Transcendentalism and Poetry

Question 1.
M.H Abrams argues in The Mirror and the lamp that one important branch of the mimetic approach to literary criticism might be described as a "transcendental theory deriving from Plato" (36). This theory specifies the proper objects of art to be Ideas or Forms which are perhaps approachable by the way of the world of sense, but are ultimately trans-empirical... and available only to the mind of the eye. (36)
It is these forms or ideas which are the ultimate realities behind the concrete objects of the temporal world. Grounding your argument in a discussion of a literary work o…