4. René Wellek and Austin
Warren*
[*The key for Wellek and Warren citations is just TL: Theory of Literature. Obviously, limiting this chapter to their single joint volume is hardly fair to the respective oeuvres of the two critics, who have produced many works since then, and who -- despite their avowal of “shared agreement” (TL 8) -- may not hold the same views (cf. Note 19). But the impact of the this one book merits its place as a strategic starting point for my discussion of literary theory in the Anglo-American world.]
When it was first published in 19492 [2 and some
passages as early as 1940], Wellek
and Warren's Theory of Literature was destined to become a highly and
pioneering attempt to enumerate the main issues that literary theory might
address. The two scholars offered a broad survey of past trends as well as a
program of future tasks. Making this program seem urgent without offending the
prior upholders of the discipline called for some diplomacy. On one side, the
profession was defended: “literary scholarship has its own valid”
"intellectual methods"; “the true study of literature” is “at
once “literary” and “systematic" (TL 16). On the other side, it was
asserted that “literary theory, an organon of methods, is the great need of
literary scholarship today" (TL 19). In those days, “the only methods in
which American graduate schools provided any systematic training" was the
“ordering and establishing of evidence,” mainly with regard to
“authorship, authenticity, and date," all of which, in Wellek and
Warren's view, should be merely "preliminary to the ultimate task of
scholarship” (TL 68f, 57). Thus, the valid" and "systematic"
state of the discipline was a promise and projection of a future Wellek and
Warren sought to shape in particular ways.
Their central thesis was that “literary studies should be specifically literary," that is, “ergocentric” (TL 8, 74). “The natural and sensible starting point for work in literary scholarship is the interpretation and analysis of the works of literature themselves" (TL 139). Homage was paid to the “healthy reaction" of criticism against an “over-emphasisis" upon the "'external circumstances -- -political, social, economic -- in which literature is produced" (TL 139) (cf. Lee, 1913). A new "concentration on the actual works of art themselves” was being “especially" achieved by "the brilliant movement of the Russian formalists and their Czech and Polish followers,” as well as by practitioners of “explication de textes" and “close reading": the "New Critics" such as Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, William K. Wimsatt, and Monroe Beardsley, along with R.P. Blackmur, Ronald S. Crane, William Empson, I.A. Richards, F.R. Leavis, Leo Spitzer, Earl Wasserman, and, yes, Harold Bloom and Geoffrey Hartman in their (very different) early incarnations (TL 139f, 338f).3 [31 The cited works are Hartman's (1954) Unmediated Vision, and Bloom's (1961) Visionary Company (TL 338). Incredible as it now seems, Wellek was Hartman's dissertation director.] Though Wellek and Warren don't label themselves “formalists” -- "commonly” a designation for "modern critics limiting themselves to aesthetic criticism” (TL 241) -- they clearly sympathize with this direction, as we shall see. For instance, they prefer their “conceptions" like “genre” to be “formalistic" ones rather than “subject-matter classifications" (TL 232).
The book proceeds by parceling "literary theory” into four sections. First come the “definitions and distinctions” concerning the “nature” and "function of literature” (TL 5). Next, traditional procedures for “the assembling and preparing of a text" (“cataloging," “editing," etc.) are pointedly treated as “preliminary operations” (TL 57, 59, 5). The rest of the book is divided between “extrinsic” versus “intrinsic” approaches; befitting the resolve to place literature at the theoretical center, the section on “intrinsic study" is longer than the other three sections combined. Reasonably enough, “psychology," “society,” and “the other arts" were made “extrinsic,” whereas “metre,” “style," and "metaphor” were "intrinsic" (TL 50). More subtlety is required to see why “ideas” are “extrinsic” (the “history of ideas” is at stake, not literary content); or why “biography” is “extrinsic” when “literary history" is “intrinsic.” Perhaps the whole division, however it may be delineated in practice, is fundamentally problematic.
Wellek and Warren are ambivalent about modelling their project after
science -- an attitude we will keep encountering in American literary theory.
They caution against the “scientific invasion into literary study” whereby
“the methods developed by the natural sciences” get “transferred to the
study of literature” (TL 16). Scholars try to “emulate the general
scientific ideals of objectivity, impersonality, and certainty," for
example, by “collecting neutral facts” or “studying causal antecedents and
origins.” In such work, “scientific causality is used to explain literary
phenomena by the assignment of determining causes to economic, social, and
political conditions.” Or, an “attempt" is made “to use biological
concepts in the tracing of the evolution of literature." Or, such
“quantitative methods" as “statistics, charts, and graphs” are
appropriated (TL 16; cf. TL 24, 171, 280, 309). In Wellek and Warren's estimate,
the outcome was typically “limited” success.”, if not "failure"
(TL 16).4 [4.
“Success" is however allowed for Birkhoff’s (1933) use of mathematics
in aesthetics, and for the application of “morphology” to "folklore”
(TL 261, 130) ( Propp’s [1928] work was passed over, perhaps being hard to
find in those days).] For example,” “professional
linguists,” except maybe those in “lexicology" and "etymology,”
“slighted" the “pursuits” of "language study” relevant for
“the modern student of literature"; and "the “behavioristic”
school of linguistics" “very consciously" “ignored" the
“expressive value” of the
"utterance" (TL 176, 178). It was not
realized that “linguistic study becomes literary only" "when it aims
at investigating the aesthetic effects of language" (TL 176).. Similarly,
“we must reject the biological analogy between the development of literature
and the closed evolutionary process from birth to death,” since biology makes
no provision for “variable schemes of values" (TL,256f; cf. TL 27, 236).5
[5. “The early genre histories of Brunetiète [1890] and Symonds
[1890]” are deemed “vitiated by an excessive reliance on the biological
parallel” (TL 261; cf. TL 236, 256). For a different use of "evolution,” see
p. 186f.]
Nonetheless, "science" and “literary study” are said to
“contact or even overlap," notably in the “fundamental methods" of
“induction and deduction, analysis, synthesis, and comparison” (TL 16).
These shared “methods” are typically applied by science to general
phenomena, and by literary studies to specific works. Wellek and Warren opine
that “attempts to find general laws in literature have always failed" (TL
18). “No general law can be assumed to achieve the purpose of literary study:
the more general, the more abstract and hence empty it will seem; the more the
concrete work of art will elude our grasp." This insistence on addressing
the "concrete work” (TL 39, 118, 121, 128f, 132, 147, 262) foregrounds
"the necessity of theory growing out of a concrete engagement with
texts" (letter to me from Wellek). If so, the domain of theory may be hard
to keep separate from the interpretation of works, as critics like Iser and
Culler argue it should be.
One solution could be to "describe as “literary theory” the
study of the principles of literature," its “categories” and
"criteria,” and to “differentiate studies of concrete works" as
"literary criticism" or "literary history" (TL 39),6
[6. Hence, theory as such
would not need to “distinguish between “contemporary” and past
literature,” as Wellek and Warren indeed “refuse” to do, deploring the
“scholarly attitude” that demands “the exclusion of recent literature from
serious study” (TL 8, 44). But the distinction does come up at times, for
example, regarding fluctuations in emotionality, rationalism, and the
separateness of prose from poetry (TL 117, 206, 165). Compare Note 9.] yet
Wellek and Warren aver that “literary theory” would be
“inconceivable" "without criticism or history," and
"impossible except on the basis of a study of concrete literary works.
" Hence, a characteristic striving in Theory of Literature is to
tailor the contours of each domain of theory very closely to the consideration
of works or groups of works. A parallel move is to relate literary theory to
neighbouring disciplines so as to maintain the centre of gravity firmly on the
literary side.
The centrality of the actual work is underscored: “there will never be
a proper history of an art" "unless we concentrate on an analysis of
the works themselves and relegate to the background studies in the psychology of
the reader” or "the author" as well as "studies in the cultural
and social background" (TL 130). This move may have been strategic in
making the enterprise palatable for more traditional critics. But ironically,
many of the trends Wellek and Warren wanted to restrict have flourished rather
than diminished in the intervening years.
The two critics had been doubtless made wary by the tendency of early
theorists to advance vulnerable generalizations, mainly in the search for tidy
classificatory schemes for sorting works according to period, nationality,
century, genre, style, size, and so on. As Wellek and Warren suggest, the
quasi-scientific “analogy to the natural world” favours "the
supposition that every work belongs to a kind” (TL 226). In categorizing, a
small number of classes was considered an advantage, two or thre if possible.7
[7 7 “A sober view" “will doubt the sacredness of the number
three" (TL 118). We do find some extravagant groupings by threes in Chs. 5
(Frye) and 15 (Bloom).] Pairs of contraries were endlessly devised for
philosophical, historical, or stylistic schemes, such as “macrocosmos"
versus “microcosmos," “Classicism" versus "Romanticism,”
"simple" versus "decorated," and so on (TL 120, 133, 179;
cf. TL 122, 193, 204, 210). Or, tripartite schemes were proposed, such as “the
thesis “nationalism,” the antithesis “irrationalism,” and the synthesis
“Romanticism"; or “positivism" ("explains the spiritual by
the physical world"), “objective idealism" ("sees reality as
the expression of an internal reality’), and “dualistic idealism"
(“assumes the independence of spirit against nature") (TL 120, 117).8
[8. The sources here are Korff (1923-53) and Dilthey (1898, 1907, 1911),
respectively.] However, such schemes of twos and threes can't “cope with the
highly diversified pattern” and the "complex process of literature";
and “the concrete individuality of poets and their works is ignored of
minimized" (TL 133, 118). Besides, literature is replete with
"transitional forms" and the "contamination" of
“genres" (TL 25, 261).9 [9. "Literary history
between 1500 and 1800" was a “mingling and contamination of genres,”
whereas the "contemporary tendency” runs "against the confusion of
genres" (TL 261, 25).]
We might see here a variant of the ancient “quarrel between the
“universal” and “particular” in literature," “going on since
Aristotle" (TL 18). Wellek and Warren adopt an intermediary position:
“each work of literature is both general and particular” (TL 19). “No work
of art can be wholly unique, since it would then be completely
incomprehensible” (TL 18, 151) (an argument also advanced by Hirsch).
“Moreover, all words in every literary work are, by their very nature,
“generals” and not particulars" (TL 18). “We can thus generalize
concerning works of art" and still "attempt to characterize the
individuality of a work, of an author, of a period, or of a national
literature" (TL 19). For this task, some "literary theory" is
indispensable, or ideally, "a dialectical interpenetration of theory and
practice" (TL 19, 40). The question remains whether this “theory"
can make use of traditional classifications enough to incorporate the results of
past research. The "traditional genres of the lyric, the epic, and the
drama," for instance, are taken not merely as "obviously” “the
centre of literary art” but as “formalistic" or possibly
“psychological" classes (TL 233, 84).
Presumably, the valence of such old conceptions will have to be
re-established by exploring how they function when literary works are produced
and received. At times, Wellek and Warren seem to agree: "the nature and
function of literature must" be "correlative": "the use of
poetry follows from its nature," 10 [10. As in much
literary theorizing, poetry comes to stand for all literature. It is suggested
that "the distinction between modern literary theory” might “scrap the
prose-poetry distinction'; and that
the distinction between a novel and a poem”; may be “only quantitative and
fail to justify the setting up of two contrasting kinds of literature” (TL
227, 158). To be sure, as we shall see in a moment, poetry was favoured also
because its theoretical description was the most advanced (TL 212)]; and its
“nature" "follows from its use" (TL 29). “Its nature is in
potence what in act is its function; it is what it can do" (TL 238). Yet
the "intrinsic" focus draws more attention to the nature of literature
than to its function. A basic definition of literature is urgently needed, but
hard to formulate. Powerfully reductive, objectifying proposals are speedily
dismissed. The “nominalist" view, advanced by Croce (1909) among others,
that “literature" is “a collection of individual" works that
"share a common name," says little about “the aesthetic convention
in which a work participates" (TL 226). The definition
"everything in
print” also fails, since literature can be “oral,"11
[11 Though Welick and Warren
“would sharply distinguish oral epic from literary epic” and might include
the Iliad among the oral, they refer
to “the poem Homer wrote,”
“Homer's reason for writing the
Iliad,” or “contemporary readers
of Homer” (TL 227, 30, 42, my emphasis).
and “the “real” poem"
is neither "the writing on the paper" nor the “sequence of sounds”
(TL 20, 22, 143, 146). At most, “writing and printing" "have done
much to increase the unity and integrity of works of art," and some
“print devices" may be used as "integral parts” of
"particular works" (TL 143).
The elitist definition of "literature" as "'great books”
goes to a different extreme (TL 21f). It "introduces an excessively
“aesthetic” point of view “ and
"makes incomprehensible the continuity of
literary tradition” (TL 210) -- a point made in various ways by Fiedler, Jauss, and Jameson as well. Greatness cannot exist without some background or
comparison; nor indeed can literariness. Besides, the elitist definition tends
to dilute Wellek and Warren's major project, evaluation by requiring a value
judgment at the initial moment of identifying the literary work.
Wellek and Warren prefer to base their definition on "the particular
use made of language in literature” (TL 22) -- a typical formalist move.
“The main distinctions to be drawn are between the literary, the everyday, and
the scientific." “The ideal scientific language” should be “purely
“denotative," “aiming at a one-to one correspondence between sign and
referent"; the "sign is completely arbitrary” (“can be replaced by
equivalent signs") and “transparent” (“directs us unequivocally to
its referent’) (TL 220). "Literary language," in contrast,
“abounds in ambiguities," "homonyms, arbitrary or irrational
categories," "historical accidents memories, and associations"
(TL 23). It is “highly “connotative and contextual,” "carrying with
it” “an aura of synonyms and homonyms" and maximizing the
“expressive” "side” that “scientific language” “wants” “to
minimize” (TL 2 3, 17 5). “The word is not primarily a sign, a transparent
counter, but a “symbol” valuable for itself as well as in its capacity of
representative" (TL 88). Stated this way, the” opposition rests on an
idealization of both types. The frequent opaqueness and imprecision of
scientific discourse is ignored. And literary language is so defined that the
poem appears more relevant than the prose work (cf. Ch. 2). Wellek and Warren
propose to “call" a “literary work of art" a "poem"
“for brevity's sake"; but a more cogent motive, conceded later, is that
“the theory and criticism of poetry" were in those days far superior
"in both quantity and quality," to that for prose, e.g., for “the
novel” (TL 142, 212).
Probably because few definitions or idealizations have been proposed for
everyday" "language," it is "more difficult" to
distinguish from the “literary" than the scientific had been (TL 23).
“Everyday language" shares the "expressive function" and is
also “full" of “irrationalities and contextual changes" (TL 23f).
A “quantitative difference" is suggested, wherein “literary
language" “exploits" “the resources of language" "much
more deliberately and systematically" (TL 24). Here again, “poems"
provide the best evidence with their “complex, close-knit organization";
but “every work of art imposes an order" and "unity on its
materials." A qualitative difference is also indicated in "the
distinction between common speech and artistic deviation" in terms of
“distortions from normal usage" and "organized violence committed on
everyday language" (TL 177, 180, 171). Such a conception accords with
Spitzer's (1930b) idea that a “deviation in mental life" should “have
a coordinate linguistic deviation" (TL 183). But whereas the special
mind-set is essential to literary communication, deviant language is not (Ch.
2). Quite aside from works whose language appears to us ordinary, we can
appreciate literature from times and cultures whose everyday language we hardly
know, as Wellek and Warren admit (TL 155, 177). To participate in literature, we
must be able to make “new" and “strange" (in Sklovskij's words)
whatever language we encounter (cf. TL 242).
Another criterion of difference is offered as a corollary of Kant's
notion that practicality” as well as “habit" can be an “enemy"
of “aesthetic experience” (TL 240). Hence, “literature is, by modern
definition, “pure"“ of “practical intent (propaganda, incitation to
direct, immediate action) and scientific intent (provision of information, facts
additions to knowledge)” (TL 239). It is “false” to "locate the
seriousness of a great poem or novel" in its "historical
information” or "helpful moral lesson" (TL 31). "We reject as
poetry or label as mere rhetoric everything which persuades us to a definite
outward action" (TL 24). Though this intent does figure in the production
and reception of many works, it is not dominant enough to replace all literary
intents. As our two critics remark in regard to “ideas,” we expect that
“practical" “materials” and “information" be “literarily
used" as "integral parts of the work” (TL 239).
This “integral” quality is brought out in Wellek and Warren's
definition of “the work of art" as “a whole system of signs, or
structure of signs, serving an aesthetic purpose" (TL 141). As such, “the
work of art” is "an object of knowledge" with a "special
ontological status"; “neither real (physical)" “nor mental
(psychological)” “nor ideal (like a triangle)”; “it is a system of norms
of ideal concepts which are intersubjective" (TL 156). A parallel is
proposed: the total “system of language (langue)" is related to "the
individual speech act” (“parole”) in much the same way as the “literary
work of art" is related to any one “individual realization" (TL
152). Both the “system" and the “work” represent "a collection
of conventions and norms whose workings and relations we can observe and
describe as having a fundamental coherence and identity in spite of very
different, imperfect, and incomplete" realizations by individual users. We
might also "contrast" the “language system of a literary work of art
with the general usage of the time” (TL 177).
This proposal suggests a useful view of the openness of the text. Instead
of simply postulating that there must be right and wrong readings (as Wellek and
Warren do, p. 340, we could stipulate that there will be a systemic relationship
among the various readings that people who know the language and conventions
will be likely to derive from the text. Readings which appear more functional in
accounting for the experience among such people and for the relatedness of their
results should be given preference. This systemic core would be the operational
correlate for the aspect that, in a “Platonist" or “phenomenologist”
view, might be the objectified abstraction called the "essence” (cf. TL
153, 156).
Within the system of the work, the “old dichotomy of “content versus
form"“ should be abandoned, as the "formalists” suggested (TL
140). We can "rechristen all the aesthetically indifferent elements
“materials,” while the manner in which they acquire efficacy may be called
“structure" (TL 1400. These "raw materials" would subsume “on
one level, words, on another level, human behaviour" and
"experience”
(including “the author's experience”), and on yet “another, human ideas
and attitudes" (TL 241, 218). In a “successful" work, "all of
these” “are pulled into polyphonic relations by the dynamics of aesthetic
purpose" (TL 241). Accordingly, "structure is a concept including both
content and form, so far as they are organized for an aesthetic purpose"
(TL 141). This “structure” could be modelled within the
"polyphonic" “system" of “several strata" propounded by Ingarden (1931): "sound," "syntagmas” or "sentence
patterns," the "'world“ ("objects,” “plot, characters,
setting”)" “viewpoint,” and "metaphysical qualities"
(“the sublime, the tragic, the terrible, the holy’) (TL 151f, 225)
Some problems arise here, for instance, whether all five strata are
“indispensable," and whether "stylistics," including rhetorical
schemes and “imagery,"
belongs to the
"syntactical” "stratum" (TL 152, 211).12 [12.
Even the number is uncertain. the fifth stratum in one listing (“metaphysical
qualities’) is the "fourth and last" in another (TL 151f, 225).] If
"every work of literary art is first of all, a series of sounds out of
which arises the meaning," and if "we can write the grammar of a
literary work of art,” "beginning with phonology" and ”rising to
syntax" (TL 158, 176), a spatial or temporal ordering of the strata seems
implied, both for reading and for analysis. The surface text retains tight
control over its processing. But we need to inquire how a reader or analyst
moves up from the "lower" levels to the “higher" ones during
the “mental experiences based on the sound structure" of
"sentences” (TL 156). Like many critics (and linguists) Wellek and Warren
tend to bracket the question by treating linguistic units as independent agents,
for example, “sentences and sentence structures refer to objects" and
"construct imaginative realities such as landscapes, interiors, characters,
actions or ideas" (TL 153). (Iser's model offers the most detailed picture
of how this may happen, Ch. 8).
The relationship between literature and reality is conceived here as we
might predict for an “ergocentric" method. "The work of art" is
"never" a "mere copy of life” or “simply the embodiment of
experience” (TL 78). “Literature must not be conceived as being merely a
passive reflection or copy of the political, social, or even intellectual
development of mankind” (TL 264). “Studies” of “social pictures"
from “novels" have "little value" if "they take it for
granted that literature is simply a mirror of life, a reproduction" (TL
103). Also, "sincerity" is a “false criterion" "if it
judges literature in terms of biographical truthfulness" (TL 80) (a
criterion applied, however) by critics like Fiedler and Millett). Still, some
“studies” use “literature as social documents, as assumed pictures of
social reality," or as a source for “the history of civilization” (TL
102, 20; cf. TL 252). To explore certain “older periods,” we may be
“forced to use literary material for want of evidence" from “writers on
politics, economies, and general public questions” (TL 104).
Wellek and Warren stress that “art imposes some kind of a framework
which takes the statement of the work out of the world of reality" (TL 25).
We should expect to find “not so much objective facts as complex
attitudes" “illustrated in fiction,” reflecting for example the
“artistic method of the novelist" and the position of the work as “the
latest in a series of such works" (TL 104, 78). "The correspondence
between a novel and experience can never be measured by any simple pairing off
of items"; we must "compare the total world" of the author
"with our total experience” (TL 246). “The analogies between life and
literature become most palpable when the art is highly stylized": the
“writers" "superimpose their signed world on our experience."
“The great novelists all have such a world-recognizable as overlapping the
empirical world but distinct in its self-coherent intelligibility" (TL 214).
Following these views, the two critics undertake to sort out different kinds of
“truth." To accuse literature of lacking "truth" in the sense
of “systematic and publicly verifiable knowledge" is a “positivist
reduction" (TL 33f). They propose the "alternative" of a
composite, "pluri-modal truth”: “factual truth" (“specific
detail of time and place"); "philosophical truth” (“conceptulal,
prepositional, general’); “psychological truth" ("conscious and
systematic theory of the mind"); and literary "truth" (“the
view of life" which “every artistically coherent work possesses")
(TL 3 5, 212f, 92, 34). “The reality of a work of fiction” is “its effect
on the reader as a convincing reading of life," rather than “a reality of
circumstance or detail" (TL 213). The "fictional world” is
“commonly" more “integrated" than our own "experienced and
imagined world,” as well as “less strange and more representative than
truth" (TL 213). When borrowing from other modes of “truth,” literature
changes their status. It can “apply, illustrate, or embody” a "philosophy
which exists in systematic conceptual form outside of literature" (TL 34).
Or, it can use “psychology" to "sharpen" its “powers of
observation,” or to reveal "hitherto undiscovered patterns” (TL 93).
But such literature is not actually participating in philosophy or psychology,
or much less competing with them (cf. TL 19, 92, 123f).
In respect to "truth," "myth" is a problematic
concept. Generally, “myth” is
"any anonymously composed story telling of
origins and destinies: the explanations a society offers its young of why the
world is" (TL 191). But history shows variations in this conception. In the
Aristotelian tradition, “myth" was “the irrational or intuitive as
against the systematically philosophical" (TL 190). For the
"Enlightenment," "myth was a fiction," but for "Vico,"
"the German Romanticists, Coleridge, Emerson, and Nietzsche" it was
“a kind of truth" (TL 190). In "modern” times, “myth"
designates “an area of meaning" that concerns religion, folklore,
anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, and the fine arts" (TL 190). In
particular, “myth is the common denominator between poetry and religion"
"for many writers"; "religious myth is the large-scale
authorization of poetic metaphor" (TL 192) (cf. Frye, p. 65).
However, modern man,” may “lack myth" “destroyed” by
"intellectuals'" and "the Enlightenment," as Nietzsche
claimed (TL 192). Or, we might have.shallow, inadequate," or "false”
myths," such as "progress,” "equality,“ or "universal
education.” Wellek and Warren consider it a “probably true"
“judgement" that "when old, long-felt, self-coherent ways of life
(rituals with all their accompanying myths) are disrupted by “modernism”
most men (or all) are irnpoverished.”13 [13. Whereas Fiedler
would concur, Millett would welcome the “disruption," since for her,
myths act as “propaganda” for justifying “racial sexual beliefs" and
“misogyny” (SX 404, 71).]
Plainly, "myth" is a distinctly positive concept for "our
own view, “seeing the meaning and function of literature as centrally
present” in “myth,” which can "bridge and bind together"
"form” and “matter'" and enable "a higher level of
integration” (TL 122, 193). "Myth" is “a favorite term of modern
criticism," subsuming such “motifs” as “the image or picture, the
social, the supernatural," “the narrative," “the archetypal or
universal, the symbolic representation as events in time of our timeless ideals,
the programmatic or eschatological, the mystic,” and the “social, anonymous,
communal” (TL 190f) (compare Frye and Fiedler). "If the mythic has as its
contrary either science or philosophy, it opposes the picturable concrete to the
rational abstract” (TL 191). Anticipating Fiedler (in El and LD) is the remark
that “the real" and “successful” “plot" of Huckleberry Finn
is the "mythic plot" of a “journey down a great river of four"
who "have escaped from conventional society'; the "last third” of
the book trying to provide ,,some “plot" is “obviously inferior"
to the rest (TL 217).
These attempts to define literature and its relationship to reality
exhibit a typical trend in Theory of Literature: the undisguised
reference to value-laden criteria at every level of description. Unlike many
theorists, Wellek and Warren do so quite consciously, proclaiming
"evaluation” “the central problem of all criticism” (TL 157).
"We cannot comprehend and analyse any work of art without reference to
value" (TL 156). Merely to “recognize a certain structure as a “work of
art“ or “to spend time and attention" on it “is already a judgment of
value” (TL 156, 250). "Structure, sign, and value form three aspects of
the very same problem and cannot be artificially isolated” (TL 156). If
"structure" is defined as a means for “aesthetic efficacy,"
then “there is no structure outside norms and values” (TL 140f, 156).
Consequently, "the separation between the exegesis of meaning" and
"the judgment of value" is "rarely, in “literary criticism,”
either practised or practicable” (TL 250).
Welick and Warren know that this outlook is by no means universally
shared. As Hirsch does much later, they complain how "the modern view is
inclined to excessive unnecessary relativism," and how “anti-academics
within and without the universities" "affirm the tyranny of flux"
(TL 247). Although "values" are not likely to be "objective"
in the sense of being “publicly verifiable,'14 [14. Though
conceding that “there is no completely objective method of establishing
classifications," Wellek and Warren disavow “complete” or “mere
subjectivity” or “mere subjectivism," and insist that their broad
conception of “the total meaning of the work of art" is not “a plea for
arbitrary subjective misreadings” (TL 59f, 18, 162, 173, 42).], a
“critic" may "affirm that the value” is “really, potentially
present in the art object -- not “read into” it or associatively attached to
it, but with the advantage of a special incentive to insight, seen in it” (TL
249). To be sure, "the values” are not "there for anyone," but
“realized, actually valued, only by
".readers who meet the requisite
conditions" (TL 249). “The “classicists, who appeal to the suffrage of
all men of all times and lands tacitly restrict their “all” to ”all
competent judges." The mental processes of experiencing values are not at
issue here, since for Wellek and Warren, any “theory” for “the psychology
of the reader" must engender “a complete confusion of values” (TL 147).
Modern “relativism” is contrasted starkly with the “Classical” or
“Neo-Classical" standard, which took "works of ancient origin"
as the best models and remained "intolerant" or "unwitting of
other aesthetic systems” (TL 230, 234). Criteria included “a rigid unity of
tone," “stylized purity and “simplicity,"“ plus “a
concentration on a single emotion" (TL 234). Literature was exhorted to
present “the typical, the universal," and to “heighten or idealize
life" (TL 213). The “Aristotelian" viewpoint appealed to an
“educated hedonism," whereby literature, such as the tragedy, "ought
to produce, not any chance pleasure, but the pleasure that is proper to
it"“ (TL 230). Classicist theory was “a mixture of authoritarianism and
rationalism" and tried to be “regulative and prescriptive" (TL 230,
233). Conversely, “modern" “theory" is “clearly
descriptive" and “doesn't prescribe rules to authors” (TL 235). This
change may have encouraged that decline of evaluation lamented here. Related
causes might be the "modern" use of "'private symbolism"
rather than “the widely intelligible symbolism of past poets"; plus
“the vast widening of the audience” and the “more rapid transitions"
in recent times (TL 189, 232). The diversification of functions naturally
emphasizes the problematic character of stable value systems.
Still, on the highest level of generality, “most men seriously
concerned with the arts agree” that “literature has a unique”
"value" (TL 240). “The aesthetic experience" is "a
perception of quality intrinsically pleasant and interesting, offering a
terminal value and a sample and foretaste of other terminal values" (TL
241). What “art” “articulates is superior” to the “self-induced
reverie or reflection" of its "users"; “it gives them pleasure
by the skill with which it articulates what they take to be something like their
own reverie or reflection and by the release they experience through this
articulation" (TL 31). Literature gives pleasure in a higher kind of
activity, i.e., non-acquisitive contemplation” accompanied by a “pleasurable
seriousness” of “perception" (TL 31). Accordingly, “the aesthetic
experience" “is connected with feeling (pleasure, pain, hedonistic
response) and the senses; but it objectives and articulates feeling-the feeling
finds, in the work of art, an “objective correlative,” and it is distanced
from sensation and conation by its object's frame of fictionality" (TL
241). This account is compatible with the “formalist” conception of “the
poem” as “a specific, highly organized control of the reader's
experience,” under the condition that “the tighter the organization, the
higher the value" (TL 249, 243). Indeed, the “criteria of greatness in
any realm of theory or practice” appear to be, a grasp of the complex, with a
sense of proportion and relevance“ (TL 244) (cf. Reid, 1931).
Thus, the hedonistic account is merged with the formalist one, so that
the enjoyment and value of a work are made commensurate with its
“complexity" and "coherence” (TL 36, 93, 104, 109, 123, 130, 212,
239, 243, 246). Following Bosanquet (1915), Eliot (1933), and Pepper (1945),
Wellek and Warren approve the “criterion” of “inclusiveness:
“imaginative integration” and “amount (and diversity) of material
integrated"“ (TL 243). "Provided a real “amalgamation” takes
place, the value of the poem rises in direct ratio to the diversity of its
materials." Similarly,
"the maturity of a work of art is its inclusiveness, its awareness
complexity,” including "ironies,” “tensions,” and “purposed
ambiguity” (TL 246, 194). "We are content to call a novelist great when
his world, though not patterned or scaled like our own, is comprehensive of all
the elements -- we find necessary to catholic scope” (TL 214). “The literary
work” that "continues to be admired must possess" “a “multivalence”:
its aesthetic value must be so rich and comprehensive as to include among its
structures one or more which gives high satisfaction to each later period";
only “a community” rather than "a single, individual can realize all
its strata and systems” (TL 243) (cf. Boas, 1932). The notion that “each
generation leaves elements in the great work of art unappropriated” allows for
a "desire to affirm” the “objectivity of literary values” without a
"commitment to some static canon” (TL 247). Hence, values need not entail
the "subjectivity” of literary studies that makes Wellek and Warren
uneasy (cf. TL 18, 42, 44, 152, 156, 162, 168, 173, 249).
Multiple structuring gives “great" works a lasting potential for
innovative experiences, for making things “new” and “strange" in the conceptions
of "Romantics" and “formalists" (cf. TL 242). “Each more recent “movement” in
poetry has had the same design: to clear away all automatic response, to promote
a renewal of language.” The “pleasure in a literary work is compounded of the
sense of novelty and the sense of recognition" (TL 235). "The criterion” is
"novelty"
"for the sake of the disinterested perception of quality” (TL 242; cf. TL
25). "It is the essence of the aesthetic norm to be broken” (TL 242) (cf. Mukarovsky, 1964 [1932], 1970 [1936]). Hence, “when we return again and again
to a work,” we find “new levels of meaning, new patterns of association”
(TL 242f). Yet here is another plausible impediment to evaluation: the
recognition of an innovative work requires critics to perpetually call in
question their own current values that are allegedly guiding their judgments at
the same time (Ch. 3). As we might expect, criteria from outside the literary
work are not accredited for evaluation. “Psychology,” “sociology,” and
"philosophy” can have “artistic value" only if they "enhance
coherence and complexity” (TL 93, 109, 123). “Philosophical,”
"psychological, or social truth as such has no artistic value” (TL 123).
After all, “mediocre, average works” “may seem better to a modern
sociologist" (TL 95). Moreover, "no biographical evidence can change
or influence critical evaluation” (TL 80). In sum, "applying some
extra-literary standards" is apparently as bad as “resigning ourselves to
the meaningless flux of changing" "values” (TL 257).
In addition to value, Wellek and Warren uphold the correctness of
possible readings for literary works. Predictably, they seek their standards
inside the text (or "poem,” as they like to say). “We can distinguish
between right and wrong readings of a poem, or between a recognition or a
distortion of the norms implicit n a work of art by acts of comparison, by a
study of different false or incomplete realizations or interpretations” (TL
154). When reading a poem aloud, “a reciter
may or may not recite correctly,”
and the “selection of components implicit in the text” “may be either right or
wrong," the “wrong readings" being “distortions of the true meaning” (TL 169,
145). “The normative character of the genuine poem" is due to “the simple fact
that it might be experienced correctly or incorrectly" (TL 150).
Yet Wellek and Warren also imply that the right reading is difficult to
attain. Even “the author,” “when he re-reads” the text, "is liable
to errors and misinterpretations" (TL 148). “Intelligent critics” may
perpetrate single “misreadings” or overall “misconceptions of the artistic
process” (TL 239, 259). The situation worsens when we admit the general
public. "The sum of all past and possible experiences of the poem"
"leaves us with an infinity of irrelevant individual experiences, had and
false readings and perversions” (TL 150). If “the genuine poem is the
experience common to all experiences,” this “common denominator"
"must be the lowest," “the most shallow, superficial, and trivial
experience” -- the supposition being that “most men stay at a sub-literary
level" (TL 150, 200). At times, correctness seems quite out of reach: “in
every individual experience only a small part can be considered as adequate to
the true poem" (TL 150).
Thus, Wellek and Warren define “the real poem" as “a structure
of norms," which “together make up the genuine work of art,” and yet
stipulate that an individual reader can "realize" them “only
partially” (TL 150f). 15 [15. The cited analogy to "langue” and
“parole" seems appropriate here. But the source of those terms, namely
Saussure's (1916) theory of language (TL 294), would not have placed any text on
the side of “langue.” See Beaugrande (1987, in preparation) for discussion.]
This outlook is hard to reconcile with a strong stand on correctness and
evaluation. Their evident mistrust of “social and collective experience"
forces the two critics to situate the “norms” in the text and bracket the
problem of how to decide which actualisation to prefer when these “implicit
norms" get “extracted from every individual experience of a work of
art" (TL 150). On occasion, suggestions are made that it's wrong to insist
on one particular reading, as when “some readers" of Frost are castigated
for “giving to his plurisigns a fixity and rigidity alien to the nature of
poetic statement" (TL 190).
The conception I advocated (Chs. I and 2) -- that there is no “right”
meaning, but an experience of feeling a meaning to be more or less right, and a
performance of asserting this -- was not recognized as an issue to be studied
empirically, and still isn't by most critics. Wellek and Warren content
themselves with the thesis that the work has a "dynamic"
“structure” which both retains substantial identity" “throughout the
ages" and “changes throughout the process of history” (TL 155). Yet
this “perspectivism,” they hasten to add, “does not mean an anarchy of
values, a glorification of individual caprice, but a process of getting to know
the object from different points of view which may be defined and criticized in
their turn” (TL 156). Moreover, “all different points of view are by no
means equally right”; “it will always be possible to determine which point
of view grasps the subject most thoroughly and deeply."
The traditional recourse for establishing the “right" reading by
appealing to the author's intended meaning is handled here with circumspection.
“The view that the genuine poem is to be found in the intentions of the author
is widespread"; “though it is not always explicitly stated," “it
justifies much historical research” as well as “many" “specific
interpretations” (TL 148) (cf. Walzel, 1920; Coomaraswamy, 1944; Walcutt,
1946; Hirsch VAL, discussed in Ch. 7). “Historical reconstruction has led to
great stress on the intention of the author" -- under the assumption that
“if we can ascertain this intention” and “see" that it was
“fulfilled,” “we can also dispose of the problem of criticism" (TL
41).
Given their zeal to focus on the literary work itself, Wellek and Warren
are hardly well-disposed toward this notion. “The whole idea that the
“intention” of the author is the proper subject of literary history seems”
“quite mistaken"; “the meaning of the work of art is not exhausted by,
or even equivalent to, its intention” (TL 42). "As a system of values, it
leads an independent life.” “The intentions and theories of artists”
“say little or nothing about the concrete results of an artist's activity: his
work and its specific content and form" (TL 128). “The artist does not
conceive in general mental terms but in concrete material: and the concrete
medium has its own history,” "tradition,” and “powerful determining
character which shapes and modifies” “expression” (TL 129). By the same
token, the "stratum" of "metaphysical quality" should be the
“world view which emerges from the work, not the view stated didactically by
the author within or without the work" (TL 2450).
Besides, "for most works of art we have no evidence to reconstruct
the intention of the author except the finished work" (TL 148). And even
the “contemporary evidence” of “an explicit profession of intentions"
from the author “need not be binding on a modern observer.” It “may be
merely a pronouncement of plans and ideals, while the performance may be either
far below or far aside the mark." “Divergence between conscious intention
and actual performance is a common phenomenon” (TL 149). Therefore,
"intentions” of the author are always rationalizations" "to be
criticized in light of the finished work." The author's actual experience,
conscious and unconscious, during the time of creation” is “a completely
inaccessible and purely hypothetical" entity “we have no means of
reconstructing or even of exploring" (TL 149). “If we could have
interviewed Shakespeare” about "his intentions in writing Hamlet,"
we would “still quite rightly insist on finding meanings (and not merely
inventing them) which were probably far from clearly formulated in Shakespeare's
conscious mind” (TL 148). On occasion, “artists may be strongly
influenced” “by contemporary critical formulae" that are nonetheless
“quite inadequate to characterize their actual artistic achievement” (TL
148). “Zola," for instance, subscribed to a "scientific
theory," but produced “melodramatic and symbolic novels."
"Sometimes a psychological theory, held either consciously or dimly by the
author, seems to fit a figure or situation," but can “do so only
incompletely and intermittently" (TL 920. The “Elizabethan psychology”
of the four humors or the like cannot explain such characters as Hamlet or
Jaques to the degree that they are “more than types" (TL 92).
Literary biography" often uses “the works themselves" as
evidence" about " authors (TL 76). This "assumption" is also
“quite mistaken." “One cannot, from fictional statements, especially
those made in plays, draw any valid inference as to the biography of a
writer.” "Authors cannot be assigned the ideas, feelings, virtues, views,
and vices of their heroes" (TL 77). “The relation between the private
life and the work" is not simply one of “cause and effect." An
author may, of course, choose to “display his personality," and “draw a
self-portrait"; but even here, the distinction" remains "between
a personal statement of an autobiographical nature and the use of very same
motif in a work of art" (TL 77f). “A work of art forms a unity" with
a quite different relation to reality than a book of memoirs, a diary, or a
letter" (TL 78). As a matter of “simple psychological facts," “a
work of art may rather embody the “dream” of an author than his actual life,
or it may be the “mask,” the “anti-self behind which his real person is
hiding," or “a picture of the life from which the author wants to
escape." We must “distinguish sharply between the empirical person” and
the "personal"“ quality of " the work"; what we call
"Virgilian” or “Shakespearean'" is certainly not based on
“biographical evidence" (TL 79). Such considerations are presumably a
motive why, as noted above, “biographical evidence” is disbarred from
"critical evaluation” (TL 80).
Even as a form of literary history, biography should be treated with
restraint. “The biographical approach actually obscures the proper
comprehension of the literary process" when "it breaks up the order of
literary tradition to substitute the life-cycle of an individual” (TL 78). The
approach may also cloud “the internal development of literature" in terms
of what Henry Wells (1940) calls "literary genetics”: “books imitate,
parody, transform other books, not merely those which they follow in strict
chronological succession" (TL 235). Still, biography might be helpful for
determining whether a given “parallel" is due to direct influence or to
"a common source" for the two works (TL 258). Thus, biography might
shed light on "originality," "a fundamental problem of literary
history," though it should look for the “intricate pattern" rather
than the “isolated “motif or word." A related application might be
“the study of the genesis of the works: the early stages,” “drafts,
rejections, exclusions, and cuts," though this task too is not, finally,
necessary to an understanding of the finished work” (TL 90f).
Another way to study authors could be derived from sociology. “Since
every writer is a member of society, he can be studied as a social being"
(TL 96). We might explore “the social provenance and status of the
writer," and his “social ideology" (TL 95f). Yet our two critics
assign “the social origins of a writer" “only a minor part” in “his
social status, allegiance, and ideology” (TL 97). We might prefer to inquire
how “the writer” “has pronounced on questions of social and political
importance.” But here too, we are admonished that “pronouncements,
decisions, and activities should never be confused with the actual social
implications of a writer's works." Or, we might examine “the economic
basis of literary production"; “much evidence has been accumulated”
here, but “well-substantiated conclusions have rarely been drawn” (TL 95-,
101). Writers are not “merely dependent" on "patron or public";
they “may succeed in creating their own special public” (TL 1010. “The
writer is not only influenced by society," but also "influences
it" (TL 102).
Wellek and Warren grant that “literature is a social institution, using
as its medium language, a social creation" (TL 94). “Literature occurs
only in a social context, as part of a culture, in a milieu" (TL 105).
Also, “aesthetic institutions are social institutions” (TL 94) (cf. Tomars,
1941).16 [16. Even “traditional literary devices" like
“symbolism and metre" are pointedly declared “social in their very
nature” (TL 94), though such a view has hardly affected literary studies.
Compare Plekhanov (1936) on symbolism.] However, the stipulation is upheld that
"the most immediate setting of a work" is “its linguistic and
literary tradition"; only far less directly can literature be connected
with concrete economic, political, and social situations." At most,
"the social situation" seems to determine the possibility of the
realization of certain aesthetic values, but not the values themselves” (TL
106).
The concern here is again how to “isolate the strictly literary
factor" (TL 108) and how to deal with the general divergence between
literary versus sociological methodology. “The “sociology of
knowledge"“ as developed by Weber and Mannheim for example,17 [17.
Mannheim's approach is cited with empathy by Bleich (SC 250 and Jauss (TAR 40),
but with disapproval by Hirsch (AIM 147) and Jameson (PU 236, 249)],
though it can help “draw attention to the presuppositions and
implications of a given ideological position” and “to the hidden assumptions
and biases of the investigator,” is mistrusted because of the “sceptical
conclusions” arising from its “excessive historicism" and because of
its “inability to connect “content” with “form" (TL 108). So it
cannot "provide a rational foundation for aesthetics and hence criticism
and evaluation."
“The most common approach to the relations of literature and
society" is to
"study” "works" as "assumed pictures of
social reality” (TL 102). Yet "though some kind of dependence of literary
ideologies and themes on social circumstances seems obvious, the social origins
of forms and styles, genres and actual literary norms have rarely been
established" (TL 109). And “only if the social determination of forms
could be shown conclusively could the question be raised whether social
attitudes" can “enter a work of art as effective parts of its artistic
value." Occasionally, "social truth" might
"corroborate" "artistic values.” But "there is great
literature which has little or no social relevance"; "social
literature is only one kind” and “is not central in the theory of literature
unless one holds the view that literature is primarily an “imitation” of
life" -- a view which (as we saw) is energetically rebutted: “art not
merely reproduces life but shapes it” (TL 102). We must "know the
artistic method of the artist studied," for instance, whether it is
“realistic" or “romantic" (TL 104).
Finally, "the sociology of the writer" might be pursued in
terms of "the profession and institutions of literature” (TL 9 5). The
most conspicuous contributor would be “Marxist criticism," which at its
best,” “exposes implied, or latent, social implications of a writer's
work" (TL 107).18 [18. Plekhanov's (1936) view of
"art for art's sake” as a depair with social change is cited here (TL
101), though without the emphatic endorsement appended by Jameson (MF 386).
Another commonality is the idea of combining Marx and Freud (TL 108f), to which
Jameson devotes a whole volume (PU).] Not surprisingly, though, the overall
estimation of such research is unfavourable. “Marxism never answers the
question of the degree of dependence of literature on society" (TL 109).
“Marxists” "attempt far too crude short cuts from economy to literature
and often “fail to deal concretely with either the ascertainable social
content” of a writer's works, “his professed opinions on political
questions," or “his social status as a writer” (TL 106). “The
“vulgar Marxist"“ perpetrates the "curious contradiction" of
a “determinism which assumes that
“consciousness” must follow “existence,” that a bourgeois cannot help
being one," and an "ethical judgment which condemns him for these very
opinions” (TL 107).
Marx himself is called in to testify that "certain periods of
highest development of art stand in no direct, relationship with the general
development of society, nor with the material basis and the skeleton structure
of its organization” (TL 107). Marx "understood that the modern division
of labour leads to a definite contradiction between the three factors
(“moments” in his Hegelian terminology) of the social process –
“productive forces,” “social relations,” and “consciousness. "“
“He expected” in a "Utopian" “manner" that "in the
future classless society, these divisions of labour would again disappear"
and “the artist" would be "integrated into" a
"society" with “communal art” (TL 107, 100). In consequence,
Wellek and Warren suspect "Marxist critics" of being “not only
students of literature and society, but prophets of the future, monitors,
propagandists” (TL 95). Some of this hostility may be aroused by the Marxist
tendencies to be essentially relativistic," to repudiate
"humanism" and “the universality of art," and to apply
"non-literary" “criteria" (TL 107, 95).
If Wellek and Warren are sceptical about sociology, they are even more
reserved about applying psychology to literatures.19 [19. In a
letter to me, Wellek said: “much in the psychology chapter could not have been
written by me”. Spitzer (1958: 371) argues that "psychological stylistics
applies only to writers" "of the eighteenth and later centuries,"
who cultivated "an individual manner of writing" (TL 183). ] As
literary scholars, they typically apply the term “psychology" to Freudian
and Jungian psychoanalysis, though behavioural psychology is mentioned in
passing (TL 154, 178).20 [20. The “behaviorists” are
decried for “defining as ‘mystical’ or ‘metaphysical’ anything which
does not conform to a very limited conception of empirical reality”; and for
holding “a bad theory of abstraction” plus an “absurd theory" of
“reading” being done by "the vocal cords” (TL 153f, 144). Yet the
view that “reading" does not “break" “printed words” “into
sequences of phonemes” (TL 154) is not shared by a number of recent
psychologists (cf. Beaugrande 1984a: 224 for summary and references).] Four
possible objects of “psychological study” are envisioned: "the writer
as type and as individual,” “the creative process," "the
psychological types and laws present within works,” and "the effects of
literature upon its readers” (TL 81). Only the “types and laws" are
claimed to “belong, in the strictest sense, to literary study." The
reader gets relegated to a later chapter on "literature and society,” as
if real readers should enter the picture only as a group or mass, and not, as in
the work of Holland, Bleich, or Paris, as individual personalities.
Studies of the "writer” and the “creative process" may be
"engaging pedagogical approaches," but must not encourage "any
attempt to evaluate literary works in terms of their origins." This
formulation reveals the root of Wellek and Warren's mistrust: psychology might
relativize or undermine the passing of value judgments. Reservations are voiced
against critics like Arnold and Saintsbury, "who elaborately confounded
psychological problems with problems of literary evaluation” (TL 178).
Following a "shift of interest to the individual taste of the reader,"
"most scholars" evinced an “astonishing helplessness” about
"evaluating a work of art" (TL 139).
The author's creative personality is a complex issue. The Freudian
outlook is handled with caution, because it projects a gloomy portrait indeed --
a descendent of the ancient myth that "the poet" is "productively
mad" (TL 205). Freud thought of the author as an obdurate neurotic, who, by
his creative work, kept himself from a crack-up but also from any real
cure" (TL 82). "The artist" “turns from reality because he
cannot come to terms with the demand for the renunciation of instinctual
satisfaction," and “in fantasy-life allows full play to his erotic and
ambitious wishes."“ "He moulds his fantasies into a new kind of
reality" -- a process likened (as by Fiedler and Frye) to the composition
of a “dream”21 [21. Wellek and Warren however “question
whether a poet has ever been so uncritical of his images" as the
“dream” process is (TL 207) (cf. Rosenberg, 1931). Nietzsche's “most
influential of modem polarities” “between Apollo and Dionysus" is made
parallel to that between “dream” and “ecstatic inebriation," whereas
Frye puts “dreams" on the “Dionysiac” side (TL 85; AC 214). For
Fiedier, a “dreamlike style” may excuse a book's being “maddeningly
disorganized" (LD 155, 157).] -- but
“without creating real alterations in the outer world."“ Wellek and
Warren are uneasy about considering "the poet" a "day-dreamer who
is socially validated": “instead of altering his character, be
perpetuates and publishes his fantasies." Unlike “the day-dreamer,"
the writer “is engaged in an act of externalization and of adjustment to
society." Besides, writers “have not wanted to be “cured” or
“adjusted" in order to stop writing or to accept a “philistine,"
“bourgeois" “social environment" (TL 83).
No doubt the view of authors as neurotic is part of a commonplace
reaction to people questioning established reality, or proposing alternatives
(cf. Ch. 2, 6). But to explain literature away in this fashion is to deflect its
major purpose of enhancing everyday awareness. Moreover, we need to contemplate
not just the actual personalities of authors, but the "persona” or image
they project. One author might cultivate the image of the
"'possessed," “obsessive, prophetic poet," driven by an
"obsessively held vision of life,”22 [22. In Poe's
case, obsessive themes” are said to be “provided" by “the
unconscious" and “literarily developed" by “the conscious"
(TL 88). Compare the description of writing later in this chapter.], whereas
another would try to appear a "trained, skilled, responsible
craftsman," exerting “conscious precise care for the presentation of that
vision” (TL 84f). Or, “in the work of a subjective poet, we have a manifest
personality far more coherent and all-pervasive than that of persons as we see
them in everyday situations" (TL 24). Yet "there are obvious reasons
why self-conscious artists speak as though their art were impersonal" (TL
88).
As for writing itself, "any modern treatment of the creative process
will chiefly concern the relative parts played by the unconscious and the
conscious mind” (TL 88). "The experience of the author" includes not
just “conscious experience” and “intentions,” but “the total conscious
and unconscious experience during the prolonged time of creation” (TL 148).
"The poet” "speaks" "out of” an "unconscious"
that is both "sub- and super-rational” (TL 81). “The Jungian thesis
that beneath the individual unconscious -- the blocked-off residue of our
past" -- lies the “collective unconscious," favored the notion that
the author "retains an archaic trait of the race" and
"recapitulates” or “preserves” a "strata of the race
history" (TL 830) (cf. Jaensch, 1930; Eliot, 1933; Chase, 1945).
One such phenomenon might be “synaesthesial",
the “linking" of “perception out of two or more senses,” as a
"survival from an earlier comparatively undifferentiated sensorium” (TL
83). Another might be a "special integration of perceptual and
conceptual," allowing the “unconscious" to make
a "central contribution" of “visual” and “auditory"
“imagery" (TL 83, 208, 188). However,
it would be "mistaken" to suppose that "the poet must have
literally perceived whatever be can imagine”; or that the “imagery"
constitutes "a hieroglyphic report” on his or her "psychic health”
(TL 207ff).
Composition is roughly described as "the associative linkage of word
with word,” plus “the association of the objects to which our mental
“ideas” refer," “the chief categories” being "contiguity in
time and place, and similarity or dissimilarity” (TL 89; cf. Ch. 1).23
[23. Saussure (1916) has a similar terminology. We may also recall Jakobson's
division between metonymy and metaphor, which may however violate Wellek and
Warren's warning that "the psychological question should not be confused
with the analysis of the poet's metaphorical devices" ('L 195, 27).] But we
get few operational details about the creative process" in its "entire
sequence from the subconscious origins of a literary work to those last
revisions which, with some writers, are the most genuinely creative part of the
whole" (TL 85). The inclination to see the “subconscious” or
"unconscious” at work during "origins" or “inspiration” (TL
85) may be fostered by our lack of theories and data about that phase of
mentation. The “authors" themselves prefer to “discuss conscious and
technical procedures,
for which they may claim
credit” (TL ss). Yet even a full and accurate account of an author's thoughts
might not resolve the problem of a possible “distinction between the mental
structure of a poet and the composition of a poem, between impression and
expression” (TL 86).
A different application of Psychology would be to scrutinize the
personalities of literary characters (cf. Ch. 12). We might examine the
“connection between characterization (literary method) and characterology
(theories of character, personality types)” beyond global contrasts like
“flat” versus "round” or
“sentimentaI clichés like "blonde” home-maker" versus
“passionate, mysterious brunette” (TL 33, 219).24 [24. 11 “Flat”
and “round” are of course Forster's (1927) terms for empty and full
character types. This stereotyping of women by hair colour is a recurrent theme
in Fiedler's analysis of the “American novel,” whose authors used such types
to “skirt the problem of portraying women” (LD 200f, 314). One cognitive
value in the drama and novels" would be to reveal “human nature," as
Horney believed about the works of "Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and
Baizac" (TL 33). However, the notion that an author's characters are all
his or heir “potential selves” (TL 90) needs clarification. If we learn that
the “four brothers Karamazov are all aspects of Dostoyevsky (TL 90), are we to
read his novel as autobiography, or his life as novel, or both? Are we to assume
a trade-off, such as: "the more numerous and separate his characters, the,
less definite his own “personality"? Lest "psychologists”
"use the novel only for its generalized typical value,” Wellek and Warren
warn that “the writer must be doing far more than putting down a case
history": "he must be either dealing with an archetypal pattern”, or
with a “neurotic personality pattern widespread in our time” (TL 33, 82).
At the reader's end, the main focus ought to fall on the "concretisations
of a given work of art” (TL 155)25 [25. A citation from
Jauss may be helpful: “by concretization, Vodicka means the picture of the
work in the consciousness of those “for whom the work is an aesthetic
object" (TAR 73). Iser uses the same term in a comparably phenomenological
sense (p. 140). ] We might “reconstruct" these "from the reports of
critics and readers about their experiences and judgments.” Critics are
presumably "the right kind of reader"“ that I.A. Richards (1924:
225ff) considered the basis for a “psychological theory" (cf. TL 147),
provided we had a model for analysing the origins and effects of such
“reports.”26 [26. For Wellek and Warren, Richards”
"extreme psychological theory” is “in flat contradiction to his
excellent critical practice” (TL 147). For Bleich, the subjective factors that
Richards acknowledged" are the main contribution to literary hermeneutics
“ one that gets “omitted from conscious consideration in his practice” (SC
34). Wellek tells me that a
refutation of Richards appears in the fifth volume of his History of Modern
Criticism.]
Yet Wellek and Warren raise copious and emphatic objections against any
such model. They avow that "the psychology of the reader" “will
always remain outside the object of literary study -- the concrete work of art
-- and is unable to deal with the question of the structure and value of the
work” (TL 147). They exhort us not to “put the essence of the poem into a
momentary experience which even the right kind of reader could not repeat
unchanged” (TL 147). Such an approach must “fall short of the full meaning
of a poem” and “add inevitable personal elements," something
instantaneous and extraneous,” "something purely idiosyncratic and purely
individual" (TL 1460. The reader's ”mood," “education,"
“personality," and “religion,” along with “philosophical" and
"technical preoccupations, thereby mix with the work. Grave perils evoked
here: not merely "the absurd conclusion that a poem is nonexistent unless
experienced and recreated in every experience”; 27 [27. Precisely this
“xonclusion" is Bleich's starting point: "no work even exists unless
someone is reading it” (SC 109). A similar thesis, quoted in later chapters,
is voiced by Hirsch (VAL 14), lser (AR 34), and Bloom (BF 8f)] and the inability
to "correct" an "interpretation" or to "explain why one
experience of the poem should be better"; but also "complete
scepticism and anarchy,” plus “the definite end of all teaching of
literature which aims at enhancing the understanding and appreciation of a
text" (TL 146).
The motive for such vehemence must be the intense commitment to values,
as I have noted, joined with the thesis that a “complete confusion of values
is the result of every psychological theory" (TL 147). The emotional aspect
within individual reactions of a reader" especially disparaged as
unreliable: "describing is some emotional similarity of our reactions"
will never" be capable of “verification" and will never lead “to a
cooperative advance in our knowledge" (TL 128). “Merely emotional
“appreciation"“ is equated with "complete subjectivity” (TL 18).
Conventional critics are chided for having "recourse to an emotive language
describing the effects of a work of art on a reader in terms incapable of real
correlation with the work itself” (TL 253). “Tears," “laughs,” and
a "thrill down our spine" are picked as illustrations.
The neglect of cognition in the psychology of that time no doubt
encouraged the suspicion that “every psychological theory” “must be
unrelated either to the structure or the quality" of a text (TL 147). The
two critics grant as “true, of course, that the poem can be known only through
individual experiences" (TL 146). But they argue that “we
recognize a structure of norms within reality and do not simply invent verbal
constructs" (TL 154). "The objection that we can have access to norms
only through individual acts of cognition” “can be refuted with Kantian
arguments." We are
"liable to misunderstanding" “these norms," and cannot profess
to “assume a superhuman role of criticizing our comprehension from
outside," or to “grasp the perfect whole of the system." But we can
still criticize a part of our knowledge in the light of the higher standard set
by another part" (an idea expanded by Hirsch).
As we have seen, Wellek and Warren's “theory of literature” is a
transitional vision documenting the early stages of that domain, and is thus
nicely suited to start off our survey. They were understandably anxious to keep
theory close to its object, the literary work. This centre of gravity supported
their organization of concepts, but minimized the importance of certain issues
that have since corn to the fore. Similarly, a powerful interest in evaluation
and correctness fostered deep mistrust of theories devoted to the mental
activities of people who produce and receive literary texts. When contemplating
methods they do not favour Wellek and Warren are moved to premonitions of
“danger" and “anarchy" (LT 42f, 129, 142, 146f, 156, 182, 193,
212).
Nonetheless, the cautionary or conservative aspects of the book by no
means signal its main achievement. It covered a breathtaking range of past work
an offered a substantive list of future tasks that “have scarcely begun to be
studied” (TL 109; cf. TL 102, 122, 129, 161, 260). Some of these seem
conventionally literary endeavours, though rather ambitious, such as to produce
“histories" of “English poetic diction,” “genres,"
"national literature” (not using "simply geographical or linguistic
categories"), and indeed of whole "groups of literatures (TL 260f, 53,
268). The centrality and specialness of literature would be best preserved if
scholars could "trace the history of literature as an art, in comparative
isolation from its social history, the biographies of authors, or the
appreciation of individual works” (TL 254). Other tasks extend far beyond
literary studies, such as to probe "the wide diversity of standard
pronunciations” and “stratified speech" in "different ages and
places"; or to “trace the social status of the intelligentsia,"
“the prestige of the writer in each society," and “the degree of
dependence of literature on society" (TL 161, 177, 98, 109). Still more
imposing are these unanswered questions: "how ideas actually enter into
literature"; “how” “literature affects its audience";
"how" "all the arts in a given time or setting expand or narrow
their fields over the objects of “nature"'; "how norms of art are
tied to specific social classes"; or “how aesthetic values change with
social revolutions" (TL 122, 102, 129).
“After all," Wellek and Warren conclude, "we are only beginning to learn how to analyze a work of art in its integrity; we are still very clumsy in our methods, and their basis in theory is constantly shifting" (TL 268). Now, several decades later, none but a hardy soul would declare we have left all this far behind us. But as I hope to demonstrate, we have attained a steadily more refined and comprehensive awareness of the scope and necessity of “theory of literature."
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