Modern Age - Winter 2017 - 77

LITERATURE AND MORALITY

for being united with so much merit."7 Shakespearean drama is
"a faithful mirror of manners and life" precisely because he "so
mingle[s] good and bad qualities" in his characters-such is, after
all, the nature of fallen men and women.
Johnson, however, maintains that "in narratives where historical
veracity has no place, I cannot discover why there should not be
exhibited the most perfect idea of virtue: of virtue not angelical,
nor above probability, for what we cannot credit we shall never
imitate, but the highest and purest that humanity can reach."8 The
qualification is not very helpful: what is "the highest and purest"
virtue of which we are capable? Plainly it must be high enough
that readers are not at all dazzled by the attractions of vice:
The Roman tyrant was content to be hated, if he was but feared;
and there are thousands of readers of romances willing to be
wicked, if they may be allowed to be wits. It is therefore to be
steadily inculcated that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness; and that vice is the natural consequence of narrow thoughts, that it begins in mistake,
and ends in ignominy.9

In principle this judgment differs little from that of Socrates in
the Republic, who was willing to allow "hymns to the gods and
praises of good men" in his ideal commonwealth (607A). In both
cases the moral valuation of poetry is determined by external,
nonpoetic criteria rather than by norms generated within literary
art itself. Mimesis or literary representation is at best indifferent, if
not simply pernicious. It can only be redeemed by manipulation
that heightens the contrast between virtue and vice. The "mirror" held up to nature should be the opposite of a passenger-side
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Modern Age - Winter 2017

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Contents
Modern Age - Winter 2017 - Cover1
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Modern Age - Winter 2017 - Contents
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