4 / INTRODUCTION TO THEORY AND CRITICISM INTRODUCTION TO THEORY AND CRITICISM / 5

UNIVERSE
WHAT IS LITERATURE?
i
Another major question-"what is literature?"-can be, and is, WORK
answered by associating literature .'withsuch key terms as representation,
expression, knowledge, poetic or rhetorical language, genre, text, or disc,ourse. ARTIST AUDIENCE
In our ordinary understanding, literature represents life; it holds up, as it
were, a mirror to nature and is thus "mimetic." The expressive theory of
literature, which regards literature as stemming from the author's inner artist; didactic theory highlights the tie between work and audience. For-
being, similarly depends on a notion of mirroring, though here literature malist theory focuses on the work itself; as we have just seen, it character-
reflects the inner soul rather than the external world of the writer. The didac- istically deemphasizes connections between the text and the universe, artist,
tic theory, which sees literature as a source of knowledge, insight, wisdom, or audience. Until the early Romantic era, literary theory dealt largely with
and perhaps prophecy, is compatible with both the mimetic and the expres- the poem's relationship to the universe and the audience; in the nineteenth
sive theory: literature can depict external and internal realities while at the century it focused on the artist; and in the twentieth century it turned to the
same time disseminating valuable knowledge andqlarifying The work itself. Most theories of criticism and literature, argues Abrams, juggle
dominant view of literature as both mimetic and didactic, still allve tonay, these four major elements and orientations, tending to privilege one.
arose with the ancient Greeks and was challenged by the Romantics and This classification scheme and its lessons have proven useful, especially
then the moderns. Though the theory of literature-or "poetics," as it is in illustrating basic theoretical orientations and in delineating broad histor-
sometimes called-has been a contested topic throughout history, the debate ical trends. But the famous diagram has limitations, as any theorist will tell
has been especially fierce in modern and contemporary times. . . '. you. Perhaps the most serious is that it stops with modernism: it predates
Modern theorists often insist language ,of literature, unlikt:: that the appearance of such influential postmodern theoretical movements as
of newspapers and science, foregrounds poetic effects (particularly tropes structuralism, poststructuralism, feminism, postcolonial theory, and cultural
and figures) that range frbm alliteration, assonance, metaphor, and parad(),x studies. Abrams maps out a progression from mimesis and didacticism to
to rhythm and rhyme. In this theory of literature or poetics, nei- expressionism to formalism, but recent theory and criticism of literature have
ther depiction of external or intermilrbality nor knQwledge about existence moved on to cultural critique. In the process, theorists have focused in turn
or refined emotion distinguishes literature from ordinary and scientific dis- on the imitation of reality and its lessons, on inner truths and visions, on
course: instead, "literariness" (or "poeticity") renders literature distinctive poetic techniques and their orchestrations, and on sociohistorical and politi-
and special. The theory first emerged during the nineteenth. century when cal representations and their values. In this historical development the "old"
poets such as Edgar Allan Poe and GeJiard Manley Hopkins started exploring, problems recede from view but never disappear; instead, they undergo recon-
sometimes extravagantly, the constituent materials of literature (es.pecially figuration and occupy new conceptual relations.
sound effects), turning away from the notidn of literature as simply a reliable Consider, for instance, the structuralist or semiotic theory of literature
recorder of nature or source of morality. A similar transformation followed that fits all literary texts into genre classifications. According to th'is per-
in tHe visual arts; the postimpressionist painters focused on paint text,ures, spective, a genre is defined by arbitrary sets of conventions, such as those
brush strokes and color intensities rather than seeking photographic ,rea'i- governing the haiku-a poem of seventeen syllables in three lines of five,
th!s. Writers the6rists at the time often felt that to justify by seven, and five syllables, respectively. These conventions distanceJiterary
pointing to its accuracy and realism was to put it in.cOm)1etition. writing from ordinary reality, even when the conventions are calculated to
sciences social sciences, j01.irnalisrri, and photography.!..L..a compehtIon they give the appearance of direct reportage. In seeing literature as genre con-
believed'it could not win. Conversely, by timphasizing the literariness: of sisting of complex sets of codes, the structuralist retains the formalist view
erature, they would accord it a distinctive and elevated aesthetic; ,status' ()ver of literature as a separate mode of discourse that follows its own artistic rules
competing domains and fields, ensuring its survival and dignity in but adds the key sociological concept of convention. Because conventions
times. Such a formalist theory of literature prevailecl in the early are not only literary but also linguistic and cultural, literature and society
mid-twentieth century among Anglo-American New'Critics and Slavic are reconnected through discourse.
formahsts, many of whom are represented in this anthology. ,,' Poststructuralist and deconstructive accounts of literature go one step
A well-known heuristic device conveniently summarizes all the accounts further by problematizing the notion of mirroring, which, as we have seen,
of literature discussed up to this point. Developed by M. H. in The undergirds. expressive, didactic, and mimetic theories of literature. They do
Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953), so through a close and technically complex examination of the workings of
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this study aid pictures the literary "work , at the center of a triangular struc- language-seen as distant and different from reality, for it necessarily con-
ture; the outer three points are occupl.e4 by the "universe," the "artist," and tains distorting rhetorical and genre devices. Language is not a simple
the "audience." Mimetic theory emphasizes the relations between the work transparent medium. Any use of language, no matter how typical or
and the universe; expressive theory foregrounds the link between work and employs some combination of historical conventions and figurative devices,
6 / INTRODUCTION TO THEORY AND CRITICISM INTRODUCTION TO THEORY AND CRITICISM / 7

which compromises its transparency. Moreover, language separates from well-made artistic object corresponds to the notion of reading as careful
"reality" at the very basic level of the sign because, strictly speaking, words explication and evaluation of dense poetic style. Second, when viewed as the
are not things. The four letters b, i, r, d are not an actual feathered creature. spiritual expression of a gifted seer, poetry elic;ts a biographical approach to
In linguistic terminology, neither signifiers (words) nor signifieds (concepts) criticism focused on the poet's inner development. Third, dense historical
are referents (things). Because language consists of "floating signifiers" that symbolic works presuppose a theory of reading as exegesis or decipherment.
are detached from reality, it shritilates or summons things as they are. Lan- Fourth, literature conceived as social text or discourse calls for cultural cri-
guage deals in effects rather than things. The gaps between signifiers, sig- tique.-While We can separate theories of literature from theories ofinterpre-
nifieds, and referents render the truthfulness and reliability of language tation, they often·work handin hand.
undecidable (a technical term from mathematics borrowed by poststructur-
alism). Language is thus, to employ technical deconstructive terms, text or
textuality, meaning acomplex'interweaving of self-referential, undecidable CLASSICAL THEORY AND CRITICISM
relationships. In extreme forms, this challenging theory of literature as .tex-
tuality views language as thoroughly divorced from reality; in more moderate Anthologies covering the history of theory and criticism usually begin with
forms, language maintains a relation to reality, albeit a highly unstable one. the classical theorists,and rightly so, because their influence on its develop-
At stake is literature's ability to reflect reality or impart reliable knowledge- ment has continued up to the present. The most influential classical theorists
and the uncertainty raises doubts about its truth claims and about 'earlier in Western culture are Plato and Aristotle, followed distantly by Horace.
theories of literature. This area of inquiry is commonly'labeled the "crisis of Recently, a renewed interest in rhetoric has brought Gorgias, Quintilian, and
reference" (or "referentiality"). others into the picture-a change that illustrates the mutability of the canon
The dizzying deconstrRctive view of literature as text has been opposed by of theory;'Taken together, the classical theorists represent a wide range of
the widespread recent po'ststructuralist theory of literature as discourse, a term opinions about .literature and its, significance developed over a millennium
associated with the influential work of Michel Foucault. Discourse theorists (from the fifth century B.C.E. to the fifth century C.E.). To sample their
explicitly trace the language of literature to its source in the spoken language groundbreaking work, we will consider some of their opinions on two leading,
of everyday social life. Conceived by its many advocates as anti-'elitist, this often interrelated issues of their time: literary mimesis and didacticism.
materialist theory of discourse-whether it stems from the work of Foucault, On these two issues, Plato' and his student Aristotle' present the best-
Mikhail M. Bakhtin, black aestheticians, New Historicists, cultural material- known views. Both agree that mimesis'(imitation or representation) is a key
ists, queer theorists, psychoanalytic critics, or cultural studies scholars' (all feature of poetry, but they conceive of and evaluate it quite differently. Plato
allotted. space in this anthology and discussed later in the introduction)- has his spokesperson Socrates disapprove of poetry's imitation of ·reality on
insists that language is uttered by embodied subjeCts situated historically in the grounds that poetry cannot depict truth and teach morality and that it is
contentious social spheres that are regulated. by powerful institutions.Signif- irrational-based on inspiration, not knowledge. As an idealist philosopher,
icantly, this theory of the social text---:-of language use as he locates reality in a transcendent world of eternal Forms or Ideas that only
life to earlier views of literature as mimetic, .expressive, and didactic. reason can properly apprehend; this world is distinct from the illusory phe-
Literature, according to these recent discourse theories, re-presents and nomenal world of our senses, which poetry represents. For Plato, ,the mate-
refracts reality. Indeed, language itself constitutes reality; it also produces rial world is at best an imperfect copy of the original transcendent world of
distortions. This is mimesis with· a, difference: literature represents reality; Ideas, and poetry is but a degraded copy of a copy. He concludes
but reality is grounded in convention, riot nature, and'it is subject to illusion. representation. threatens social stability by offering false images and unsuit-
Similarly, discourse theorists affirm that literature expresses the inner life of able role models. In Republic, he has Socrates recommend that it
authors, but life is understood to be a regulated'social phenomenon that be banished from the ideal society, except perhaps that poetry which praises
differs with the time, location, and: group of the author. In place of the the gods and avoids representing them in an unseemly fashion.
solitary poet giving unique expression to truths universal to all humankind, Plato takes this severe position in part because he is reacting against the
we find in recent discourse theories an embattled "scriptor" creatively mixing views of earlier sophists such as Gorgias arid Thrasymachus, whom he rep-
and matching cultural codes derived from .her or his situation,community, resents as less concerned with truth than-with persuasion. They saw language
and tradition. In this account literature retains didactic as well as mimetic as not simply representing reality but in effect producing reality by shap-
and expressive powers. The knowledge it conveys is of the "cultural uncon- ing the beliefs
)
of an audience. As a result; in oratory as well as in poetry,
scious"-that is, of the archive of historical words,.symbols,codes; instincts, what matters most is bringing a particular audience to hold a specific point
wishes, and conflicts characteristic' of a people and its era. To treat discourse of view, not imitating an absolute truth. Some sophists even boasted that
as social text pluralizes the theory of literature, .makirig a single universal or in a debate they could argue any side of an issue' and win. Later rhetori-
totalizing theory of literature, good for alltiinesandplaces; appear reductive. cians such as Quintilian emphasized that the good orator was also a morally
Literatures replace literature. . good man, but truth and honesty apparently mattered little to fifth-century
Theories of . literature and theories of reading. have' affinities with. one Greek sophists, who significantly influenced the formation of Plato's ethical
another. Here are four instances. First, the formalist idea of literature as a position.