Abstract

ganisms is followed by a section on the development of organisms, then one on the kinds of organisms, their continuity, and so on. In another text, the sections might be interchanged, the material arranged differently, but whatever the organization, we will find that one part is explained in terms of another, more basic part-that, in short, there are fundamentals of biology. By contrast, it seems possible to begin the explication of literature anywhere. One excellent and very successful introduction to poetry begins with the narrative poem, followed by a part on the descriptive poem. This emphasis on what a poem is doing shifts violently in the third part to how the poem does it-metrics. The fourth part shifts again, introducing tone, defined as the interplay between author, poem, and audience. From a subject that is in a certain sense outside the poem, we plunge back into a close verbal analysis in part five, where imagery, symbolism, and metaphor are discussed. In the sixth part, we are back to meaning again, talking about the statement and idea of a poem. There are a few more sections, but these are enough to make us wonder where the fundamentals of poetry are. Is there no relation between point-of-view and the lyric? Or between the idea of allegory and the idea of allusion? If we had a