Literary Theory

Materials

Introduction

Attitudes to the study of literature have undergone nothing short of a revolution in the last half-century or so. Changes were afoot in the previous half-century but they moved at nothing like the pace and in nothing like the variety of ways that have been evident since the Second World War. It is true that writers and critics had been reflecting on the nature of literature at least since Aristotle but, in the course of the twentieth century, the whole concept of a ‘literary text’ became questionable.

As a student of European literature in the 1960s I heard little mention by my professors of ‘literary theory.’ Genre (tragedy, the novel, the sonnet etc) was certainly mentioned and so were the writer and the critic, but any allusion to the reader was rare indeed. Everyone talked freely of the writer’s ‘intention’ and the ‘meaning’ of the text. When it was deemed necessary, one brought in consideration of the writer’s ‘background’, the ‘historical context’, and the ‘philosophical climate’. There was also such a thing as ‘practical criticism’, which literature departments made their students do, although no-one explained to us why we had to do it, or how it would be useful to us in our studies. It was assumed that its usefulness was obvious.You took a sample of an unfamiliar text, translated it, if necessary, pointed out a few significant figures of speech that you recognised, such as a metaphor or a simile, discussed its meanings and implications, brought in a bit of background knowledge, if you had any, and that was about it. If you did this well under exam conditions, you passed the exam, proving to all who cared to know that you could analyse literature.There were the great writers and the not so great writers and, by heeding one’s professors, one gradually learned to distinguish them. Occasionally, one heard of a ‘psychoanalytic interpretation’ or a ‘Marxist approach’, but, more often than not, they were mentioned in a tone that suggested that these were slightly disreputable activities. If you were lucky, you might be blessed with one lecturer who was open to new ideas and challenges.Then, suddenly, when I was a postgraduate in the late 1960s, all these keen young lecturers appeared telling us that our very notion of a ‘literary text’ was questionable.Whole edifices of carefully constructed bodies of knowledge started to shake at the foundations. Nothing was sure or sacred anymore. It was becoming difficult to utter a word of comment on anything, especially literary works, without justifying yourself theoretically. Naturally the question arose, ‘Why do we need theory?’ Hadn’t we been managing quite well without it, thank you very much, for some considerable time?

Why Theory?

What professors, teachers and lesser mortals did not realise, or were reluctant to admit, was that, in fact, they had been using theory all their adult life, without knowing it (rather as Monsieur Jourdain in Molière’s play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme does not realise, until it is pointed out to him, that he has been speaking prose all his life). How could this be? Quite simply because there is ‘live theory’ (theory we consciously consider when making judgements) and ‘dead theory’ (the theory which lies behind the assumptions we hold when making judgements but which has become so integrated into our common practice that we are no longer aware of it). Many had been discussing literature using ‘dead theory’, without having bothered to analyse their own presuppositions. So the answer to the question ‘Why theory?’ is quite simple: because it is better and more honest to be aware of the reasons why you do something than to be ignorant of them. If this maxim holds good for all human endeavours, then there is no reason why the study of literature should be exempt from it.

The problem is that defining what counts as ‘theory’ and what one means by ‘literary’ is no easy task. Most critics and theorists have grappled bravely with the problem but have finally given up, declaring that it does not matter anyway. Some theorists lead one to the conclusion that literary theory does not really exist as an independent discipline. There is, many claim, just ‘Theory’, theory about everything from literature to lesbianism, from hooliganism to horror films. Since many books are to be found with the phrases ‘Literary Theory’ or ‘Theory of Literature’ in their titles, however, it is clear that there is a body of thought to which the terms can be applied. There is a kind of theory with literature as its focus.This

is an important fact to establish, because there are other kinds of theory, such as ‘Critical Theory’ and ‘Cultural Theory’, which rely on the same theorists and schools of thought as ‘Literary Theory’. The difference between them all is clearly one of focus and attention. The theorists and schools of thought considered in this book have in common the fact that they challenge ‘common sense’ notions of what literature is. They often question our assumptions about ‘great literature’ and propose different ways to analyse and evaluate it. However, any vague statement about literature (such as ‘All literature is escapist’) does not constitute a theory. It must meet more stringent requirements to be considered both valuable and valid.

What Counts as Theory?

Clearly, in the first instance, a theory must attempt to explain something. Its proponents may believe that it does this successfully but others may not. Jonathan Culler, an eminent populariser of literary theory, has made a useful distinction: ‘…to count as a theory, not only must an explanation not be obvious; it should involve a certain complexity’ (Culler, 1997). Unfortunately, many theorists have not only recognised this basic truth but have taken it too passionately to heart, cloaking their insights in obscure language. Yet it is clearly true that new understanding often comes only after developing a model of some complexity in the mind. Literature, in all its forms, treats of human life, its nature and problems, its mode of existence, its ways of coexistence and thought, and its belief systems. Any theory about these phenomena can, therefore, be considered relevant to the study of literature. However, the actual application of such theories is a complex procedure, fraught with pitfalls, to which the revered academic, as much as the novice scholar, is disturbingly liable to succumb. Misinterpretation, false analogy, unfounded generalisation, reductive argument – all these hazards lie in wait for the unsuspecting critic. It is also, therefore, in the nature of theory that not only does it have some complexity but that it is also often difficult to prove or disprove.A theory may sound very convincing but can it be proved to have validity? If it cannot be proved, does it thereby lose its usefulness? And what would constitute proof, or disproof, of any given theory? Does it finally matter whether it can be proved or not? These are questions which it is difficult enough to answer in the fields of the so-called natural sciences and in sociology, psychology and other disciplines. What of literary theory? It would seem wise to consider first exactly what the object of study is.

What is Literature?

Because many theorists have been primarily concerned with phenomena other than literature (psychoanalysts with the human mind, Marxists with human existence in a capitalist society etc), it has often been of only secondary importance to them whether a text they are considering can be deemed to be literary or not. Often the same methodology is applied in analysing texts, which may resemble each other in many ways, but which must be identified differently. One can imagine, for example, one text which is a short story told in the first person, taking the form of a confession to a murder, and another text which is an actual signed confession by a real murderer. They might be almost identical in language, structure and content. The important difference is, of course, that the reader knows that one is a story and the other a real confession, and judges them accordingly. In the case of the story, the reader might consider whether or not it was realistic or whether or not the character was telling the truth, but would not need to question whether or not it was an authentic document, written by the person named. In the case of the real confession, it would be possible, in principle, to check its truth content against known facts. This would not be possible, nor would it be relevant in the case of the story. The reader thinks this way because he or she knows that the story is a literary text. But how is it obvious that the text has a quality which we call ‘literariness’?

It would seem that a definition of ‘literariness’ should be of urgent concern.Yet the authors of books on literary theory provide no such adequate definition. This is likely to be due to the nature of language as much as to the incompetence of theorists.The lack of a definition, which could be applied to all works regarded as literature, is not necessarily a bad thing. Many of the most useful words, in all languages, are useful precisely because they do not designate something very specific, but identify a range of meanings and related phenomena. Where would we be without such words as ‘Love’, ‘Hate’, ‘Work’, ‘Business’, and, more pertinently, ‘Music’, ‘Drama’, ‘Art’, etc? All the things which we might group together and to which we might apply one of these words bear family resemblances to each other, but they are also all highly individual. If we had to have words for every single experience, we would not be able to communicate with each other about those experiences. We need words, such as ‘literature’ and ‘literary’, indicating such family resemblances, to enable us to communicate information about individual differences to each other. All attempts at defining literature therefore have proved to be only partial and thus of little practical use: the best that has been thought and said; language taken out of context; language organised in a special way which distinguishes it from its other uses; language used to create a fictional world. None of these definitions is close to being adequate or useful, because none of them refers exclusively to literary language (a mentally ill person, for example, can