The Poetry And The Art In Maritain's Literary Theory

In the 20th century, Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) is a famous Christian esthetician of France, a theoretician of the literature and a major representative figure of western modern theory of New Tomasism. After having absorbed extensively various rational viewpoints of many thinkers in different times, he put forward his unique theory of literature and art, especially his thinking about the origination and working of art has great value which cannot be overlooked.In my dissertation, I mainly discuss two important propositions梡oetry and art and reveal the close relation between poetry and art in Maritain's literary theory. It is very important for us to tell the difference between poetry and art, which not only is the key to accurately catch Maritain's theory, but also is a new angle and train of thought offered by Maritain to unclose the secret of art creation. The dissertation consists of three parts.In my dissertation, I discuss three respects of poetry -- formation, origin, essence, and explain the meanings of the poetry. Maritain believes that poetry is a kind of primitive spiritual activity which reveals the inside existence meanings of things and ego. According to composition, the poetry includes two elements-the things and ego. The ego is subject, subjective world; The things refer to object, the objective world. They are closely connected with each other and permeate each other. In relation to origination of the poetry, Maritain thinks poetry is a intellective action which is non-conceptional and intuitional and it takes place in the unconscious field of people's soul. As to the essence of poetry, . poetry is intuitional, identical and creativeunderstanding.The second part of my dissertation explains what is the art from the angle of the conception, essence and classification. Maritain frankly regards art as a kind of creative and making activity of mankind. As far as the essence of art is concerned, art is practical self-perfected intelligence and the desire in the practical intelligence points to the last works. In regard to the art classification, Maritain divides art into practical art and beautiful one. Practical art meets people's special needs and has the utilitarian quality. Beautiful art can freely release creative spirit and tends to display the beauty, so beautiful art has the nature of transcendence and freedom.The last part mainly touches on the relation of art and poetry. Maritain argues that in spite of the difference between art and poetry, they are difficult to be separated with each other. The close relation firstly shows that on the one hand, as a invisible poetic intuition, poetry needs art to make it appear; on the other hand, as a creative intuition, poetry necessarily inclines to the art in order to express poetic intuition, as a result, poetry can connected with art and compose the whole process of art creation together. In addition, the relation between art and poetry can also embody that poetry could transcend art, because poetry is definitely free and cannot be bound by any rules, while art is on the contrary.