(In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Gen.: 1:1)

The fact that the literary work is ‘comprehended’ at some level or the other and appreciated by a culture other than the one that produced it does not invalidate the fact that literary works have specific cultural origin. It is quite unfortunate that the universal ‘comprehensibility’ of a literary work should cloud this fact. Perhaps the point that Aristotle made about the universality of poetry over against the particularity of history has also contributed to this clouding effect. What Aristotle pointed out was the fact that the artist tried to capture the universal (also known as the ideal) that manifested itself in the particular. If the artist sees the universal in the particular, the historian sees the particular in the particular (Poetics 9.1-12; Stace 328; Butcher 197). Indeed, the artist, like the historian, still sees only the particular. It is the particular which contextualizes. If an artist can work only with the particulars (s)he is familiar with, a critic also can comfortably deal with particulars (s)he is familiar with. This is why Aristotle himself examined Greek drama and not Chinese drama simply because Stagirus, a Grecian colony and seaport on the coast of Thrace, was his cultural context.

Most critical theories do not address the question of context squarely, but remain acontextual or semi-contextual, seldom wholly contextual. Before we deal with the degrees of contextualism, we can begin with a definition of context. According to one definition it ‘refers to those parts of a text preceding and following any particular passage, giving it a meaning fuller or more identifiable than if it were read in isolation …' (Baldick 45) and also ‘the biographical, social, cultural and historical circumstances in which it is made (including the intended audience or reader)’ (Baldick 45).

Evidently, context can be understood in two different ways. If the preceding and following parts of a text refer to the internal context, the biographical, social, cultural and historical circumstances constitute the external context. Both internal and external contexts can obtain in two different modes -- the specific and the generic (Note 1).

However, the term context implies that it is the context of something that creates a binary of the context and what is contextualised. Against this understanding, one can speak of the context as the background and what is contextualised as the foreground. Another way of understanding the context could be in terms of the frame. In this case, what is contextualised is what is framed, namely, the picture.

Considering the fact that the internal context is that of the personae engaged in action, which constitutes the plot, and the external context that of the artist-person engaged in such action as composing or performing or reading, context is the location of such action and also the circumstances. Accordingly, the location is delimited by the spatio-temporal intersection and the circumstances by (naturo-cultural) physical and metaphysical environments.

Critical theories that do not recognize either internal or external context could be termed acontextual theories. The examples are expressive theories (Abrams 21-26), structuralism and post-structuralism.

In expressive theory the artist is poised not against the real world but his/her projection of it. This does not mean that the real world is absent. Rather, the real world is not taken into account by the one who expresses himself/herself. For example, if a mimetic (Abrams 8-14) artist takes the real nightingale into account, an expressive artist does not. All that the latter needs is his/her own projection of that nightingale. Therefore, the real world is found only in the background. Either the familiar world was unfamiliarised or the unfamiliar world familiarized by the Romantic artist.

In the case of the confessional poet, who is an extreme expressivist, the self’s relationship with the entire context is vitiated. This results in schizophrenia and the poet looks upon Nature with hostility even as in Sylvia Plath (‘Go Get the Goodly Squab’, ‘A Winter ship’, 'Suicide off Egg Rock’, 'Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor’, 'Man in Black’, 'Hand Castle Crags’ and a host of other poems) (Rajani 8). If only the expressive poet could let nature be what it is, it can begin the process of reconciliation and healing. But the poet won’t let that happen. She has an eternal grudge against Nature. This schizophrenic relationship with the context breaks every relationship – with spouse, parents, kinfolk, nature and even with herself. The end result is insanity. If ‘Hell is other people’ to Sartre, ‘Hell is me’ to the confessional expressivist. This is the logical conclusion of the development of the Cartesian self.

M.H.Abrams likened the expressionist to an electric bulb that generates its own heat and light (59). But Plath shows how the mimetic mirror itself could be moulded to play the expressive role. If the mimetic poet’s mirror reflected the context, the confessional’s was the self that swallowed up the context. To this effect Sylvia Plath said,

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful
The eye of a little good, four-cornered
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

In both structuralism and post-structuralism what is contextualised is not seen as action as in the other theories but as structure constructed by linguistic signs. Since there is no agency, and only structure, the question of context does not arise at all (Giddens 49-95). The literary work of art is no more designated as work (for, the latter implies a purposive human maker of the product) but as text, a structure of signifiers. Both the author and reader are not understood as autonomous, purposive determinative human subjects. With the emphasis on structure or system, the structuralist inquires into the language system, not language praxis. As praxis language cannot be freed from its spatio-temporal context. Though Saussure recognized diachrony, or linear time, his emphasis was certainly on synchrony or simultaneity (as Robert Scholes points out in his Structuralism in Literature 17). This was inevitable, for, the focus on structure necessitates a synchronic rather than a diachronic approach. Scholes points out that ‘by insisting on the arbitrariness of language, Saussure made extra-linguistic influences on language apparently irrelevant’ (17). These influences are what we have called factors of external context. For example, this way he could rule out the possibility of a Marxist maintaining that language was a superstructure conditioned by economic forces or other similar ideological claims. Even historical conditions became insignificant, for, to Saussure what language was at any given moment was adequate for study.

Roman Jakobson uses the term context as one of the six constitutive elements of any communicative act ('Linguistics and Poetics' 35). To him context means ‘what the message is about’, rather than the spatio-temporal dimensions.

If Jakobson saw context as a structural feature rather than as a spatio-temporal one, poststructuralism had no place for context at all in theory. In spite of dismissing context, poststructuralism relies on context for carrying out its interpretative tasks. Now it may be shown how Derrida’s essay ‘Sign, Structure and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’, which attempted to murder structuralism, is through and through contextual. While Derrida was theorizing about a contextless semiotic field of only signifiers, his speech-essay that was more than a mere set of signifiers was located in a real-life context. This context is not a centreless structure or what he calls ‘discourse’, but a field of play where the major players are Derrida, and his audience. This playfield has others too -- the spectres of Plato, Nietzche, Freud, Heidegger and also those of the ones yet unborn.

Derrida erupts into the field suddenly like an umpire compelled to intervene during an event of emergency: "if you will pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being so elliptical in order to come more quickly to my principal theme." (Derrida 84). Certainly one cannot attribute this interruption (interlocution) to anybody other than the speaker, who, in this case, seems to be Derrida himself invited to present a paper in the seminar in Baltimore, Maryland. The other major player is the audience. One could catch Derrida standing before an erudite audience making sounds and gestures and surprisingly the audience seems to be relating to him in conventionally acceptable ways. They seem to follow him at times and not quite at other times and all this is not possible but for a mediating phenomenon. That mediating phenomenon has to be ‘something’ which both the speaker and the listener should have already always in them. Derrida projects it before the audience who introject it in their turn and thus commune with him (and form a verbal community). Here, language, a vital part of Derrida, is something he can still project before his audience so that they can introject it. This does not mean that the audience did not partake in the being of language already. Like Derrida’s, it is a part of their being too. In fact they know how to introject what is projected before them mainly because they already always have it in them.

Obviously, the major action in the playfield is play which can be thought of in terms of Saussure’s useful opposition, namely, synchrony and diachrony. Derrida’s double-faced play-act namely, his speech-essay, is performed at the point where synchrony and diachrony intersect constantly. This means that his playfield is centered temporally. What is more, it is centered in several other ways too. Derrida, who played down speech by charging the privileging of speech ‘phonocentrism’, presented this essay in a phonocentric genre that brings him and his audience together through language. And what is bringing together if not a kind of centering? To say that language binds the speaker and the listener is to acknowledge a centered structure, a kind of logocentrism. Mark his adjective 'principal' in the phrase 'principal theme' quoted above (Derrida 84). Is not 'principal' a variety of logocentrism?

Derrida’s playfield is much broader than a mere ‘discourse’. It is the lecture session where Derrida the speaker-persona, his American colleagues gathered at the lecture hall at Johns Hopkins University, his immediate listener-personae, and the spirits of the dead scholars like Nietzsche, who are his remote listener-personae, play the game of lecture with a text-ball. All these players are already grounded in the field of this world and that of the spirit beings. These players are not merely present in the field, but related to each other who share a context and a meaningful relationship. The context broadens from being a lecture hall to a University, to an academy, to nothing smaller than the Western philosophical tradition itself. The lecture game becomes a meaningful relationship because the audience could understand the language Derrida chose as his medium of communication, and also because they can understand him and sometimes cannot. Obviously, when the audience do not know as to what to do with the text-ball there is no meaningful relationship.

Today when I read Derrida’s essay the field is differently configured – Derrida (the speaker-persona), Nirmal Selvamony (the listener-persona), the text-ball, Tambaram in Tamilnadu (the immediate world), and the spiritual world. Despite my immediate context, I can understand this essay only because I am able to participate imaginatively in somebody else’s immediate context. As for the remote spiritual world invoked by Derrida’s American audience, it is not as distant as their immediate world. The most important difference between the playfield available to Derrida’s audience and the one to me is the physical presence of the speaker.

Derrida will have us believe that discourse is a playfield where the signifiers hit each other ad infinitum like billiard balls. This endless mutual hitting operation of bat against pat, pate, bait, bet and so on, could be understood only as a mindless to and fro movement of signifiers. If this has to be understood as ‘play’, one has to postulate some signifiers that operate within a frame of rules (which the Derridean field resists), but with a certain degree of abandon. Abandon is possible only when the agent participates totally not only rationally (which involves following rules), but also emotionally, imaginatively and fiduciarily (which involve being unmindful of rules). Play is possible when the agent immanences and transcends rules at the same time. Because such an act is both rational and non-rational (or metarational) at the same time.

In Derrida's essay the signifiers do not simply hit one against the other, but play with each other. For example, the signifier, namely, ‘rupture’ makes perfect sense to the listeners because this signifier not merely immanences in the lexical meaning, namely, ‘break’, but also transcends the lexical meaning and participate in other meanings necessary to comprehend the essay. The ‘other meanings’ need not necessarily include the opposite of ‘rupture’ (though it is possible due to irony and paradox), but they certainly do the non-lexical meanings such as ‘challenge’, ‘problematise’ and so on. The audience are able to understand that by rupture Derrida means a radical problematisation in modern Western metaphysics. Both Derrida and his audience are already always engaged in the meaning-making process that involves understanding the play between the semantic immanence and transcendence of the word ‘rupture’. Derrida could play this semantic game with his listeners only because they were already familiar not only with the immanent meaning, namely, ‘break’ but also with its transcendental meaning, namely, its implications, among which the problematised relationship between pre-Derridean and post-Derridean metaphysics is only one. The play between the immanent and transcendent meanings of sets of signifiers is only one aspect of the interactive dynamic besides others like the social standing of the speaker, his gestures, tone, intention, and attitude of the listeners, their gestures, attitudes and several others.

Even as his notion of sign field is inadequate, his notion of sign too is unconvincing. Influenced by the Saussurean definition of the sign, Derrida holds that the significance (meaning) of the deferred significance (meaning) derives not from the inherent properties of the signs themselves but from the relation one sign has to the others. Now, is this true? Let us take a closer look at Derrida's idea of significance.

Derrida’s theory suggests that the meaning of ‘tree’ is the result of those differences that distinguish it from ‘treat’, ‘street’, ‘free’, and so on. A close scrutiny reveals that the differences that emerge thus have to do with form, and not necessarily, meaning: tree/treat, tree/free, free/street. Moreover, the difference in meaning will not help fix the meaning of the term in question. That is, the meaning of term A will not emerge from the meaning of the term B. Accordingly, the meaning of the word ‘tree’ namely, "a type of tall plant with a wooden trunk and branches'’ does not emerge from either such words as ‘treat’, or ‘street’ or the meanings these words call up. Further, with regard to form, the human mind perceives not only unlikeness but likeness too. It is for this reason that ‘tree’ is not juxtaposed with such verbal entities as ‘rose’ or ‘zoo’ and so on. Though ‘tree’ is not the same as ‘treat’, it is more like ‘treat’ and ‘street’ rather than ‘rose’ or ‘zoo’. Likeness or unlikeness in form may be sufficient condition for the production of meaning, but not adequate. In the case of the class of words like ‘tree’, meaning emerges only when the mind relates the word to either a representation of a corresponding object/ event or when the mind relates to the object/event itself in the world which the word refers to. For the class of words like ‘love’, meaning will emerge not when the mind relates the word to a corresponding object in the world, but to a corresponding mental entity, a concept formed out of purposeful contact with the world. There is no concept outside of objective reference to the other. That is, the concept of love is based on some object or event of love. In short, meaning can derive only in reference to the world.

From what has been said so far, it should be evident that though Derrida, following Saussure, theoretically postulates a sign uncontaminated by such coordinates as the speaker, listener, the world and the spirit, his praxis, namely, his lecture-essay and the discourse in which it is situated do exploit the relationship the sign enjoys with the coordinates mentioned above. This shows that any discourse (whether it is constituted by sign or any other entity) becomes operative only where all such players as the speaker, the listener, the world, and the spirit interplay according to a common set of rules.

Having surveyed acontextualism rapidly, we can go on to consider the types of contextualism when critical theories do address the question of context. Accordingly, we can identify four such types.

Internal contextualist theories such as Russian Formalism and New Criticism (Abrams, A Glossary 182) pay attention only to the internal context of a literary work. Murray Krieger has defined contextualism as ' the claim that the poem is a tight, compelling, finally closed context', and requires that we 'judge the work's efficacy as an aesthetic object.' (Abrams, A Glossary 182). Cleanth Brooks speaks of such a context while defining irony as the principle of poetic structure: "The obvious warping of a statement by the context we characterize as ironical". He does not limit context to mere surrounding words and sentences, but extends it to mean ‘a particular situation by a particular dramatic character’, which includes the tone of voice, and also the spatio-temporality of the personae. However, this particular situation refers to the one within the text, and not the one without. He contrasts non-poetic statements that are abstract by virtue of their contextlessness with poetic statements that are context-specific and context-sensitive.

Humanist criticism, historical criticism, Marxist criticism, feminist criticism, new historicism, cultural materialism, or cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and so on are examples of this type.

A typical example of humanist criticism preoccupied with the external context was characterology of the l6 ^th and 17^th centuries that could be traced back to Theophrastus (371-287 B.C.). Chief exponents of the genre were Joseph Hall (1574-1656), Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613), John Earle (1601?-1665), Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), and John Aubrey 1626-1697). These character portraits were constructed by observing real people in the world and identifying their general traits. This genre influenced not only the novel, but also the essay. Even a cursory glance through Francis Bacon's "Of Suspicion" and Earle’s ‘Suspicious or Jealous Man’ will reveal the common elements.

Another area of humanist criticism was courtesy literature that set the court as the normative context for character formation. An ideal courtier who was expected to be accomplished in the arts and rhetoric besides etiquette was busy constructing his public persona to fulfil courtly expectations. Two important texts that deal with this courtly project in fairly detailed manner are Baldesar Castiglione's (1478-1529) The Book of the Courtier (1528) (which takes up such matters as music, painting, oratory, conversation, the question of language besides other courtesy topics), and The Book of the Governor (1530) by Sir Thomas Elyot (1490-1546) (which also underlines the importance of literature in the cultivation of public image).

A chief exponent of historical criticism is Giambattista Vico who argued that the closest knowledge of a thing lay in the study of its origins which was best studied by the science of sciences, he called, the new science, namely, history. Winckelmann (1764) surveyed the external circumstances of different art traditions and saw Greek art as being paradigmatic. Later, Herder challenged Winckelmann and arrived at a more reasonable position that recognized the differences that made each tradition what it was and argued for relativism. Another important critic who privileged external context was Hyppolyte Taine who pleaded for the study of three external factors, namely, race, milieu and moment (Russo 383-385).

All these schools are sociological in their orientation. If Marxist criticism focussed on economy, feminism critiqued family and drew inspiration from polity. While new historicism examined the social institutions contemporaneous with the Kosmos (Welleck and Warren 214) of the text, cultural studies focussed on the relationship between the text and the reader's society. Although postcolonial studies do not confine themselves to the external context but address the issues of subject-formation -- identity, subalternity, otherness, and power relations -- which might concern not only the artist-person but also the personae, the critical paradigm of this approach remains the dialectic between the colonizer and the colonized.

Sociology being the basic framework, all the critical questions hang on sociological pegs. Now, couldn’t such an enquiry become a part of sociology – a sociology of literature rather than literature itself? In an age of interdisciplinarity, a little bit of sociology in a literature class is a welcome change. But this approach does not foreclose the question whether literary questions could be approached from a literary angle? Is it not possible to approach the sociological data pertinent to the society of Shakespeare with a literary framework instead of a sociological framework? In order to do this one has to examine the nature of literature itself. The present focus on context is a step in that direction.

A third variety of contextualism may be found in Heidegger's aesthetic theory. He conceives of the context as in a manner unlike the two aforementioned. In his conception there is no distinction between the context and what is contextualised, as we find in the other theories. Therefore we need to look upon his view as a separate category.

Heidegger's philosophy is basically contextual, for, it defines human beings and non-human reality contextually in terms of time, place, world and the earth. While his predecessors had sought to understand a person as an entity abstracted from his/her context, Heidegger defined a person in terms of her/his situatedness. A critical approach that evolves from such a philosophy could legitimately be called ontological contextualism.

In Heidegger's system of thought only human beings can exist or stand out by virtue of their capacity to be open to and be responsible to what he calls Being. Non-human beings such as rocks, plants, and animals cannot exist; they can only be, for, they do not stand in need of deciding about Being, as man does. In this a human being is distinctive.

If existence is standing out, where does a human being stand? To Heidegger, the one who stands out and where (s)he stands out are inseparable. For this reason he defines the human being as Dasein, meaning, 'Being-there' (Macquarrie 7). This definition says we are where we are. We are defined in terms of a specific intersection of place and time, historicality. In other words, Heidegger defines Being in terms of space and time. By virtue of a human's spatio-temporal location, and identifying features (s)he is defined as Being-in-the-world. Here, Being should not be understood as the content that is contained in a container known as the world. No, because we can never see the world as object, rather, we can only see through it. As existents, humans are not simply contained by the world, they are immanent in it and also transcend it.

In Heidegger's thought the world has to be distinguished from the earth although these are never separated. The earth (Gk. phusis) is the ground on which the world of Dasein comes to be (Heidegger 264; McCulloh 512).

The objects and organisms other than humans do not have a world (Heidegger 265; Macquarrie 8). Only humans do because they exist. Existence is impossible without the world. By virtue of Dasein's ability to transcend the world, one can relate to life or the world in two basic ways -- authentically or inauthentically. Authentic existence involves choice, existing as the distinctive being one is, and inauthentic existence involves getting overwhelmed by the routine life and social pressures. To choose is to take charge of the possibilities open to Being, and failure to do so results in inauthentic existence, or the falling of Dasein (Macquarrie 28).

There are several insights in this philosophy to elucidate the context and action in a literary work. Both the external context of the poet and his/her community of persons, and the internal context of the personae in the plot can be examined in the light of the notions of authentic and inauthentic existence (Note 2). These concepts are apt to criticize such poems as Frost's which involve the question of choice -- whether to watch woods or not; whether to take this road or that; whether to come into the woods or not and so on.

The context, as Heidegger defines it, makes manifest the being of things and the Being of persons. In his essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art' (Heidegger 256-279) he speaks of this manifestation of being in great detail. The objects and the ground on which they stand define their being and reveal their truth to us. In other words, an artist, by contextualizing his material articulates a world for a historical people. For example, a Greek temple is a building disposed as such by the Greek sculptor in order to reveal the world of his own people. This revealing involves concealing too. The building, by enclosing the figure of the god, both conceals and discloses the figure. In so doing the poet articulates the truth of the temple by bringing the concealed and the revealed into a tensive state. Heidegger calls this the happening of truth, not a state of truth. Truth happens in the temple's standing where it does. The artist has the power to let the objects that tend to conceal themselves come out into the open, the clearing, in a luminous manner. This illumination, an aspect of truth is what Heidegger calls the beautiful (Heidegger 271; Kockelmans 134). Such truth happens not only in a Greek temple, but also in the paintings of Van Gogh's. His painting of the peasant shoes just does not make manifest what this isolated being as such is, rather, it makes unconcealedness as such happen in regard to what is as a whole -- the more directly and engagingly do all beings attain to a greater degree of being along with the shoes (Heidegger 271).

Like the other arts, poetry also reveals the origin of being of an entity. The word 'origin' (Ger. ursprung ) means 'to originate something by a leap, by bringing something into being from out of the source of its nature in a founding leap (Heidegger 278). In other words, poetry makes the historical existence of a people leap forth. The origin is also the beginning which contains the undisclosed abundance of the unfamiliar and extraordinary, which means that it also contains strife with the familiar and the ordinary. When poetry takes its readers to the origin of being, it reveals the unfamiliar aspect of a thing and conceals its familiar aspect.

It may not be an exaggeration to say that Heidegger saw the German poet J.C.F.Holderlin (1770-1843) as the German version of the Greek god Hermes, the bringer of messages. Holderlin interpreted Being and the world of the Germans. Engaged in the inter-subjective dialogue, Holderlin listened both to the gods and to the Germans and spoke their language of Being. In so doing he took his readers to the very origin of Being by naming the gods originally and by naming the things and making them shine out in beauty and truth (Heidegger, 'Holderlin' 758-765).

Though Heidegger repeats the idea of disclosure of the world in poetry and other arts, he never explains how this is achieved; what principles are followed in order to achieve this end. Secondly, even as Heidegger lauds the quality of strangeness in the work of art (Heidegger 276-277), he regards the poet as an extraordinary person like the philosopher, mystic and the prophet (Heidegger, 'Holderlin'). A kind of vocational elitism of the intellectual climate of the nineteenth century, as in Nietzsche, Carlyle and Emerson, marks Heidegger's thought too. Thirdly, the outsider role of the poet (as standing out of the world) might derive from the basic definition of existence itself. This inevitably de-emphasizes his/her active engagement with the everyday world despite his/her inhabiting a historical world. Heidegger is quick to affirm that while the poet remains in the supreme isolation of his/her mission, (s)he fashions truth vicariously and, therefore, truly for his/her people. Though the essence of poetry is historical, the poet himself/herself, in the role of a mediator between the gods and his people, remains a solitary nightingale enjoying the dark solitude of the vocation.

Heidegger's aesthetic is not weighed down by the sociologism of the later schools of criticism of the post-80s. By attempting to look at art and poetry from the point of view of context rather than society and social institutions, Heidegger's theory is free from the limitations of acontextualism of several other theories. True, the ontological definition of context situates the works of art in the world, but that world itself remains abstruse and rarefied, making it a rare experience of a few chosen vocational elites. Even the earth underneath the world does not make this world concrete enough. The historicality of this world also does not make it context-specific. This lack of specifiability of context makes for the unspecifiability of the nature of the aesthetic experience, the means to obtain it and assess its value. All that Heidegger can do is to round off an aesthetic event when it does happen and describe it in ontological terms. Perhaps he can tell us that the phenomenon both reveals and conceals itself and that is its truth and beauty.

Some critical theories do acknowledge both the internal and the external contexts. This position can be explained by briefly looking at the mimetic theory. Plato’s theory of imitation has a triadic framework – the imitator, the original and the copy (The Republic 597). This is so because the basic paradigm underlying ‘the copy of a copy’ is also the original-copy paradigm. Here, the original has qualities of the sacred, for, it is the world of the archetypes. However, it must be noted that when the copy becomes the original for another copy, the former does not partake of the quality of the sacred. But Plato does admit to the fact that the sacred takes possession of the artist and inspires her/him into poetry. This is evident in Plato's acknowledgement of the element of 'divine afflatus' (Phaedrus 245) which is indubitably a form of divine agency. Though the sacred could be seen as an aspect of the context, Plato neither takes the spatio-temporal dimensions into account nor regards these dimensions aspects of the sacred.

As far as Aristotelian mimesis is concerned, there is acknowledgement of both contexts, internal and external. His discussion of the unities of place and time point to the spatio-temporal context of the plot. Similarly, his humanized situation theory points to the external context. If the idea of unity of time involves the imitation of real time, a single revolution of the sun, the unity of place is also modeled on events occurring in real places. Internal action, namely, plot, is derived from external action. The virtues and vices, our ideas of nobility and meanness are all derived from real life. Aristotle’s criterion of probability has to do with the correspondence between the original and the copy. In fact, several aesthetic problems that preoccupied critics for a long time stem from the contextual dualism in Aristotle’s Poetics, involving the internal and the external contexts. Some of these are the problems of realism (verisimilitude), truth, and belief, consistency in characterization, appeal to naturalness, and the notion of limit.

Though Aristotle takes into account the space and time of the action of the plot, he does not the space and time of the imitative art act itself which should determine the external context. Thus Aristotle’s treatment of external context is partial. This has serious implications for later development of criticism along ontological and epistemological lines raising questions of reality-appearance; belief-disbelief – rather than along praxiological lines privileging internal and external contexts.

As a specimen, the folktale, 'Chestnut-Grey' (A Mountain 18-23) can be read as a simple story of a son who makes his own home (oikos) by finding a suitable bride for himself. The story shows how Ivan the Fool sets his eyes on the Princess, overcomes oppositions, fights his foes who desire her, finally gets her and marries her to make his own home and oikos. In other words, the story is about the making of an oikos. Interestingly, all the Tamil akam poems of the cankam corpus are also based on a master narrative in which the oikos is the central context. Everything revolves round the dyadic pair, namely, the hero and the heroine of the oikos.

The internal context of 'Chestnut-Grey' has two significant spaces – the kingdom of the Tsar, and the hero’s own home within that kingdom. The time of action is indicated here and there by means of verbal markers like ‘once upon a time’, ‘when the time came’, ‘now at this very time’ and so on, which only convey a sense of vague time, but sufficient for the purposes of a fairy tale. References to the natural phenomena of the oikos are hinted at here and there as in the very first paragraph – which helps us understand that the forest from which Ivan gathers mushrooms is not very far from his house. Two of the most important cultural spaces are the hero’s home and the palace where the princess lives. A third in importance will be the grave of the father. But there are other cultural aspects – the bridle, the ring and so on. Besides these, there is the element of the sacred too, which is a constituent of this context – the spectre of the dead father. Visiting this dead father, Ivan performs nothing short of ancestor worship and reaps the benefits of his father's blessings and the magical object.

The early Greeks understood oikos as the family and its habitat, being a confluence of spirit-beings, persons, non-human life and land. Being a world of a family, the oikos is basically small in scale. As time went by, when the family got dispersed, for several reasons, oikos also got dispersed and eventually fragmented (Everett 37-43). Strangely, the fragmentation has not reduced the size of the oikos. Instead, it has taken monstrous proportions by redefining the family and forging strange relationships and legitimizing unconventional kinship. Modern urban settlements are today’s versions of oikos that sit quite uncomfortably over the small and compact oikoses of the past.

In fact, the state government itself could be seen as an extension of the oikos, a huge hierarchized system bonded by familial ties and loyalties. The state apparatuses like the police, the court and other intimidating institutions make it a patriarchal rather than a matriarchal oikos.

The institution of economy is also oikic enough. Not only are huge business corporates business houses, and family affairs, they are thoroughly imbued with the oikic culture. Modeling the work place on the oikos, several business concerns privatize public space often stepping on the toes of the customers. Even the most cutthroat speculators manage to house their tutelary deities in their workplaces and offer pujas robbing the time of the customers. The customers also find this a natural state of affairs because they too are part of such an oikos after all. Indeed, the spirit beings of the oikos, the counterparts of Hestas or Vestas have reappeared in the workplaces.

In a society that is torn between the time-honoured glories of the family/oikos, and the individual-centred alien modernizing global agencies that are not by any stretch of imagination, family-friendly, the oikos that fosters the family can very well be an adequate model for a literary theory. In fact, such an attempt could vitalize and valorize an ancient institution.

From an overview of the types of contextualism we may proceed to make some general observations. Firstly, as for the internal context, it need not be looked upon only as the world in which the personae of the text have their being, but it has to be acknowledged as their being itself as Heidegger has shown. It becomes an ontological feature of the textual world which Rene Welleck and Austin Warren refer to as Kosmos. Therefore, any critical theory that does not map out this context does not show the full literary work.

Secondly, if we concede that works of art are nothing if they are not concrete, and concreteness impossible apart from context, it becomes a primary principle in works of art and subsequently in any critical theory.

Thirdly, the internal context of a literary work does not appear nihilo, but derives from the external context of the work. Therefore, a competent knowledge of the external context is necessary for the full appreciation of a work. For example, the world of Ivan the Fool and the Tsardom in the Russian folktale, which constitute its internal context, derive from Russian culture, which constitutes its external context. Though the tale could be comprehensible to anybody who is a non-Russian, perhaps even to someone who is of the opinion that Russia is in Sri Lanka, its appreciation is certain to enhance if the reader is familiar with the external context the tale derives from. Chances are that this appreciation peaks if the reader happens to share the same external context with his/her hero.

Fourthly, the case for context strengthens if we allow that literary works are some of our proud cultural artefacts, and like all the other cultural artefacts, emerge from a specific culture.

Fifthly, we have to acknowledge the fact that oikos is the primordial context of humans and everything that happens to us, including art and poetry, happens right there. If we need a literary theory today adequate to grapple with the literary works we produce, circulate, appreciate and identify ourselves with, it must be a theory that is based on the whole oikos. Therefore theories based on some aspect or the other of the oikos such as emotion, language, race, gender or class and power and so on will also remain unacceptable to us. Each of these aspects has to be seen in relation to the specific whole oikos.

If no force, national or international, can thwart the search for oikos, it is only fair that literary theory reflect the reclamation of oikos in literary praxis. Therefore, the need for a critical theory that will examine both internal and external contexts cannot be underestimated.

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1. I am grateful to Nirmaldasan for helping me make this distinction at this point.

2. Existence is actualized in terms of thinking also. In other words, thinking is a way of relating to Being. It occurs in three different modes -- calculative thinking, repetitive thinking and primordial thinking (Macquarrie 46). Calculative thinking objectifies and breaks up the whole. It characterizes the sciences and everyday life. Repetitive thinking has to do with relating to history meaningfully and making it relevant for one's own time. Primordial thinking, unlike calculative thinking, consists in listening and passively responding to Being and the world. The poet thinks in this mode by letting the world impinge on him/her not as in inauthentic existence though. It is not difficult to see how Heidegger's idea of primordial thinking could be traced back to the involuntarism that characterizes the poetic act as described by Plato (Stace 232), "wise passiveness" of Wordsworth ('Expostulation and Reply'), and 'necessary laziness' (The Sacred Wood 52) of T.S. Eliot. Though the idea of primordial thinking is involuntary to some extent, it should not be taken to mean that Heidegger rejects the role of volition in human acts. He does not reject reasoning, but distrusts its importance and so minimizes the place of calculative thinking. In so doing, he downplays science, technology, and all conceptual thinking. This does not mean that volition is not important. In order to make choices and project oneself into what he calls the possibilities of Being, the human being has to perform volitional acts and even reason out to some extent.

*First presented in University Grants Commission-sponsored Refresher Course for teachers of English, Stella Maris College, Chennai, 13 February 1998.