 | This articlepossibly containsoriginal research. Pleaseimprove it byverifying the claims made and addinginline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed.(December 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
The concept ofgenius, inliterary theory andliterary history, derives from the later 18th century, when it began to be distinguished fromingenium in a discussion of thegenius loci, or "spirit of the place". It was a way of discussingessence, in that each place was supposed to have its own unique and immutable nature, but this essence was determinant, in that all persons of a place would be infused or inspired by that nature. In the earlynationalistic literary theories of the Augustan era, each nation was supposed to have a nature determined by its climate, air, and fauna that made a nation'spoetry, manners, and art singular. It created national character.
T. V. F. Brogan argues that "genius" is a middle term in the evolution of the idea ofinspiration and poetic ability from a belief in an external source (afflatus, or divine infection, and poetic phrenzy, or divine madness) and an internal source (imagination and thesubconscious). However, the concept became nearly identical with poetic madness and divine madness in laterRomanticism. The word itself was conflated with the Latiningenium (natural ability) by the time of theRenaissance, and it thereby becomes a natural spirit or natural essence unique to the individual and yet derived from the place. In this sense, it is still a term synonymous with skill.
Edward Young'sConjectures on Original Composition (1759) was the most significant reformulation of "genius" away from "ability" and toward the Romantic concept of "genius" as seer or visionary. His essay influenced theSturm und DrangGerman theorists, and these influencedSamuel Taylor Coleridge'sBiographia Literaria. The Romantics saw genius as superior to skill, as being far above ability.James Russell Lowell would say "talent is that which is in a man's power: genius is that in whose power a man is" (quoted in Brogan). The emphasis onGothic literature, on thesublime in general, and the poet as spokesman of a nation's consciousness allowed the declining meaning of "genius" as "natural spirit of the place" and the emergent meaning of "genius" as "inherent and irrational ability" to combine. At the same time, Romanticism's definition of genius as a person driven by a force beyond his or her control and as an ability that surpasses the natural and exceeds the human mind makes it virtually identical with the Classical notion of divine madness or frenzy.
With the incorporation ofSigmund Freud's theories of poetic madness and the irrationality of imagination deriving from the subconscious, "genius" in poetry entered 20th century critical parlance as, again, something inherent in the writer. The writer was special and set aside from others by "genius", which might be a psychic wound or a particular formation of the ego but which was nonetheless unique to that particular person and was the critical feature that made that person an artist.Irving Babbitt's writings discuss the genius in theModernist view. Again, genius is something above skill, something that cannot be explained, contained, or diagnosed.
Since Modernism's decline, "genius" has faded somewhat from critical discussions. As writing has focused on its own media and writers have focused on process (e.g. theL=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets andpost-modernism), the belief in a special trait that makes the artist above the run of humanity, and more particularly the view that skill is inferior to imagination, has been in decline. However, there is anemergent concept of geniusArchived 2009-03-13 at theWayback Machine associated with the culture of certain contemporary literary circles. Such an image of genius is oftendefined in opposition to the figure of thecritic, the former being more independent and spontaneous in their thought, the latter being more self-reflective but consequently restricted to responding to, rather than creating, enduring cultural artifacts. The earliest version of this formulation is to be found inGotthold Ephraim Lessing's commentary onImmanuel Kant's notion of genius. Kant scholar Jane Kneller articulates the subtlety of his distinction by explaining "genius demonstrates its autonomy not by ignoring all rules, but by deriving the rules from itself."[1]
