Capulet

I haven't studied much literary analysis, but I have done lots in communications theory. Muted group, feminist, modern, post-modern, et al.

I can believe feminism is a form of literary critique. There are tons of books coming out of "men writing as women writing science fiction" and the reverse, and there has always been a giant debate about the role and placement of women in literature. It would be EXTREMELY easy to develope a critique system that explores the position of women in society as related to their appearance in the literature of the time.

I don't know if that's what the literary critique system for feminism does, but the above is one easily contrived option.

__________________
It's not opression when you are protecting the voice of the majority.

-Shawn

ghostman

I have managed to find one application of University Theory (to double your capital count to two) to my every day life: the liberal education it provides. I find myself, because of my intense degree-seeking study of classical and modern works, thinking far more logically, critically and creatively than my peers. This may simply be arrogance, but I think it is superior training and exercise. As for applying Theory itself...well that day has not yet come.

I am in agreement. Many kinds of theories are important and applicable. They can start as hypothesis, undergo experiment, and eventually provide tested and conclusive evidence. Literary theory begins, lives, and ends in the hypothesis stage. It can not be fired through a particle accelerator, looked at through a microscope, or participate in a clinical trial: it is, like Fox News, All Opinion, All the Time.

We are clearly on the same side of the debate. I do have one problem with saying that literature "seeks to prove nothing, nor to direct or command the lives of the people, nor even to argue or debate." Literature is always trying to prove something, to direct and command the lives of people, and to argue and debate. That's why every thought, whether social or religious or whatever, is written down. Literature not only seeks to do these things, it has the power to. That it has this power and seeks to tap this power is of little relevance in terms of literary theory, however. As has been clearly stated, the social, political, scientific, religious theories may be brought for examination - and such examination may even lead to progress of some kind - but literary theory, as an untestable (to use your word) hypothesis, can only be "tested" by other untestable hyoptheses. The literature, if it will change things, or argue things, will do so on its own merit, and without the office thoughts of eager tenure-aspiring college professors. The great Ulysses would still be great, wouldn't it, if there was no theory of modernism? Surely it couldn't be suggested that literary theory gave Joyce's work meaning. That would be to suggest that Joyce's work didn't have meaning before the theory was fully developed. I wonder what Joyce would say about that. Nothing original comes out of the mouth of Literary Theory - it only regurgitates, almost always in unrecognizable form, the literature it consumes.


This is well presented. There are indeed benefits of literary criticism - I, for example, because of Joseph Valente's book and lectures, understand that Stoker's Dracula is comprised of dopplegangers carrying in their pockets, among other things, racial implications - but there is a risk, as I previously pointed out and that you have here supported: the risk of creating writers who aspire to write what has already been written. Novelists are a smart bunch; they can manage to take care of their form without the help of those who do not write novels. Indeed, it is my opinion that contemporary novels would be better were the majority of novel writers not intellectually subdued with theoretical studies in college. After all, literary theory is a relatively new (get ready to laugh) "science." There has always been discussion of literature, of course, and always critics and their critiques; but literary theory as we know it - divided and subdivided into schools and classrooms within the schools - has only been around since the 1950s. Coincidentally, this is precisely the time intellectuals (most notably Gore Vidal) began predicting the demise of the novel. While their prediction was based primarily on the rise of television (and justly so), the greater artistic threat of instructing aspiring writers as to what exactly constituted great writing was being carried out in palaces of higher learning all over the world. Indeed, the novels of the last half of the 20th century have reflected this teaching. There have been no great original works of fiction - none that will last and last - except from authors who were educated outside the system, or who, like Nabokov, were products of the first half of the century. Lolita, I think, is the one novel from the 50s on that will endure. And perhaps the Harry Potter books, which were written by a woman on welfare.

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Capulet

Neuromancer, William Gibson, Degree in English Literature

Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice, Degree in Creative Writing

HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, English at Cambridge University

Many novels, Stephen King, Bachelors Degree in English

Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy, English Degree from Loyola College

I'm not going to paste in authors Ad Nauseum. I think it's safe to say the above list is a sufficient cross-section to demonstrate there are authors operating out there that have significant post-secondary training in literary theory that are producing memorable works.

While I'm sure there are no set, defined rules for what should be in a car, there are definately minimal items that have to be included in order for it to work. You need a device to provide locomotion (engine), a place to reside on the vehicle while travelling(seat), and some way of directing it (steering wheel). Sometimes these items take different shapes, but their basic purpose are all going to be fulfilled in some capacity.

Books can be analyzed in a similar fashion. There are different genres of books, and they all tend to carry specific traits in common with the other members of their genre. That you can classify anything as "science fiction" or "romance" or "murder-mystery" shows there are specific elements at work. Analysis can be refined beyond determining specific plot points, and you can examine the literature from a variety of different angles.

This by no means limits author's ability to come up with something new. In fact, a healthy knowledge of what's been done before, how books have operated, and what patterns they've followed before lets you marry the old with your new in wonderful ways. Literary analysis is what moves the field foward. Even your "welfare writers" are sure to be working their analysis on a subliminal level, as they've probably read significantly in their specific genres, and act upon the conventions they have previously witnessed.

__________________
It's not opression when you are protecting the voice of the majority.

-Shawn

Lupin3

Thanks for your comments, ghostman.

You are quite right to have called me on this. My comment was predicated mainly on the fact that while political intellectuals and men and women of letters seek to enact policies that proscribe the lives of others, writers of literature seek only to communicate to those who agree to listen and to think. Buried within this position, of course, is a claim on the nature of literature and art that was unstated. I personally take as a criteria in evaluating art and literature the exploration of the potentialities of man, of the existential human condition. To do this well, one cannot engage in politics, for to limit oneself as a writer to a particular and arbitrary political ideology or affiliation is to ignore the possiblity of difference, both in perspective and in things as they are - which is the essence of literature. In fact, I believe the closer one gets in pursuing politics (especially, by God, of the party type) the further one gets from a real understanding of the possibilities of being human. Objectivity and truth have no party affiliations, and those who hitch art to a party or ideology demean both art and my experience of it.

I am aware of the political nature of much of what is currently considered literature, therefore I would be more specific to say the "best" literature. I am aware as well that some might consider apolitics to be politics, but then I can see the logical fallacy in saying "politics is everything, therefore no-politics is politics." The fact that I am illustrating my statement of artistic objectivity in political terms, however, reinforces the political nature of nearly all literary Theory, and the invasiveness with which it creeps into even casual conversations on the arts.

I hadn't wanted to spend much time discussing this as I knew it would turn to politics and utilitarianism, rather than an examination of the impact of Theory on literature. You and I seem to be generally in agreement on the present state of the art. Hopefully Talia and others can bring some diversity to the topic.

ghostman

Let me clarify my statement about authors and great original works of fiction. All authors and works of fiction, regardless of originality and greatness, will last. Libraries, in an attempt to outcollect other libraries, will hold on their shelves anything that is bound. They will hold them forever, or until they burn down.

Also, books or authors such as those you've listed will endure as footnotes, as reference points, as answers to obscure trivia questions. Neuromancer, despite being a fine book, is a trivia question in its own time because of its genre. It is not a book that will last and last in the sense I was suggesting. That is, it will never be taught in schools. You and I might know that schools teach a lot of crap, and that they don't teach many wonderful works, but that is ultimately irrelevant. Every generation, save those precious few readers who are genuinely curious and interested in literature, knows only the books they are made to read and the books of their time (or their parents' time, which their parents happen to still talk about). Books need more than to just be preserved for them to be considered enduring. They need to be celebrated widely, generation after generation; discussed emotionally and emphatically, generation after generation; hated and loved, generation after generation. None of the books or authors you mentioned will do that, I'm afraid.

Stephen King has the best chance of proving me wrong, mainly because his writing is original. While one of his works generally is not all that different stylistically or foundationally from any other of his works, his work as a whole is rather unique when compared to the rest of late 20th century literature. For this reason alone, he might endure. He will not endure, however, because he is a great writer. He is a prolific and entertaining writer, but I would be surprised to see any of his books taught seriously as example works of supreme fiction. This is what I'm talking about, what I'm saying we have been missing: supreme, mind-altering, unimaginable fiction.

Anne Rice will last longer as a person than she will as an author. By that I mean interest in her persona - this strange, New Orleans, mystical thing - may indeed outlast interest in her books, which are mass market genre products. Mass market genre products, by the way, do not last and last. They fill the shelves of used book stores until one day they stop selling, even at a buck apiece, and are recycled or thrown in the fireplace. They won't be reprinting Anne Rice books in a hundred years.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will gain interest with the upcoming release of the movie (my man Mighty Mos once again rocking the screen), but I fear it is too funny for its own good. Humor works almost always prove to be era-sensitive. This book, though, could last awhile because of its cultish fans. They are a loyal bunch. It is of the science fiction genre, however, and that will work against it.

And what does one say to the suggestion of Tom Clancy? He is mass market formula genre writer extraordinaire. I would have thought his books were written with software had he not written books before such software existed. Don't get me wrong, they make great one-day reads, and they translate into some of the best video games, but they are anything but literary, and they will do anything but last. Just about any rich author, you can be sure, will, in a century, be a name little known.


I encourage all writers to read as much as possible, so they know what has been done and how it has been done. But too many writers cannot, after they have read a thousand books, separate their minds from the ideas, styles and structures contained in those books. Indeed, it is a hard struggle to do so. Even one's "free-thinking" is often patterned after the free-thinking of another. (For a powerful example, read a political Noam Chomsky book and see if you don't start analyzing politics the way he does, and at the same time feel as if you are thinking on an entirely independent level.) You mention writers who work with knowledge attained subliminally - I actually think attaining knowledge subliminally, rather than having it pounded into your head through tests and papers, is the way to go for writers. The best writing, in my opinion, is written subliminally, instinctively, and contains all the emotions and feelings one finds hard to express intellectually. The problem with learning through Theory is that it forces the writer to become overtly intellectual, at which point all subtlety is sacrificed. It forces the writer to write works that live up to the Theory's conclusions and predictions, that abide by the theory. The last thing fiction should ever do is abide by anything.

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Capulet

I think you'll be surprised who continues on and who doesn't. If you look at William Shakespeare closely, he was writing for the masses, and at a peasant level of diction. Great ideas, and resonating with the audience is what keeps a book alive. Tolkein is going to be around for a long time, but tell me how many people celebrate William Morris and The Well at the World's End? It was truly amazing in writing style and idea. Indeed it's celebrated as the first true fantasy novel, and defined the genre. But Tolkein is what will be discussed, and remembered as time goes on.

As time lengthens, and people are more removed from the understanding and language structure of previous cultures you'll find your old classics no longer being discussed at length. It's why you start taking The Hobbit or The Lord of the Flies in school instead of Shakespeare or Huxley. It just doesn't resonate anymore, and so it's no longer "great".


Fiction should abide by the rules of grammar. Grammar in itself is a theory, and applies constraints. I think you need to know what's been done, what can be done, and then move beyond it. There's nothing worse than writing what you think is the Great American Novel, and then finding out you just basically rewrote another author's work.

See what's been done, what's being done, and maybe what needs to be done or what people are responding to, and go from there.

__________________
It's not opression when you are protecting the voice of the majority.

-Shawn

Lupin3

I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say here, Capulet. Could you provide some examples?

When you say he wrote "for the masses," do you mean he targeted his works at them? Or that he examined their condition and place in society? Or that the "masses" (I understand this term to be used in a Marxist manner) paid his way?

And what do you mean by "peasant diction?" Do you mean he used common words and oaths (true) in the common manner (false)? Or that his word choice was not elevated, as in poetry (also false)?

One might make the argument that Shakespeare wrote for his peers first (Marlowe and other playwrights, his social contemporaries) or possibly Queen Elizabeth or King James, but certainly not the common man.

As to who is teaching "The Hobbit" or "Lord of the Flies" instead of "Romeo and Juliet" or "Hamlet," this is certainly the exception (if in fact it actually happens - I've certainly never heard of Shakespeare being phased out of high school curriculums to spend more time with hobbits) and high school literature has relatively little to do with literature's cannon, anyway.

Personally, I think there is an implicit problem with measuring the worth of literature by its position or inclusion in a cannon that continues to be read and (especially) taught in universities and colleges throughout the English speaking world. For whatever definitions by which one includes a work (whether ghostman's literary worth or Capulet's popular worth) one must, by time and space requirements alone, exclude other works that meet such requirements.

In Shakespeare's case, while he is the "bard" considered by most to be the penultimate expression of what it is to be human in the English language (see especially Bloom's "The Invention of the Human") he was hardly the only worthy candidate for that title even in his day. Christopher Marlowe had been considered the best playwright of his age until Shakespeare, like an "upstart crow," came along. Read Shakespeare's ulogy of Marlowe upon his murder if you want the bard's opinion of him. Still, it is Hamlet that is read today, not Doctor Faustus. Is Hamlet better? Of course, but not so much so that Marlowe should be consigned to the dustbin of also-rans.

So the question becomes: How then shall we measure literature? If not by authority, for as I've shown the cannon - on the authority largely now of academics uninterested in literature per se - is hardly comprehensive or fair to authors, much less readers, then what? Not by popularity either, for the interests of the masses are fickle and subject to change, and in any event why should we assume that judging literature is any more appropriate for rule by majority than say, science? Science, unlike fashion or taste, is dependent on a process outside the personal predilections of individuals. Logic is the same for you and I and everyone else (though certainly our ability to use it varies quite a bit...). So is the same true of literature? After all, is it not self-evident that to suggest the equal worth of "A Moveable Feast" and "Interview with a Vampire" intrinsically and on its face is false, even absurd?

Enter Theory. Theory has, for at least the greater part of the twentieth century until now, become increasingly central to our "understanding" of literature and the cannon - even if its only the means by which the existence of the cannon should be questioned in the first place. And yet, as ghostman and I and others have pointed out, Theory is not science, though it sometimes sounds like one. It is not testable, it is not falsifiable, nor provable. So what then, is it based upon? How can one differentiate Theory from any other fashion or taste that blows like dust across the waste of popular fancy? I am not so sure one can differentiate Theory from fashion at all.

Capulet

I'm at work so I'm going to apologize up front for the brevity of my post, and the lack of answers it has for the questions posed to me. I have finals in theories of human communication this week, and I can't bring myself to discuss it while I'm cramming it into my brain! This is supposed to be a distraction! lol. I'll get back into this thread in more detail starting Wednesday.

__________________
It's not opression when you are protecting the voice of the majority.

-Shawn

Lupin3

Capulet, I'll actually be out of town for several days starting Wednesday, but I'll definitely follow up with you when I get back. I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation.