The Heresy of Paraphrase Revisited

I try to rejuvenate Cleanth Brooks\u27 old thesis about the \u27heresy of paraphrase.\u27 This I do by analysing a couple of well-known poems and by performing thought experiments of the possible world kind. They show that paradigmatic examples of poems are not paraphrasable. A prosaic text can be improved with the aid of a paraphrase, but a typical poem cannot. The deeper explanation for the non-rephrasability of poetry is that our understanding of it is basically tacit. In this way I hope to give Brooks\u27 original thesis a more solid foundation