Intorduction to Literary Theory

[Ecurb]

(First post moved from the Harold Bloom thread)

I just read the first lecture in Paul Fry's "Introduction to theory in literature" course. I found it fascinating (being a literary theory neophyte). Fry speaks directly about the hostility to literary theory that I sometimes see at Litnet:


During the same period when I was first teaching this course, a veritable six-foot shelf of diatribes against literary theory was being written in the public sphere. You can take or leave literary theory, fine, but the idea that there would be such an incredible outcry against it was one of the most fascinating results of it. That is to say for many, many, many people literary theory had something to do with the end of civilization as we know it. That's one of the things that seems rather strange to us today from an historical perspective: that the undermining of foundational knowledge which seemed to be part and parcel of so much that went on in literary theory was seen as the central crucial threat to rationality emanating from the academy and was attacked in those terms in, as I say, at least six feet of lively polemics. All of that is the legacy of literary theory, and as I say, it arises in part from the element of skepticism that I thought it best to emphasize today.

Many Litnet posters seem hostile to literary theory in much the same way: it seems a threat to the canon of which they are so enamored (witness the endless lists of "greatest" books). Perhaps others see a familiarity with theory as a threat to their own status as well-educated and discriminating readers. I'm not sure.

I'm going to go ahead with the course -- and perhaps start a new thread based on it (although the first text -- "Tony the Tow Truck" -- is unavailable online, and it may be a hassle reading the homework).

Another intriguing bit in the first lecture is:


I think the sort of skepticism I mean arises from what one might call and what often is called modernity--not to be confused with Modernism, an early twentieth-century phenomenon, but the history of modern thought as it usually derives from the generation of Descartes, Shakespeare, and Cervantes. Notice something about all of those figures: Shakespeare is preoccupied with figures who may or may not be crazy. Cervantes is preoccupied with a figure who is crazy--we're pretty sure of that, but he certainly isn't. He takes it for granted that he is the most rational and systematic of all thinkers and raises questions about--since we all take ourselves to be rational too--raises questions about just how we know ourselves not to be paranoid delusives like Don Quixote. So that can be unsettling when we think of this as happening at a certain contemporaneous moment in the history of thought.

Now Descartes, you remember, in his Meditations begins by asking a series of questions about how we can know anything, and one of the skeptical questions he asks is, "Well, might I not be crazy?"

It appears that Literary Theory is, in part, interested in the relationship between language and consciousness and language and thought. I guess I'll find out as I continue with the course. If other Litnet members are interested, I'll start a thread about the course. Here's the link to the text version of the first lecture:

http://oyc.yale.edu/transcript/451/engl-300

[Ecurb]

The second lecture, perhaps, delves further into the hostility many feel toward literary theory. In this lecture Fry talks about “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes. Specifically, Barthes argues against the “authority” of the author. Barthes and Foucault were writing in Paris, in the 1960s, and “authority” was the enemy of intellectuals. Nonetheless, one way to think about language is to ask, “What does the speaker mean to say?” Obviously, if you don’t understand Chinese, you can only guess at what a Chinese speaker means to say, and not very accurately at that.

“The Death of the Author” is a long book about a short story, Balzac’s “Sarassine”. Here’s one passage:


In his story "Sarrasine" Balzac, describing a castrato disguised as a woman, writes the following sentence: "This was woman herself, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive worries, her impetuous boldness, her fussings and her delicious sensibility." [Barthes says,] "Who is speaking thus? Is it the hero of the story bent on remaining ignorant of the castrato hidden beneath the woman? Is it Balzac the individual, furnished by his personal experience with a philosophy of Woman? Is it Balzac the author professing "literary" ideas on femininity? Is it universal wisdom? Romantic psychology? We shall never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject [and this is a deliberate pun] slips away….

This notion is contrasted to an earlier critic, Samuel Johnson, who writes:


There is always a silent reference of human works to human abilities, and as the inquiry, how far man may extend his designs or how high he may rate his native force, is of far greater dignity than in what rank we shall place any particular performance, curiosity is always busy to discover the instruments as well as to survey the workmanship, to know how much is to be ascribed to original powers and how much to casual and adventitious help.

Certainly many LitNet members would concur: some of the enjoyment inherent in literature is based on the notion that it allows the reader to marvel at and revel in the genius of his own species. As Fry puts it, “We want to rate human potential as high as we can, and it is for that reason in a completely different spirit, in the spirit of homage rather than cringing fear, that we appeal to the authority of an author.”

Foucault, by the way, also thinks the author should have no legal status (i.e. copyrights). Copyrights are bourgeois. (This relates to a discussion of free speech we had in the Charlie Hedbo thread.) I suspect the course return to these issues later on.

Clearly, Literary Theory is a form of Philosophy. Not all fans of literature enjoy philosophy, with its obsession with details and its hard-to-understand jargon. I prefer more traditional literary criticism myself. Still, I’m planning on continuing with course, and I’ll post more (if anyone’s interested).

[ennison]

Copyrights are bourgeois? So is an MOT certificate. Since when outside of the sleep-deprived consciousness of pseudo- revolutionaries did the word bourgeois stop being a reference to the civilising power of a roof over your head. But then a leaky garret in a slum will do for a writer. Who after all wants to pay for being entertained. When the best things in life are reckoned free then the writer should never ask for anything least of all legal protection for his work lest he becomes corrupted by dough. Music is free ain't it. What's a bank balance to a rock star looking up at the stars singing about the b who stole his bloody bourgeois tent. There are too many books about books about books.

[Ecurb]

What do you have against books?

Copyrights clearly are bourgeois (by the 1960s counter-culture meaning of the word, meaning immersed in the world of petty capitalism and middle class authoritarianism). Here's Fry, explaining Foucault's position:


To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism [and criticism is a lot like policing, right--"criticism" means being a critic, criticizing] very well, the latter then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author (or its hypostases: society, history, psyché, liberty) beneath the work: when the Author has been found, the text is "explained"--a victory to the critic.

In other words, the policing of meaning has been accomplished and the critic wins, just as in the uprisings of the late sixties, the cops win. This is, again, the atmosphere in which all of this occurs--just then to reinforce this with the pronouncement of Foucault at the bottom of page 913, right-hand column: "The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning."

Foucault calls important literary influences (for him, people like Marx and Freud) "founder of discursivity", instead of "authors", although (acc. Fry) the distinction is not clear.

For us Americans, the First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Clearly, copyrights do "abridge the freedom of speech (and) of the press" -- although that isn't necessarily a bad thing (for those of us who are sane enought to view the Constitution as something other than holy scripture.)

[ennison]

Well I guess you must work for nothing then oh saintly non-bourgeois one. And it's the ""books about books about books"" I have summat against and as it's a quote from Tessimond I guess I should have marked it.

[Ecurb]

I can assure you that I am neither saintly nor non-bourgeois. However, since Foucault and Barthes are major figures in literary theory, I am (mildly) interested in what they have to say, especially since before starting on this Yale course I never understood it very well. I'm not familiar with the Tessimond quotation (I googled it but it didn't come up), but it seems strange for someone posting on Litnet to object to books about books, or books about books about books. What are we doing here if not writing about books, or about books about books?

If one likes books, why not talk about them, or write about them, or write about what other people have written or said about them? Of course there might be bad or boring books about books, but many are interesting (in my opinion). In addition, since I initiated this thread in part because I was curious about the hostility toward literary theory I sometimes see on Litnet, perhaps you can help me. Why are you (or Tessimond) hostile to books about books? I mean, would you rather read books about sports, or books about computers?

[ennison]

I'm sure I come across as brusque but it is not with you Ecurb. If Foucault and Barthes float your boat well I'm sure we all have our eccentric pleasures. Literary theory is interesting up to a point but with me the point comes early. They are commentators at a great distance and the more arcane they become the more they end up being the opposite of creative. I do not believe they even enjoy reading. I guess you could say we are commenting on books here but a thread like the Daily Dose of great Prose for example seems to be written by readers for readers. Literary theorists increasingly write for each other. Didn't find the Tessimond quote? Well "There you huv it" as Rab C Nesbit might say (and probably did)

[Drkshadow03]

My issue with literary theory comes back to how it is practiced. Literary Theory should be the study of the theoretical assumptions and ideas behind reading and experiencing literature. In my experience, when it is actually taught, literary theory tends to be political philosophizing of texts, with a heavy focus on post-modern literary theory, while ignoring the ideas of earlier literary critics and theorists. To summarize, one of the bigger problems is that not all theorists are treated equal. Another problem is that the nature of literary theory as philosophizing about language, texts, readers, and sometimes invisible social power structures makes it difficult to falsify.

[Ecurb]

Fair enough. I read the third lecture -- on hermeneutics -- and apparently the study of hermeneutics is linked to the rise of Protestantism, because Protestants could no longer rely on the Church for the interpretation of the Bible.

I'll continue to post when something seems interesting enough to stimulate response here.

As to whether Foucault and Barthes "float my boat", I don't understand them any better than anyone else. I also find them snooty, condescending, supercilious and obscure. However, I find this vaguely comforting. It seems to me that French Intellectuals SHOULD BE condescending and obscure. If I can't understand them, or if their points seem merely political and trivial to me, I assume the fault is with me, not with them. After all, I'm the (relatively) uneducated American rube; it's only natural that sophisticated European intellectuals write things that go over my head (the lecture on hermeneutics cites Martin Heidegger, who fits the same mold). So I (occasionally) try to understand famous European philosophers better (by reading this course on Literary Theory, for example), although it never seems to work.

[YesNo]

As to whether Foucault and Barthes "float my boat", I don't understand them any better than anyone else. I also find them snooty, condescending, supercilious and obscure. However, I find this vaguely comforting. It seems to me that French Intellectuals SHOULD BE condescending and obscure. If I can't understand them, or if their points seem merely political and trivial to me, I assume the fault is with me, not with them. After all, I'm the (relatively) uneducated American rube; it's only natural that sophisticated European intellectuals write things that go over my head (the lecture on hermeneutics cites Martin Heidegger, who fits the same mold). So I (occasionally) try to understand famous European philosophers better (by reading this course on Literary Theory, for example), although it never seems to work.

If I can't understand what someone is saying after a reasonable attempt has been made, I assume they are not saying anything. I might then take a hostile position toward them and entertain myself by looking for arguments against their positions.

However, if I am in a better mood, and especially if they are French, I try to view them as a form of entertainment like the street urchins you see as you walk along the Seine between the Louvre and the Eiffel tower trying to con you with petitions or rings or like those aesthetes trying to epatez les bourgeoisie with their tedious banalite du quotidien.