This article describes the shift in academia, especially in literature disciplines, from theory based

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1 1 Dave Stone Literary Theory and Writing Sep. Oct Gerald Graff s Taking Cover in Coverage Abstract This article describes the shift in academia, especially in literature disciplines, from theory based mindsets towards more objective but less interesting frameworks and approaches to the organization of studies, and suggests that this shift has resulted in a less enriching experience for both the teachers and students. Where once college departments would have sets of courses that explored diverse pieces of their overall field from the perspective of one theory or another (for literature, there might have been a religious studies themed approach, a psychoanalytic approach, etc.), or simply from the unique perspectives and personal, informal theories of each Professor, Graff explains how colleges now tend to classify and organize courses according to criteria such as period (18th century literature, for instance) or genre (such as sci fi/fantasy) and pay little heed to finding any remarkable connections between the covered works beyond that of inclusion. This approach, Graff argues, restrains the amount of the significance of any given work that will be found by the average study by decontextualizing it out of cross discipline relatable theories. Graff, Gerald. Taking Cover in Coverage. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Eds. Vincent Leitch, et al. New York: Norton, Web. Keyword Search of Wolfgang Iser literary theory, literature, aesthetics, ontological, history, interpretation of literature, artistic theory, kuhn, iser, modality, ontological, literary analysis

2 2 Iser, Wolfgang. How to do Theory. Malden, Ma. Blackwell, Web. Terry Eagleton s Introduction: What is Literature Summary Literary theorist Terry Eagleton opens his book Literary Theory by stating that the existence and practice of literary theory presumes the existence of something called literature (1). He then proceeds to analyze various notable proposed definitions of it, beginning with that espoused by formalism, mainly as it was construed by the Russian Formalists in the early to mid 20th century. From there he refines the concept of literature in regards to other theories and proposed definitions until he ultimately concludes that literature is a radically context dependent concept that is best understood in relationship to the power structures in place in a society. Eagleton flatly dismisses the possibility that a mere distinction between factual and fictional writing will suffice. He does so on the basis of there being a multitude of texts considered literature that are not imaginary writing (1) and plenty of fiction not counted as literature. Among his examples are, for the former, the non fiction essays of J.S. Mill and works whose factuality is debated, as with many religious and historical texts (1 2), and Superman comics (2) for the latter. This proposed definition establishes a tone and style more than offers any particular insight; he notes that even the briefest reflection (1) will reveal that it is an absurd criteria. Eagleton begins in earnest with an extended examination of a widely held conceptualization of literature in the century prior to his writing (1983), that of the Russian Formalists. His initial explanation of the formalist conception is as a poetic quote by Russian critic Roman Jakobson, who supposedly deemed literature, or the writing style of literature, to be organized violence committed on ordinary

3 3 speech (2). Literature entails a disproportion between the signifiers and the signifieds (2), he puts more technically, then goes on to articulate in full the formalist perspective as being that literature, by forcing us into a dramatic awareness of language, refreshes habitual responses and renders objects more perceptible [and that] by having to grapple with language in a more strenuous, self conscious way than usual, the world which that language contains is vividly renewed (3). An operative word is estrange (5). Literature estranges us by being structurally complex, but because it nevertheless is a reflection of reality, our view of reality is intensified. Eventually he objects and argues that, as quaint an image as their definition is, wherein literature elevates reader s appreciation for the world through the use of more complex words and constructional techniques, it fails to cover all things considered literature, for it really just thinks of literature as poetry, and when it is not technically poetry, it is poetic. Seen in this light, he argues that the abundance of writings accepted as being literature that are admired for reasons other than sophisticated language, even to the point of being held in esteem primarily for their very plainness, invalidates this position. Meanwhile, he points out that things not generally considered literature can have the exact same emotional effect on readers that formalists hold to be the defining trait of literature: ambiguous phrases like dogs must be carried on the stairs (6) may estrange readers when their ambiguity is noticed and considered. Nobody would today think to label fragments of language like that literature, and so he concludes that the formalist definition is faulty. In response to this dilemma of non literature writings having the potential to be estranging, Eagleton broadens the formalist definition of literature to non pragmatic discourse (7). Literature in this sense is no longer defined in terms of structure but of intent; it is not the objective incongruity compared to the colloquial language within its parent setting of a piece of writing that makes it literature

4 4 or not, but whether its meaning is of more than immediate significance. The popular notion that literature functions as a mirror for reality, a selective recreation, or a reflective activity that people use to make sense of the world fits neatly into this definition. But as with the previous proposals, Eagleton finds exceptions and as such rules it out. In this case, the primary failings are that there are many works accepted as literature that are/were clearly designed to be immediately significant, or pragmatic (say, the allegorical writings of George Orwell) and likewise works designed to be non pragmatic that are not conventionally read that way (like ancient texts read out of archaeological (7) interest). Worse, there are indisputably pragmatically designed works that can, with sufficient imagination, be successfully used as a way to reflect on matters of complex and cosmic import. Eagleton s example is of person using a railway timetable as a reflection point for the transitory and fleeting nature of reality. If great significance can be found in virtually anything with sufficient imagination, then defining literature as something in which great significance exists is untenable. In order to account for the subjectivity of significance Eagleton concludes that literature must be context dependent highly valued writing. Anything can be literature, and anything can cease to be literature (9), he opines. His final augmentation is to explicitly tie literature to ideology, which he defines as the ways in which what we say and what we believe connects with the power structure and power relations of the society we live in (13). In other words, for him, the ideology of a society is not its collective set of ideas, values, and norms, but the medium for the transmission of those ideas, values, and norms between power classes. The comparatively concrete, analyzable power structure dimension of a society is treated as the basis for that society s conception of what is and should be valued, and therefore literature is whatever kind of writing is esteemed highest within a society, as determined by the espoused values of the powerful, historically the upper class, wealthy, elite, and leaders of social forces.

5 5 What is Literature? : literature is what the people in a society agree it is, and their criteria will be based on what they are taught by social forces. Literature as a category does not have its own objective definition, it is simply a label applied to writings valued because they fit into a society s value system. Evaluation of Terry Eagleton s Introduction: What is Literature? On four occasions during my time in college, I have been asked to define what a chair is. Is it a thing to sit on? Well, what about chairs that are museum pieces or art: are they no longer chairs? No attempt to physically classify them according to shape will go very far: they are too multifarious a set of objects for any single physical element of their construction to be universal, let alone defining. It is a fun, if frustrating, exercise in illustrating the precise mechanisms of the human s inductive mind. That this odd activity cropped up with such surprising frequency, across subjects and even schools of dramatically different structure and philosophy (a Seattle community college and a private Catholic college in Wisconsin) I take as a testament to the paramountcy of its constructivist moral in understanding the cognitive nuts and bolts of how humans conceptualize the world. With this mindset firmly inculcated, I can never take a What is question seriously again, be it for anything from chairs to life. I immediately frame the question within the context of humans instinctively understanding all concepts (an individual s personal idea of what a given thing consists/ can consist of) based on categorical attributes that we have in our lives learned to associate with a particular concept through utility. This includes the utility of a word being experienced to function smoothly in conversation when used as a signifier of certain things, e.g. when I say the word tree and both the person I am talking to and I consider this to refer to plants with a wood body that grow out of the ground, the success of this usage of the word makes me more prone to use it in this way in the future. Seen in this light, Terry Eagleton s ostensible

6 6 quest to define literature is ill fated. Literature is obviously going to be a flexible term that we use and apply at our convenience. Eagleton claims that the attributes we take pieces of literature to possess can be traced to sociological class struggle (14), but I think he overestimates the extent to which the empowered class of people have on the development of the concept of and inclusion criteria for literature. Accepting that literature does not have any objective qualities, but is rather a name for a class of highly valued written works in a society is enough, and connected this general idea (which follows logically from the constructivist theory of how humans understand all things ) to class struggle is altogether unnecessary. A glance at the etymology proves of interest; the word literature predates that of literary by roughly 150 years, but literature is itself derived from lettered, indicating that in its earliest usage it referred to (literally!) all works composed with letters, i.e. all written works. In that still largely illiterate era (14th 15th century) the assumption was almost certainly that everything that was written was of some significance. All messages worth the time, resources and effort involved in actually being written, physically being put lettered, before writing materials were commonplace, would be important for social (such as the messages between members of the ruling class) if not cosmic truth revealing artistic reasons. The nature of education at the time would meanwhile have suggested that anybody studied enough to be able to read, let alone write, would have in their studies also have picked up an exceptional amount of what today we would call critical thinking skills, a general knack for reasoning and conceptualizing the world. There would resultingly have been no necessity for distinguishing literature amidst the pool of all written works. Only in a culture of comparatively high literacy rates that is however pervaded by written works not considered valuable, from so called trash novels to informational texts like advertisements or road signs, is demarcation necessary. Already one can see

7 7 that attempting to define literature as we think of it is a trifle misguided. At the most, literature is a word whose meaning changed (from referring to all lettered, or written, works) upon the recognition in the English speaking community of a class of written works valued higher than others, a class of somehow more intellectually stimulating or artistic works. Eagleton s refutation of Russian Formalist definition for literature is cogent, but the fact that it is accomplished without reference to ideologies or power structures is telling in terms of seeing how unnecessary those concepts are for an understanding of literature. On account of Formalism s fixation on structure, Eagleton s argument that its definition of literature reduces it to poetry (5) is solid (although it does beg the question of what is poetry? ). This equation alone does not invalidate the formalist definition; only an example of non poetic writing that is consistently considered to be literature can do that. Eagleton fails to provide a specific example, although he does allude to supposed literature admired not for (whatever he considers) poetic language but for laconic plainness or low keyed sobriety (6). He runs into trouble here because one can imagine poetry which is admired for these characteristics (the work of A.E. Housman, for one). A fortiori, he conflates estranging language with flamboyant language, and as such claims that according to the formalist definition jokes, [soccer] chants and slogans, newspaper headlines [and] advertisements (6) could/should be classified as literature. But just because some language is plain does not mean it sounds colloquial. Language that is admired for its plainness may be admired because of how refreshingly simple and clear it is, but Eagleton conflates plain sounding with natural sounding and therefore cites it as proof that non poetic language can be literature. The question, then, is whether a formalist would agree with Eagleton in saying that for language to achieve the estranging effect they hold literature induces it must be showy and flamboyant. Based

8 8 on Eagleton s articulation of the Formalist definition, it sounds like it does. The organized violence on ordinary language (2) that Roman Jakobson spoke of does not sound like it includes polite little hymns, no matter how earnest or poignant. The same goes for if it must indeed defamiliarize and deform. (3) If estranging is to be synonymous in this regard with retarding, with being word for word mechanically, from signifier to signified harder to read and make sense of than normal language, then Eagleton s objection to formalism is reasonable. If a work could be estranging for non structural reasons (e.g. for having a complex message articulated with simple language, or being refreshingly simple) then the Formalist position could be better defended. However, even then, a work possessing estranging qualities would only be literature because we value that effect, or more specifically recognize that effect as being a symptom of intellectual stimulation. Meanwhile, if a work is estranging for conceptual rather than structural reasons, then the degree and feel of that estrangement will be extremely hard to identify case to case. Nor would it be an especially useful way to approach literature. As Eagleton says, it would have come as a surprise to George Orwell to hear that his essays were to be read as though the topics he discussed were less important than the way he discussed them (7). While the values and morals of Orwell s works may be cognitively estranging, may, to put it bluntly, make us think, to claim that effect as the proof of literariness is pointless in comparison to the issues brought up in his works. No, it is better for the estranging concept to be remembered as a clever way formalists found that allowed them to discuss literature without drawing the ire of an oppressive government. The proposal that literature is non pragmatic discourse, and Eagleton s eventual objection to it is likewise reasonable. It is true that virtually any piece of writing can be read non pragmatically, over analyzed in comparison to the intent of its writing. He has come upon a pattern, but does not yet

9 9 acknowledge it: whether a piece of writing functions the way a person believes literature functions is subjective. For formalists, it had to be granted that whether language structurally was estranging enough to be literature could only be gauged in comparison to the normal language of the society the question of literariness is being raised in, whereas for the non pragmatic definition the subjectivity is based on the individual s choice of where to look for significance. These can be even closer related. The formalists believed that the estranging quality of literature was a sign of its value precisely because it made the world vividly renewed (3) and intensified (4). Literature by extension is valuable because it makes us find more value in the world, which is quite along the lines of the non pragmatic definition of literature as something which provides us with language with significance (value) beyond immediate practicalities. The two both essentially paint literature as valuable writings. This value for them is a property of the literature, not a subjective determination of society, as Eagleton ultimately concludes. Rather, literature is valuable because it affects how people conceptualize the world. Eagleton inverts this relationship in his own description of literature. By ruling out other definitions he is left with literature being nothing more than the writings valued in any given society. He adds to this by claiming that the ideology ( the ways in which what we say and believe connects with the power structure and power relations (13)) of that society determines why writings are valued: the inclusion criteria for literature hood, in short. The issue here is that he does not acknowledge that literature is an interactive element of a society, or more generally that the ideology of a society cannot be traced fundamentally to its power structure. Literature is surely as vital a factor in the determination of ideology as ideology is of it. As a Marxist critic, Terry Eagleton is predisposed to wind up with an incomplete conclusion to his question of what is literature out of a desire to tie it as directly as possible to class struggle. Social

10 10 and political debates aside, this colors his logic, and indeed he does ultimately come up with a conception of literature that is erroneously related to social power (13). That class struggle, oppression and power structures are important elements of every society is a given, but they are not the core, defining traits to which the motivation behind all social forces and human predilections can be traced to and understood in the framework of. For example, humans like sweet tasting things, and our love of sugared products reflects this. The industry of junk food and candy exploits this valuing of sweetness, and a Marxist would argue that the bourgeoisie further exploits the poor s penchant for sweetness by providing it in overpriced, especially unhealthy forms in order to keep the proletariat down. But the heart of the situation is the biological human valuing of sweetness, not the class based exploitation. Class struggle can be thusly correlated to virtually all phenomena in a society, but it is still just a dimension, however influential. Literature too is a dimension, the dimension of the particular canon of a society and how the qualities of the members of that canon affect the culture (e.g. how morals of stories inform values). All the dimensions of a society are interactive, with none possible to isolate and fully understand without the context of the others. Eagleton is right to say that literature can only be understood in relationship to the ideology of the society it is in/ considered to be literature in, but his conception of the relationship is flawed. He construes it as a one way street in which what constitutes literature in a society is something purely borne out of the pre existing ideology, not a factor in helping determine the ideology. Literature is valued writing, for many more reasons than simply being found to be useful for reinforcing the values that perpetuate a class system, and among them is the appeal of routine. Things that were considered literature on Tuesday are very likely to still be so on Wednesday, simply because it would be a bother to get people to agree on such a big change so quickly. And because a large portion of our canon is inherited, the values of those works affect our opinion of what

11 11 constitutes literature and more abstractly, affect our beliefs about reality. This is not the bourgeoisie keeping oppressive works in the forefront, but the influence of routine. His definition of ideology is part of the problem, and it in fact has the same issue as his take on literature: it is unnecessarily defined in exclusive relationship to the power structures of society (he describes it as the ways in which what we say and believe connects with the power structure and power relations of the society we live in (13)). Ideology being the set of ideas and values held by a society is a more broadly useful definition. Under the premise that all ideas, beliefs and values are directly relatable to the power structure of a society, it makes sense that literature could only be defined likewise. Connecting Eagleton s definition of ideology to power structures is interesting and worthwhile, but not so much that it needs to be a constant reference when ideologies are discussed, and the same can be said about his definition of literature. Also not helping is the fact that he never explicitly defines power. That said, one can assume power to be an attribute of people, rather than of anything that affects the mindset, especially the value system, of people in a society (a uselessly vague definition). All of our standards of discernment may indeed by the result of social conditioning, but for Eagleton this conditioning evidently has the ulterior motive of perpetuating a class system (14). This is simply too far a stretch. The world is too messy to support the paranoid notion that the criteria for something being literature can be directly traced to the economic elite. The 1% may take advantage of ideologies and infrastructure, but the subculture of academics and literary scholars are too informal and unorganized to function as a medium of value judgment indoctrination between the most powerful class of people and the masses. If our standards for what constitutes literature were so heavily influenced by assumptions by which certain social groups exercise and maintain power over others (14), then one would expect more

12 12 consistent standards that somehow could be traced to class. But what we find is the designation of literature slapped onto an astonishingly diverse number of written works. What is and is not literature is majority rules, and Eagleton s attempt to tack on the addition that the standards we collectively use are based on conditioned assumptions that somehow perpetuate the prevailing class system and power structure (through the vague means of a society s ideology ) is unnecessary and unsubstantiated. Each individual s development of the idea of literature is too uncontrolled and the typical result is too abstract and adaptable for there to be a socioeconomic agenda to it. Even based on Eagleton s own description of ideology as a medium of, in a word, indoctrination, literature will obviously be a major component of that indoctrination, as a kind of less specific propaganda. Ipso facto, literature plays a part in determining what people consider to be literature. And as the writers are by and large not members or conscious advocates of a social elite, or always concerned with class systems, all that can be said for sure is that people influence what people believe constitutes literature. Literature is a category that we as a society place works into based on standards of value relative to the work s distinguishing features. Literature is valuable, and while value may be theoretically found in anything by a person with enough imagination, a piece of writing can only be literature if it is widely held to be valuable. This is the object of putting things into letters, after all: to be able to share them. So, maybe it is only right that literature must be a communally determined category. Eagleton, Terry. Introduction: What is Literature? Literary Theory. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota, Web.