The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition

by M.H. Abrams

Traces the evolution of the Romantic approach to literary criticism and compares it to the other methods which prevailed in the early nineteenth century.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Criticism, Philosophy, Romanticism, Literature, Theory

418 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Meyer Howard Abrams is an American literary critic, known for works on Romanticism, in particular his book The Mirror and the Lamp. In a powerful contrast, Abrams shows that until the Romantics, literature was usually understood as a mirror, reflecting the real world, in some kind of mimesis; but for the Romantics, writing was more like a lamp: the light of the writer's inner soul spilled out to illuminate the world. Under Abrams' editorship, the Norton Anthology of English Literature became the standard text for undergraduate survey courses across the U.S. and a major trendsetter in literary canon formation.

Abrams was born in a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey. The son of a house painter and the first in his family to go to college, he entered Harvard University as an undergraduate in 1930. He went into English because, he says, "there weren't jobs in any other profession, so I thought I might as well enjoy starving, instead of starving while doing something I didn't enjoy." After earning his baccalaureate in 1934, Abrams won a Henry fellowship to the University of Cambridge, where his tutor was I.A. Richards. He returned to Harvard for graduate school in 1935 and received his Masters' degree in 1937 and his PhD in 1940. During World War II, he served at the Psycho-Acoustics Laboratory at Harvard. He describes his work as solving the problem of voice communications in a noisy military environment by establishing military codes that are highly audible and inventing selection tests for personnel who had a superior ability to recognize sound in a noisy background. In 1945 Abrams became a professor at Cornell University. As of March 4th, 2008, he was Class of 1916 Professor of English Emeritus there.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read parts as an undergrad and most all in grad school in the late sixties. Its fine, clear distinctions positively bask in an age when literary endeavor and discussion redounded through the halls of the academy, as economics and computers and medically-related programs do now. It was an age when distinctions between imitation and expression sufficed, before the onslaught of the French Disease, déconstruction. The French import stretched comprehension and discussion well beyond Classical versus Romantic. Then itself was displaced, in the American Academy, by Race and Gender studies.

How old-fashioned Abrams' concern with writers and lit crit appear under the International Space Station of political and racial and gender studies. The Romantic poets, like the Classical poets, can be summarily combined: both are Old (and Young) White Males.

Yet Abrams begins with Socrates's three beds. I used to use a chair in my freshman comp: I'd place it on top of the desk and ask, "Is this a Real Chair?" I would puzzle my freshmen by, "Plato says the Chair in the Mind is the real chair, and it produces this chair, and all chairs we non-Platonists might call 'real.'" Abrams cites Socrates' Ideal bed in the mind, the carpenter's bed I lie in, and the painter's bed. In freshman comp, I never got to the third chair, the chair in the painting. That was sophomore level. I believed in curriculum, a sequence of learning. Math, Linguistics and Philosophy first, Aesthetics next.

You can blame me for the ugliness of modern America--the malls,the vast screeching highways, the treeless wastes of parking lots, the random-built cities with beautiful buildings next to heat traps and vacant lots. I should have taught Aesthetics first.

[Alok Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tough!
Abrams was certainly one of the best to know what he wrote. I enjoyed reading this collection of his essays because I generally love reading challenging criticism. Yes, there are instances that you might agree or you might just ignore. Still, the book clarifies many things for the beginners and further complicates many things for those who know a bit of romanticism.

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's the first time I've had this reaction when reading an 'academic' book: awe and envy. I usually have 2 stock reactions: 1. interesting, but the author's argument was screwed in A and B manner and 2. how did this guy even get his phd?! in a cereal box!?

M.H. Abrams is too good to be anywhere near either 1 or 2. This is a work in which immense effort has been put in, together with an incredible amount of brain power -- and it shows. The differences between this and many other works of scholarship are, I think, 1. the scope of the reading 2. the tightness of the argument. With respect to 1, I wonder how one man can process so much information. Abrams has it all down, from Plato right up to the latest books on aesthetics of his day. It is very impressive. This I'm talking in general -- not including the number of Romantic texts and (seemingly?) obscure Victorian essays (some of which don't even have the author's names!) that he has read. It is a very good summary of the critical trends up to the present (well, not so present) -- but good enough -- day. Anyone who wants to know about the history of aesthetics, especially with regard to poetry, would be well-advised to read this. Abrams has read most texts sensitively and with a good amount of thought. Somehow, he's managed to compare and contrast critical trends across countries and ages, getting over the barriers of both time and language in order to isolate trends of thought which are similar (or dissimilar) to each other and listing them in a very organized manner. One could quibble that the focus is mainly on Romantic literature but I feel that it would be unfair -- after all the moment in which the mirror turns lamp is -- the big break in the perception of art, in Abrams's view -- is when Romanticism came along.

Abrams's writing style is something to be admired. My favorite sort of academic writing: impassioned without being unclear, and with the merit of being very organized. I like it when academics can detail exactly what it is they're talking about, and Abrams has a happy habit of thought I think, which allows him to be able to organize his argument. He is not shy about declaring his preferences: he is a huge Coleridge fan, that much is obvious and a bit of a downer on Keble. Samuel Johnson, who's always been one of my favorite critics, Abrams isn't as kind to as he could be, but what do you expect from a guy who's a fan of the Romantics? Now, what's interesting, to me, about Abrams's book (though this is idiosyncratic and personal) is the fairly systematic detailing of poetry as religion. This to me seems intuitively true, and I'm of course MUCH younger than Abrams himself, so it just shows how much this view has diffused into the mainstream. I do think he could've spoken more about Plato -- everyone cites The Republic -- I think Plato was given rather short shift... I have read some reviews saying that Abrams's style is 'ostensibly academic', to which I have nothing to say but 'bollocks' and 'up yours'. This I do not understand, is being logical, clear and expressive academic? If so then it's a really sorry age, because it means that all 'non-academic' writing is incomprehensible. From experience this is not true. Something that is 'ostensibly academic' might be purposefully obfuscatory for no other purpose than vulgarly showing off one's learning. To me, THAT is 'ostensibly' (or should I say 'ostentatiously'?) academic. I shall not name culprits; those in the academic world... you know where you are with (as the Radiohead song goes).

Abrams rescues Romanticism from those who have not a clue of what it's about. Part of the problem is the confusion between romantic (things like Twilight and overpriced chocolates) and Romantic (an emphasis on the power of emotion, the syncretic view of things, etc, all the things that Abrams talks about). To me, the interesting thing is what modern science says in relation to our understanding of literature: it seems that science and poetry might converge in some sort of way again. On JS Mill, near the end of the book, he details that '[Mills's] psychological grounds are that "the capacity for strong feeling", which is supposed to disturb judgement, "is also the material out of which all motives are made"...' -- having read Pat Hogan's book on cognitive science and the humanties, this sounds vaguely familiar. I think that many of the sciences, when used in conjunction with the understanding of literature, still operate on the whole 'literature as mimesis' thing. But there's all this, and so much more -- as a cursory read of Abrams would show. The question is, if one is a critic right NOW, working on aesthetics, how would we incorporate this rich history of writing and criticism on poetry IF we were to 'enter' science? The danger is in allowing science to become a sort of metanarrative to the poetry which we read -- and the other side of it -- which is thinking science as mutually exclusive, or even as opposed to literature. I think that much of this, when you take into account academia-as-it-is-today, has to do with the mode of production of criticism. The elephant that's in the room is the status that literature has in society, a buffonish one -- worse than useless -- a parody of culture because it comes in the form of capital (cultural capital). I would think many academics would write apologias as a reaction to this, but without naming it -- sort of like setting up fences without mentioning the huge elephant that might try to blunder through. I do not think that poetry needs another apologia per se, but what it does need I think, is some honesty over how modern academic work is... parasitic and cannabalistic.

What Abrams did is difficult even for someone who is very capable. 'Publish or perish' would certainly get in the way of understanding texts, and what he did would be near impossible nowadays (even if someone were as capable). Something has to be done........ we need to show that poetry requires love -- I can see how this might branch off really -- although that's my own thesis business and none of Abrams's!

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tough one to rate on the star system, unfortunately, since it's very uneven. The early chapters, up to his precis of Wordsworth and especially Coleridge are excellent- he explains how and why Romantic criticism came to be what it is, by putting it into the context of earlier critics. The second half, though, isn't nearly as impressive. It's good intellectual history, I guess, in the 'x thought y' mode. But there's much less convincing analysis of the 'x thought y because of z' mode, and really, that's much more important.
I was also hoping for something a bit less dense when I started, which might have biased me a bit, and there's nothing more fatuous than the psychology of art, from the earliest writers through to the neuro-aestheticians of our time. So that didn't help the middle two chapters. On the other hand, better this than the books that were being written twenty years later, since Abrams was still under the impression that you have to know about something before writing theory about that thing, so this book will help you learn about the Romantics and not about, say, a deconstructivist post-feminist anti-Marxist stance with some vague connection to Shelley. Thumbs up for that.

[Thom Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential text for the study of Romantic poetry, built upon a brilliant metaphor.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to get through and a bit too long, but overall the concepts were explained very well. Useful read

[Charlotte Pence · Rating 5 out of 5]

This past year I've been thinking and reading about how the "I" in contemporary poetry has evolved from the Greek lyric and Romantic poets--and Abrams lays it out in this book. Excellent so far.

[Christopher McQuain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended to me and my classmates last year by the great Professor Borsch-Jacobsen (who teaches Intro to Theory and Criticism at University of Washington), Abrams' book purports to be on "the ROMANTIC" theory of poetry, and it does use that relatively recent strain of criticism as its jumping-off point and frame of reference. However, you could do a lot worse than this book for an introduction to a vast range of evolving lit-critical modes through history, starting with Greece and ending in 19th-century England, with Wordworth and Coleridge--whom Abrams venerates as the most valuable and interesting practitioners and theorists of romantic poetry--our principal touchstones.

In addition, Abrams's categories of theories of art--mimetic, pragmatic, objective, expressive--are fairly comprehensive and useful, and offer a good overview of critical attitudes toward art (meaning, here, poetry), at least up through Abrams' post-WWII/American cultural moment. THE MIRROR AND THE LAMP is written in an unmistakably scholarly style, so it will probably be more enjoyable for those who have studied the topic or have a more than casual interest.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can you believe it, I eat this stuff up.

[Lobo]

Re-read celem doczytania o recepcji Younga w Prusach. Doktorat in progress.

[Rike Jokanan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compulsary reading for me, an English student back to 13 years ago.

Reading it, I made doodles, notes, folding, highlight, comments. The book is now dog-eared, wrinkle, dirty, old but still CHARMING.

I still read it sometimes.

[Aaron Haspel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best survey of romantic literary theory. Abrams is a scholar, not a critic, but he is a very great scholar.

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a challenging read. No doubt this is because it is a doctoral dissertation outside of my field. But not outside of my interest, so I stuck with it. Abrams draws out what was new in Romantic literary criticism by situating it in the long tradition stretching back to Plato and Aristotle. The title is shorthand for controlling metaphors of what literature should aim at, whether to be a mirror of the real world (that is, nature) or whether it should illuminate it. That seems reasonable, yet it turns out to be not so simple. There were other aims throughout history, including moral improvement (an aim not all Romantic critics disavowed, even though they foreswore being didactic) and turning the mirror from the outside world to the author.

Along the way, there are many names (thankfully most familiar to me), quotations, and endnotes. I had to reread sentences more than once after realizing I had lost the thread. Nevertheless, I’m glad I stuck with it. Not only for the general reason that it’s always good to read something that stretches you from time to time but also for the many things I learned that can help me make better sense of the poetry not only of the Romantic period but also of the neo-classical age that preceded it (I’ve always had a hard time understanding, much less enjoying, Pope, for instance).

When this book appeared, its primary audience would have been grad students starting out. Of course, that was seventy years ago, and while I’m sure it was compulsory reading for at least a generation, I wouldn’t be surprised if it has slipped out of the curriculum since. Too bad. And don’t be scared off because it was a dissertation: it’s much better written than most.

[Brian Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is one of the critical books to read on literary but primarily poetic theory. The great Romantic movement accomplished perhaps the most important revolution in literary history. Through the public essays and prefaces of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, as well as the constant theorizing in the private letters of Blake and Keats, as well as the other important theorists of the day, such as Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, poetry turned from demanding strict reality and truth in verse and made it truly democratic. After Wordsworth and Coleridge, it began to be accessible to anybody with a pen and paper.

The central metaphor lies in the mirror and the lamp. To oversimplify the book, poets prior to the Romantics held the "mirror up to nature", reflecting truths they identified in the real world. The Romantics added a lamp to that metaphor, asserting it was the moral and aesthetic imperative of the poet to not only instruct through access to empirical evidence, but also to infuse those observations with the imaginative interaction of the poet's mind in particular to illuminate the universal truths embedded invisibly within the poetic subject.

If you find literary theory a tough slog, this is a 335 page book on literary theory. Although I certainly highly recommend it to those researching literary history, unless that theory can genuinely carry your reading, this could be a hard read. I personally enjoyed it because I have a deep interest in the subject matter. Essential to students of Romanticism and literary theory.

[Vishvapani · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Mirror and the Lamp is nearly seventy years old and many perspectives have changed, since it's publication, but coming to it for the first time I found it hugely helpful in placing the Romantic view of both art and the mind in the context of their predecessors. It's learning immense and, for me at least, it clarified many issues in intellectual and cultural history. What I missed was a greater sense of Abrams himself - why this material was important to him and what he made of it. Clearly, that isn't the kind of literary critic he was.

[Utopia · Rating 4 out of 5]

this short and precise novel opened my integrity to the ramifications to today's society. It has somewhat elevated me to a non Neolithically citizen, in a way to adjust to the darkness of musical dormitory.
Outstandingly vocal, I would suggest to any one that needs a reinvention to a literacy on a downfall to a delegative domain.

[Cutenerd scraped an O OWL in Charms · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is absolutely awesome.

[Shadab · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Mahmoud Keshk · Rating 5 out of 5]

An indispensable and profound guide to Romantic critical theory.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tough going in no the end but some great chapters on the romantic poets, chiefly Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley

[Mircah Foxwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was often referred to during my graduate studies, but I never read more than a sliver of it. I decided to come back to it now, several decades later... and while I acknowledge that this is an accomplished and exhaustive scholarly work (it's amazing to contemplate how many works Abrams had to be familiar with, to write this book), I still don't have the interest to get through the entire thing.

In short, Abrams explores two metaphors for the role of a writer/poet: either as a Mirror, reflecting on outward reality; or as a Lamp, illuminating both the inner and outer world for the reader. The latter, of course, is the role of the Romantic poet.

I give it four stars because, if you are studying literary criticism or Romantic literature, it is definitely a must-read. However, it's definitely an academic work, not aimed at a casual reader. It's also a product of its time, of course -- I'm sure a modern day Abrams would have different things to say in terms of critical theory.

I've flagged it as a book I may come back to again some time. Maybe I'll finish reading it one day.

[Philip Lane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and very thorough history of literary criticism as pertaining to poetry. It was published in the 1950s so does not include any of the more modern theories or stances but gives a very good idea of the foundations on which attitudes to art and poetry are based. It is quite technical at times and so perhaps not very useful as an introduction to the subject as even after getting a degree in literature I found myself struggling at times. I suppose some of the beliefs about what poetry should be seem to ignore the reader which for me is paramount so they appear quite bizarre. It is remarkable that the importance of the reader has only been considered seriously in fairly modern times.

[Jere · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read this twice (with a 20 year gap between readings), I now understand much more, but know much less. Which is to say: this time I enjoyed the intellectual history, but felt less compelled to take sides.

[Frini]

good

[Christian Patterson]

If the subtitle sounds interesting to you, then you'll probably like the book

[Ochrasy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most illuminating literary theories I have ever read

[Reuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good literary criticism.

[Judith]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14598174