Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

« Previous Post | Next Post »
« Previous post in category | Next post in category »

Hermeneutics: Definition as Achievement

Barfield responds to critics who charge that his attention to individual words “is a precious and dilettante kind of criticism.”  He says “the reverse is the truth” and further argues that “Words whose meanings are relatively fixed and established, words which can be defined - words, that is, which are used with precisely the same connotation by different speakers - are results, they are things become.  The arrangement and rearrangement of such univocal terms in a series of propositions is the function of logic, whose objection is elucidation and the elimination of error.  The poetic has nothing to do with this.  It can only manifest itself as fresh meaning; it operates essentially within the individual term, which it creates and recreates by the magic of new combinations. . . . in the pure heat of poetic expression juxtaposition is far more important than either logic or grammar.  Thus, the poet’s relation to terms is that of maker.”

All criticism is a kind of midwifery, and criticism that attends to words is attending to poetry at the moment of birth.  Attending to words gives the critic a share in the moment of creation.  Other forms of criticism focus on the achieved results of this process of birth.  Barfield asks, “What kind of criticism, then, is dilettante: that which attempts to know, by sharing in, the poetic process itself, or the fastidious sort which can only moon aimlessly about the room with its hands in its pockets, till theinfant is nicely washed and dried and ready for inspection?”