media poetics takes setting aside judgment as the premise and observes the changes of cultural context through understanding media.On the one hand,since language and communication media can realize the transformation of human experience,they can be collectively referred to as"Pan-media".Although the specific forms of "Pan-media" are different,they can extend the human body's functions through the transformation of experience,so they all constitute a kind of "class concept".Therefore,media poetics can integrate all kinds of media into an extended process of "Pan-media" according to this "class concept".Based on the difference of extension mode and media effect,media poetics recognizes different patterns.On the other hand,in order to better understand the effect of "Pan-media",media poetics not only regards media technology and art as two parallel texts,but also integrates them into a composite cultural text.First,the text forms a Mosaic structure through the interface of media technology and art.Secondly,by virtue of the comparison of various interfaces,this kind of composite cultural text is divided into three main types,namely,oral cultural text,mechanical cultural text and electronic cultural text.Furthermore,through the criticism of these cultural texts,the aesthetic characteristics of the three cultural texts are metaphorically referred to as "Pre-Euclidean acoustic space","Euclidean space" and "Post-Euclidean acoustic space" in turn,and thus a spatial metaphor involving technology,art and culture is constructed.Finally,through this spatial metaphor,media poetics not only predicts the arrival of the "global village",but also uses it to metaphor electronic cultural texts.Therefore,media poetics forms a kind of cultural criticism based on"pan-media" and complex cultural texts.The fourth chapter focuses on the media ecology study of McLuhan's media poetics.With the help of ecological metaphor,media poetics not only regards the environment and the anti-environment as a kind of media ecology,but also finds the Tetrads in the process of their ecological evolution,thus forms a poetic thought that can be used to study all artificial creations.First of all.under the influence of ecological consciousness,media poetics metaphors media as environment and art as anti-environment.Therefore,media culture is regarded as media ecology.Based on this understanding,media poetics metaphors media as environment and art as anti-environment.Therefore,media culture is regarded as media ecology.As a new environment,new media can transform the old environment into anti-environment.As an anti-environment,art processes human experience in a new environment into an anti-environment by means of "putting new wine in an old bottle".The relationship between environment and anti-environment not only constitutes an ecological relationship,but also can promote the development of culture through ecological evolution.Secondly,this ecological evolution is regarded as a transition process between "Archetype”and "Cliche".New media is not only a new environment,but also a new expression of culture,while art is old cliches about a new environment.Together they promote the transformation of cultural "Archetype".Third,both new and old cliches originate from the poetic creation of human beings and follow the synchronal structure of enhancing,obsoleting,reviving and reversing.This power structure was named the Tetrads,thus extending the "universal media" to all artificial creations.Finally,Baed on media etymology,"Pan-media" in this sense is regarded as words derived from poetical creation of human beings,takes human body as its etymology and follows the grammatical rules of the Tetrads.Thus,all kinds of artificial creations constitute a "Pan-text" about human poetic creation,and human cultural history becomes a kind of continuous speech.Therefore,through ecological metaphor,media poetics not only further expands "Pan-media",but also creates a poetic thought about "Pan-text".The fifth chapter focuses on the comparison and theoretical synthesis of media poetics.In order to consider media poetics as a whole,this chapter makes a theoretical synthesis of its overall characteristics by comparing it with other related thoughts.First of all,this chapter selects Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism,Ramon Williams'cultural studies,and Robert Logan's media ecology studies in order to compare them with the literary criticism view,cultural criticism view,and media ecology study of media poetics.Then,this paper extracts the dual structure of media poetics.It not only distinguishes the relationship between the surface structure and the deep structure,but also reveals the relationship between the Mosaic structure and the "pan-text".Secondly,in order to clarify the theoretical achievements of media poetics,this chapter not only analyzes the discovery process of environment and anti-environment,but also explains the proposing process of media law,so as to reveal how this poetics realizes the expansion of poetics.Thirdly,based on the theoretical achievements of media poetics,this chapter defines it as a kind of poetics thought connecting the preceding with the following.This kind of poetics originated from the critical tradition of Cambridge and initiated the study of media ecology.Based on this theoretical positioning,this chapter not only affirms the theoretical transcendence and expansion of media poetics,but also points out its controversial points.The conclusion part summarizes the main findings and shortcomings of this paper.In view of the comprehensiveness and expansiveness of the media poetics,this paper puts forward six main findings.These findings can not only enlighten the current study of literary theory,but also promote the study of media culture.At the same time,compared with the diversified characteristics of the media poetics,this paper still has a lot to be improved.