A    Discussion    of    Skepticism    Colon

In his book of essays titled Ethics and Aesthetics of Modern Poetry Selkirk (1878) discusses the ethical value of skepticism in the contemporary poetry of the time.

Here skepticism is considered constructive, since from the doubt about the foundations of faith one can "achieve a clearer understanding" ( 1-2) of ideas and of the human condition".

Colon says that in the following century this tendency expanded to the form of expression as well, freeing it from meter, line, and nearly all forms of prosody.

In other words, while the nineteen century's poet doubted ideas, the twentieth century's doubted the validity of the forms of expressing such ideas as well, inventing "new methods of aesthetics and reinvented the very notions of what and how poetry means" ( 2).

      (Colon, A. C. (2002). The ancient ethics of modern aesthetics: innovation and its doctrines in twentieth-century poetry. Stanford University.com. Retrieved March 12, 2005 at http://www.stanford.edu/~thevapes/EofA/ )

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