The state of modern literary scholarship: studying the man behind the work

[PeterL]

A literary work should stand on its own. Sometimes it can be interesting to know that the author lived through something that was included (like Vonnegut in Dresden), but the novel stands without that bit of information.

[Ecurb]

OK, perhaps I wasn't clear, so let me explain:

My criticism is not with those who write biographies and compile letters; it is with those who use biographies, letters and other secondary material to study works of literature, and who make the use of these secondary materials the main tools of literary analysis.

Shakespeare is a good example. Many scholars spend their entire careers comparing the use of semicolons to decide whether Shakespeare did indeed write Hamlet. My question is, does it really matter from a literary point of view? It's an important historical question, but must I know the identity of the author to enjoy Hamlet?

Again, my issue is neither with publication of secondary material, nor with its use; it is with its apparent overuse.



I have no idea what you're talking about, and you're clearly not following the thread.

"Overuse" of anything is bad, by definition. As to what I am talking about, you say, "Isn't the constant burrowing into authors' lives symptomatic of scholars who have run out of things to publish in a "publish or perish" world?" Isn't your suggested motive for the scholars exactly the same kind of biographical detail you inveigh against, and aren't you using it as a form of criticism of their work? In addition, you have no biographical evidence for this detail (although I'll grant that you are probably right).

Of course I agree that Shakespeare's plays are equally good whoever wrote them. Nonetheless, if people enjoy conducting the kind of "personal heresy" that C.S. Lewis opposed, I don't see anything wrong with it. There are more strange thing in heaven and earth, Horatio -- and this one doesn't seem so very strange. "Oh body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance." -- W.B. Yeats

I'll agree with you this much: if scholars claim that their analysis of a literary work is superior to competing analyses because it is supported by biographical detail, I disagree with them. The author doesn't control the text, once it is written.

[chrisvia]

Just went back and re-read Foucault. I think he sheds some light on this topic when he says, to paraphrase: "once an individual has been defined as an author, we must ask if everything s/he writes is defined as a work. Where does one stop? If in the process of publishing Nietzsche's original drafts for his aphorisms one comes across a laundry list or an address, is this considered part of his work? [Probably not, but the point is that] there is no theory that defines the author's work, therefore there is no rule to determine when enough is enough!"

[Fafnir]

Shakespeare is a good example. Many scholars spend their entire careers comparing the use of semicolons to decide whether Shakespeare did indeed write Hamlet. My question is, does it really matter from a literary point of view?

This is something I've been thinking about recently.

In my second year of university I wrote an essay on Raymond Carver, an author who I was fond of. I remember feeling really disappointed when I compared Beginners to What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, it really seemed that Carver was not all he was cracked up to be and that his editor, Gordon Lish, deserved a lot of the credit.

I came to the conclusion that the stories exist and are there for me to enjoy them, it doesn't really matter who wrote them or by what process they came to exist. Sure, knowing the author's life can help a lot when interpreting the text, but I don't think that necessarily makes it a more valid interpretation than that of someone who came to their conclusions unaided.

However, for an author like Henry James, I'd imagine that there's a huge existing body of literary criticism. His personal letters are just one more facet to explore and apply to his novels. Why not?

[OrphanPip]

Just went back and re-read Foucault. I think he sheds some light on this topic when he says, to paraphrase: "once an individual has been defined as an author, we must ask if everything s/he writes is defined as a work. Where does one stop? If in the process of publishing Nietzsche's original drafts for his aphorisms one comes across a laundry list or an address, is this considered part of his work? [Probably not, but the point is that] there is no theory that defines the author's work, therefore there is no rule to determine when enough is enough!"

Yes, the post-structuralist approach might offer us the possibility of thinking about the author's lives as a part of the experience of the work, a reading that depends solely on the text is valid but it is still contextual and dependent on any number of knowledge and biases of the critic. No real work of criticism operates solely off of the merits of the text in question, there are always theoretical underpinnings and a history of criticism that one is responding to, whether we are working out of an established tradition or working in resistance to it.

[Ragnar Freund]

No real work of criticism operates solely off of the merits of the text in question

Is that a statement of what is or of what ought to be? I agree that you won't find any recent scholarly paper that discusses the text by itself, without regard to any other sources, but my question is: should that necessarily be so? Why can't texts be studied by themselves?

Note that I am not arguing against the use of secondary/external material; I am arguing against the establishment of this kind of analysis as the sole form of academic literary analysis today. Why can't we have both?

Why is book club-type discussion of books considered inferior to what English professors do? Book club insights and analyses are very often deep, interesting, and useful. Papers that discuss texts in a book club manner should not be considered unpublishable simply because they fail to dig into the author's life.

Consider, on the other hand, JBI's dismissive response to my "case" against Bleak House. Apparently, JBI believes we should consume books the way we consume unbuttered bread: just gulp it down, untasted. Can’t there be a middle ground between this and what academics do?

[JBI]

How nonsensical. Simply put, the function of such a collection is not to be read from beginning to end, but merely to maintain and catalogue the complete works.

So for instance, I am writing a paper about Henry James' friends, I may want to look at his letters to see who he associates with - so I look under the reference, I pull out the dates I want, and I find what I am looking for.

Lets say I want to write about his literary colleagues, I could dig that up through these letters to add a perspective.

Lets say I was writing history of language at the time, and the development of letter formats - I could turn to these letters as a primary source.

The letters themselves are not only in existence for the simple point of writing biography or criticism on his novels - they are there because a) they have been chosen for preservation, and b) should be cataloged for those who may need them for whatever reason.

Biographical criticism may be out, but context criticism has never been more in. Likewise, books do not just get written over night, and sometimes process and linguistic development may be found in letters.

That all the letters are relevant is debatable, but how can we now judge what is to be kept and what is not? Certainly nobody will ever read through 140 volumes in one go, but I assure you people will read some of them.

Most books in the library are not read regularly, but that they are written and stand there provides one looking with something to find. The complete works of even someone like St. Augustine are about 4 feet thick in big bound volumes - are we about to burn those now because nobody is reading them?


Which brings us back to the main point, modern scholarship - there is nothing modern or new about cataloging authors complete works. Occasionally such things are dug up - there are volumes of a heated argument between Tyndale and Sir Thomas More that would stain the philosophers reputation beyond repair, that only a select few read. Though they are not the great literature of Utopia, or of the Tyndale Bible, all those concerned with philosophical or religious debate aught to read those works (which exist only in the original typeface). Should we burn them then?


No, the answer is, if you do not like the letters, don't read them. If you do not like modern scholarship, don't read it. Nobody forces you to - if anything English departments have proven rather remarkable resilience to generating their own income and economies, and contributing to the development of universities as a whole, something clearly is working.


Seriously, what is really your point, that the university is allocating money for this? That's not really a point, they are providing a service, and then hopefully will digilitalize that service so that everyone can benefit from it.

It's not as if this is a hot pressing issue - it took 100 years for the thing to be done anyway.

[OrphanPip]

\

Note that I am not arguing against the use of secondary/external material; I am arguing against the establishment of this kind of analysis as the sole form of academic literary analysis today. Why can't we have both?

I think we do have both, I'd be surprised if any criticism (beyond theoretical work) included no interpretation of the text at hand at all. However, when there is nothing but close reading of a text, there is only so much that can be said about the text that is interesting before it just starts to get about what a text means personally to the reader. This isn't an invalid response to a work of art, but it isn't exactly what critics are engaged in. The critic is part of a tradition, just like the novelist is, and by the nature of criticism it is always in dialogue with other works and other critics. To divorce criticism from context is to say we can divorce the novel from context, which inevitably hurts the reading more than it helps. How do we understand the deployment of established genre norms or character types without thinking of where a work fits into a tradition. I don't think art is created in isolation of context, so it seems artificial to impose a decontextualized reading onto a text.

[Ragnar Freund]

Shame on you, OrphanPip! You're actually responding to my arguments, which you have clearly read and understood. That's no way to behave here on Literature Forum! No dead horses, no straw men, no hyperbole, no non sequiturs? Who taught you to argue?

Seriously now, I'm going to do something unheard-of in this forum: I'm going to acknowledge that you made some good points, think about them overnight, and respond tomorrow. Good night.

[chrisvia]

Why is book club-type discussion of books considered inferior to what English professors do? Book club insights and analyses are very often deep, interesting, and useful. Papers that discuss texts in a book club manner should not be considered unpublishable simply because they fail to dig into the author's life.

So this seems more aligned to the New Criticism school that posits that one need only turn to the text to uncover what's there; no need to turn to the author or the historical context, etc. I have already agreed with that fact that one need not know anything about the author to enjoy the work; and now we're getting more into the merits of academic criticism versus bookclub-style criticism.

The immediate difference I see is that the latter (bookclubers) tend to focus more on the story proper: characters, plot, conflicts, etc. I recently read a Michel Houellebecq interview where he praises this style of criticism (we'll eschew the fact that he is a media provocateur). He basically says that, with most non-bookclub-style critics, they form an opinion about the author and that drives their opinion of the work. I, too, see this as a loss for the reader and the writer.

I've also often heard a comical quip that if you enjoy reading, you should never study literature in college. I disagree with the quip, but I think it is humorous and hints at the same point(s) you're making with this thread.

[Climacus]

Shame on you, OrphanPip! You're actually responding to my arguments, which you have clearly read and understood. That's no way to behave here on Literature Forum! No dead horses, no straw men, no hyperbole, no non sequiturs? Who taught you to argue?

Seriously now, I'm going to do something unheard-of in this forum: I'm going to acknowledge that you made some good points, think about them overnight, and respond tomorrow. Good night.

We need more Ragnar Freunds.

[Ecurb]

We need more Ragnar Freunds.

I agree. Ragner's ad hominem arguments may be silly, but they are amusing. His propensity for using the exact kind of criticism that he descries provides just the kind of irony this board often lacks. Thanks, Ragnar!

Ragnar responds to JBI, "The argument, "if you don't like it, don't read it" is only used by those who can't reason, argue, or think." Excellent use of the ad hominem fallacy, Ragnar, in an attempt to belittle your readers!

Not every post constitutes "an argument", as most people know. In fact, none of Ragnar's posts contain arguments, merely rants. In addition, when Ragnar blames his readers for failing to understand what he's talking about, he is blaming the victim. It's impossible to understand what he's talking about. For example, Ragnar uses another ad hominem argument in his OP (if it is an argument at all):

Isn't the constant burrowing into authors' lives symptomatic of scholars who have run out of things to publish in a "publish or perish" world?

Since you ask, Ragnar, no, constant burrowing into authors' lives is NOT symptomatic of scholars who have run out of things to publish, since some articles burrowing into authors' lives ARE published. Perhaps Ragnar meant that he feels the constant burrowing into authors' lives is symptomatic of SCHOLARSHIP (not "scholars") of which Ragnar disapproves, or which is not deserving of publication. If that is what Ragnar meant, perhaps he should have expressed himself more clearly.

Ragnar responds to JBI:

"You really don't know, do you? An original post and two follow ups, written in plain, clear English, and you're still beating dead horses and straw-men. Sorry, pal, I'm not a third-grade reading teacher. You're on your own."

"Plain English"? Ragnar objects to the "overuse" of secondary materials. We can all agree with him there. What we are unsure about is what constitutes such "overuse". Why are we unsure? Because, despite his propensity for "plain English", Roger has not told us. The closest he has come is posing questions:

For example, does it really matter that much how Dickens's childhood influenced his view of 19th century English society? To some degree, sure it does. But does that justify looking for Dickens the man in every line of The Pickwick Papers?

Good question. What constitutes "justification"? What's so horrible about looking for "Dickens the man"? What does the wishy washy, "to some degree" mean, and where is the line between "overuse" and mere "use"?

Ragnar continues:

Note that I am not arguing against the use of secondary/external material; I am arguing against the establishment of this kind of analysis as the sole form of academic literary analysis today. Why can't we have both?

I doubt anyone disagrees with Ragnar. If this is all he meant, however, he is arguing against straw men, since nobody argues otherwise. It did take Ragnar several posts to get to this utterly uncontroversial point.

Book group discussions which limit the discussion to the text are fine -- but they are accessible to anyone who has read the book. I don't think they are considered "inferior to what English professors do." However, scholars can ADD to our understanding with their special knowledge of the cultural milieu in which the novel takes place, or the biographical details of the author's life that may have influenced the novel. Because scholars have studied these things (and we everyday readers have not), their specialized knowledge can be enlightening. A specialized class of "scholars" SHOULD make use of their specialized knowledge (in a variety of ways, only one of which involves biographical detail).

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

We need more Ragnar Freunds.

Debatable.

[kensington]

We need more Ragnar Freunds.

I'm sure there's plenty to be found. There is, however, only one Mutatis-Mutandis

[Climacus]

We need more Ragnar Freunds.

Man, I'm taking heat for this. What I meant was that we need more intellectual honesty. (The post I responded to was intellectually-honest and self-deprecating.)