Dufrenne's Conception of Aesthetic Object in Poetry

Every culture has its own conception of poetry and approaches it differently. This paper draws on phenomenological approach, in specific that of Mikel Dufrenne, to compare it with Structuralism’s approach. Dufrenne makes use of two Husserlian concepts, noema and noesis, to show the difference between these two approaches to poetry. He contends that Structuralist commentaries does not provide much in terms of enjoying and understanding poetry because it says almost nothing to get us in close touch with the lived experience of poet and the world of his work. Phenomenological approach, on the contrary, moves from noema toward noesis and as such gives a way to the world of the work and yields an aesthetic understanding of it. Dufrenne sees the world of the work not as represented but instead as a world that can be traced back to poet’s lived experience to which Structuralist rules grant no access. Based on a comparative-analysis method, this paper would compare these two approaches.