Abstract
This chapter examines how, before writing, the themes that literature would later take up were matters of oral tradition and their rhapsodic mediation. Both presuppose the nature of language. Writing presupposes speech as its basis. It moves from narration of actual events into fiction and into fantasy and also into technical treatment of various regions of experience. Literature is distinguished by style, so that even the writing of history can be literary. Among the various genres of literature, poetry draws upon connotations and sound patterning. The novel is the latest to emerge and is able to contain all the other forms within its ambit. From a comparison of various works there emerges criticism and the endurance of canonical texts as coping stones. In a focus upon particular works, Dostoevski’s The Brothers Karamazov is presented as an example of the novel and Blake’s “Eternity” as an example of poetry.
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Notes
- 1.
Sartre , What Is Literature ?, B. Frechtman, trans. (New York: Washington Square Press, 1966), 144. (Henceforth WL.)
- 2.
I want to thanks several colleagues in Literature whose comments helped develop this chapter: Brett Bourbon, Scott Crider, Wendy Faris, Eileen Gregory, Gregory Roper and Bernadette Waterman-Ward.
- 3.
Categories, J. Ackrill trans. The Complete Works of Aristotle, J. Barnes ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 2a14–4b19.
- 4.
Sartre, WL, 15. He similarly says that “each painting, each book is a recovery of the totality of Being.” WL, 37.
- 5.
These basic features of speech are systematically disregarded in the scientific community and its popularizers who think that causal relations in the brain are identical with meaning relations in the field of awareness and that first- and second-person accounts can be reduced to third-person accounts. They forget that they are free to choose to pursue the truth in concert with others. See John Searle , The Rediscovery of Mind (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 117.
- 6.
Terry Eagleton , Literary Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996 (henceforth LT).
- 7.
See Merleau-Ponty and the distinction between langue and parole. Signs, R. McCleary trans. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 194), 84–97.
- 8.
Wendy Faris called my attention to the function of contact zones.
- 9.
See Chapter I.
- 10.
See Paul Ricoeur , The Rule of Metaphor , R. Czerny, K. McLaughlin, J. Costello, trans. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977) (henceforth RM).
- 11.
See Ferdinand De Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, R. Harris trans. (Chicago: Open Court, 1972). 64–7.
- 12.
Phaedrus, 1997. A. Nehemas and P. Woodruff trans. Plato : Complete Works. J. Cooper ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 357D ff.
- 13.
This is all that Plato’s notorious “Forms” mean: linguistically articulated meaning as universals as against the particulars that instantiate them. In his Parmenides , Plato has the Eleatic Stranger say: “No forms, no language .” M. Gill and P. Ryan trans. Plato: Complete Works. J. Cooper ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 135C.
- 14.
See Paul Ricoeur , “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text,” Social Research, vol. 38, no. 3 (Autumn, 1971), 529–62.
- 15.
Eagleton follows the Wittgensteinian line, claiming that there is no single essence to literature but that it has a function , a role in a particular context, LT 8.
- 16.
See Hayden White on history as narrative. The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature , and Theory, 1957–2007, R. Duran ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).
- 17.
Heidegger , Introduction to Metaphysics , R. Mannheim trans. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 29. For a comprehensive treatment of the overall conceptual system and the place of aesthetics in it for Heidegger and for each of the major thinkers treated here, see my Placing Aesthetics: Reflections on the Philosophic Tradition (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1999).
- 18.
Poetics, I. Bywater trans. In Complete Works of Aristotle, J. Barnes ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1458a, 32.
- 19.
See Terry Eagleton , LT, who presents their position but restricts its application to poetry.
- 20.
I owe this example to Hubert Dreyfus.
- 21.
Art as Experience , (New York: Capricorn, 1934), 20 (henceforth AE).
- 22.
Poetics, 1459a. When it comes to considering the eidetics of literature , it’s surprising how many times Aristotle keeps popping up.
- 23.
AE.
- 24.
Sophist, N. White trans. Plato : Complete Works, J. Cooper ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 218–21c.
- 25.
Poetics, 1459b, 30.
- 26.
Roman Ingarden . On the Literary Work of Art, G. Grabowicz trans. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 291.
- 27.
Poetics, 1451a, 20ff; 1459a, 20.
- 28.
AE, 150. This is a formal consideration and refers to the “music” of a work of art . Obviously, in most forms of art there is a mimetic element .
- 29.
Poetics, 1450a, 37. See Paul Ricoeur on muthos as emplotment , Time and Narrative, K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), vol. 1, 31–51.
- 30.
Poetics, 1451b.
- 31.
Sartre, WL, 144.
- 32.
J.R.R. Tolkien , 4-Book Boxed Set: The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King (Del Ray: Mti, 2012).
- 33.
See Martha Nussbaum , The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 388–91.
- 34.
Poetics 1447b 11.
- 35.
J. Hillis Miller makes a similar claim about literature : “For me the opening sentences of literary works… are the ‘Open Sesame’ unlocking the door to that particular work’s fictive realm.” On Literature (London: Routledge, 2002), 24.
- 36.
Jacob Klein , Plato’s Trilogy: Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Statesman (University of Chicago Press, 1977), 176.
- 37.
See my “Image , Structure, and Content: On a Passage in Plato’s Republic,” The Review of Metaphysics, vol. XL (March 1987), 495–514.
- 38.
As Dewey noted, “The poetic (intension) and the prosaic (extension) are two poles of a continuum.” AE, 241.
- 39.
Poetics, 4, 1448b, 24.
- 40.
Poetics, 6, 1449b, 24.
- 41.
See note 30.
- 42.
Poetics, 6, 1450a, 37.
- 43.
“Epic and Novel ,” Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin. The Dialogical Imagination , M. Holquist ed., C. Emerson and M. Holquist, trans. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 3 (henceforth DI).
- 44.
DI, 13, 18.
- 45.
Bakhtin treats Cervantes throughout DI but especially in “Discourse in the Novel ,” 310, 324, and 384. Kundera makes the same claim. Milan Kundera , The Art of the Novel, L. Asher, trans. (New York: Grove Press, 2000), 4–8 (henceforth AN). He says further, “I am attached to nothing but the depreciated legacy of Cervantes,” 20.
- 46.
Epic , DI, 25, 39.
- 47.
“Discourse in the Novel ,” DI, 262–3.
- 48.
Ibid., 273.
- 49.
AN, 64.
- 50.
AE, 162. Heidegger makes a similar distinction in “the Origin of the Work of Art,” Poetry, Language , and Thought, A. Hofstadter trans. (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 17–87.. See my “Aesthetics: The Complementarity of, and Differences Between Heidegger and Dewey ,” John Dewey, D. Christiansen and J. McDermott eds, Special Issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (2013). vol. 87, no. 2. (Spring, 2013), 245–66.
- 51.
Eagleton claims that literary works “are ‘re-written,’ if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them.” LT, 11.
- 52.
Sculpting in Time, K. Blair trans. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 177.
- 53.
Poetics, 1449b, 25f.
- 54.
I owe the emphasis upon the aura of the reader and several other helpful remarks to Wendy Faris.
- 55.
Sartre, WL, 144.
- 56.
For the transition from Classicism to Romanticism, see Ernst Cassirer , The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, F. Koelln and J. Pettegrove trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 275–360.
- 57.
Eagleton, LT, 10, 62–4.
- 58.
I also tell them that there is no such thing as reading Hegel , only continual re-reading. To aid the re-reading of Hegel, I have developed a text, Hegel’s Introduction to the System (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014).
- 59.
Yuri Lotman , The Analysis of the Poetic Text, 1972, cited in Eagleton, LT, 89.
- 60.
The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).
- 61.
LT, 69.
- 62.
Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id , J. Reviere trans. (New York: Norton, 1960).
- 63.
Malcolm Bowie , Psychoanalysis and the Future of Theory (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994). For Freud’s challenge to philosophy, see Paul Ricoeur , Freud and Philosophy, D. Savage trans. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970).
- 64.
See Paul Ricoeur , “Structure and Hermeneutics ,” K. McLauglin trans. Conflict of Interpretations, D. Ihde ed. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 27–61.
- 65.
Bakhtin, Discourse , DI, 292.
- 66.
Search for a Method, H. Barnes trans. (New York: Vintage Books, 1968).
- 67.
Sartre, WL, 71–2.
- 68.
Jacques Derrida , Of Grammatology, G. Spivak trans. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974) 43, 74–9.
- 69.
Theaetetus, 175a, 173c.
- 70.
Kundera , AN, 66.
- 71.
Alfred North Whitehead , The Concept of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919), 163. See also Paul Ricoeur , “The History of Philosophy and the Unity of Truth,” History and Truth, C. Kelbley trans. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 41–56.
- 72.
Eagleton, LT, 19–32.
- 73.
“Tradition and the Individual Talent,” The Sacred Wood (London: Waking Lion Press, 2011), originally published in 1921.
- 74.
LT, 32–7.
- 75.
LT, 40–3.
- 76.
WL, 84.
- 77.
Where Is Wisdom to Be Found? (New York: Riverton Books, 2004).
- 78.
Such a view finds expression in Aristotle's Ethics where friendship in the practice of theoria was highest; and the larger extension of friendship is life in the polis. Nicomachean Ethics. W. Ross and J. Urmson trans. The Complete Works of Aristotle. J. Barnes ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), X, 1177a 12ff, IX, 1070b 30.
- 79.
Cited as a conclusion to Max Picard’s The World of Silence.
- 80.
Bloom, Wisdom, 1.
- 81.
See my “The Self and the Other: Toward a Reinterpretation of the Transcendentals,” Philosophy Today, vol. X (Spring, 1966), pp. 43–63;“Potentiality, Creativity , and Relationality: Creative Power as a ‘‘New’ Transcendental?,’” The Review of Metaphysics , vol. 59 (December, 2005). See my collection of essays , The Beautiful, the True, and the Good : Studies in the History of Thought (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015).
- 82.
DI, 282.
- 83.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, III, 340–3.
- 84.
Symposium, 1997. A. Nehemas and P. Woodruff trans. Plato : Complete Works, J. Cooper ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 207D.
- 85.
See Paul Ricoeur , Freud and Philosophy D. Savage trans. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 290–3.
- 86.
John Locke , Essay Concerning Human Understanding.(New York: Penguin, 1998) Bk 4, chap. 10.
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Wood, R.E. (2017). On Literature. In: Nature, Artforms, and the World Around Us. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57090-7_8
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