Allen Tate's 'Tension in Poetry': Summary and Analysis

 

The beginning of the 20th century heralded new development and discoveries in the field of psychology anthropology sociology economics art and literature. English literary criticism too finds itself in the new order and shape. New criticism of the first half of the 20th century was in sharp contrast to the traditional criticism of the Victorian age. The new critics like I. A. Richards, T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leaves, William Empson in England and the critics like Allen Tate, Kenneth Burke, Ransom, Cleanth Brooks etc. in America brought about revolutionary changes in critical theories on art and literature.

John Orley Allen Tate (1899 - 1979) was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and poet laureate of America. He wrote a critical essay 'Tension in Poetry' in 1938. This essay serves the purpose of new criticism i.e. the close study of the text.

'TENTION IN POETRY':

In his essay 'tension in poetry' Allen Tate expects the critic to study the work of art by different approaches. He expects the critic to keep all directions open in order to derive the meaning. Here, he criticizes symbolist and metaphysical poetry for their lack of denotative and connotative meanings respectively. He defines poetry in this manner: 

"Good poetry is a unity of all the meanings from the farthest extremes of intention and extension."

Tate believes that good poetry is one which clearly conveys meaning through tension and tension comes from extension and intention. When he uses the term 'tension' he never intends the 'psychological' tension. He writes:

"I am using the term not as a general metaphor but as a special one deriving from loping the prefixes off the logic terms extension and intension."

THE TERMS - TENSION, INTENSION, EXTENSION:

Tension = extension + intension

Intension means the connotative meaning. It means implied or hidden meaning. Good poetry, according to Tate, must have this implied or hidden meaning. Extension means the denotative meaning, the superficial or literal meaning. When these superficial and hidden meanings are joined together, it gives birth to a new holistic meaning which is known as 'tension'.

TATE AGAINST SYMBOLIST AND METAPHYSICAL POETRY:

Tate attacks the symbolist poetry for its lack of extension. He cites the example of James Thomson's poem 'The Vine'. Mark these words:

"The wine of Love is music,
And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
Love sits long:"

 

If we examine these lines closely, no apparent meaning comes out from the lines. These lines are ambiguous and create complications. Here, there is no denotative meaning. So it does not lead to tension. 

Then Tate attacks metaphysical poetry on the ground that it confines only to the logical meaning. According to him, metaphysical poetry contains only denotative or superficial meaning. He takes example from Cowley's 'Hymn to Light' and find only connotation in it. He also gives another example of Miss Millay's poem 'Justice Denied in Massachusetts'. In this poem too, we can see only extension and no intension. Read these lines:

 

"What from the splendid dead we inherited

Furrows sweet to the grain

We have seen them go under."

 

In this poem we can see that the idea of farmers' exploitation is presented. The farmers who get the land from their fore fathers are exploited by the rulers and their land has been grabbed gradually. This is the literal meaning, but we don't find any hidden meaning.

 

At last, Tate gives examples John Donne's poem where he finds that intension and extension are one and they enrich each other. The lines from Donne’s poem ‘Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ run in this manner:

 

“Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must goe, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to aiery thinness beate.”

 

The above lines contain both superficial (extension) and hidden (intension) meanings. The poem has logical contradiction of things which embody unit. The finite image of ‘gold’ is extension which logically contradicts the intensive meaning which it conveys. But it does not invalidate the meaning. If one rejects ‘gold’, one rejects the meaning because the meaning is wholly absorbed into the image of gold.

 

In this way, we ma summarize b saying that Allen Tate has propounded a new theory of ‘tension in poetry’. The element of ‘tension’ which is derived from ‘extension’ and ‘intension’ is the core quality and test of a true poem according to him.

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