What is literary theory?

By Roger Webster
Literature and literary theory
The term literature is frequently used in ways which would suggest that
it is not a problematic concept. We can see differences emerging
regarding this term; such differences are often clearly observable
between academia and popular institutions, but also within academia.
The differences are not only cultural but also historical.
The late XIX century is a good illustration of one of the main ways in
which English (rather than British) academic culture sought to
homogenize and organicize the study of literature. The English
Association sought to develop the study of an English literary culture
in educational institutions. Matthew Arnolds view of culture as the best
that is thought and known in the world was to be implemented
through the medium of literature: the study of the classics and poetry.
Some critics have argued that the study of literature and the cultural
institution of English became substitutes for established religion,
which was showing weakness during that period. Literature offered a
similar kind of experience and it was important that the state instilled
(introduced gradually) appropriate civilized values.
Literature is, and has been, historically in a state of flux (flow). As terms,
literature and literary have complex and plural meanings.
Literary theory or theories offer various ways of thinking about what the
issues might be in attempting any kind of definition for literature. Two
important concepts arise from literary theory:
1- Literature becomes a problematic and heterogeneous area
regarding the ways in which it functions culturally and historically
as a form of writing and knowledge.
2- The activities associated with the study of literature, from reading
to criticism, need to be constantly reassessed.

The discourse of literary theory is a double edged weapon (arma de

doble filo): on the one hand it can explain some of the assumptions or
values implicit in literature and literary criticism. On the other hand, we
should not let the truths which emerge from theoretical texts stand
unchallenged.
Literary criticism and literary theory
Literary criticism has established itself as the main activity associated
with the academic study of literature. It involves the reading,
interpretation of and commentary on a specific text which has been
designated as literature. It is practised by professional critics and by
students of literature and circulated in published form in books and
journals.
There are two conventions which tend to be inherent in the practice of
criticism:
1- Criticism is secondary to literature itself, that is to say that it is
posterior to the literary text.
2- Critical interpretations seem to assume that the literary text is
unquestionably literature: that literature is a natural, self-evident
category.
Literary theory should do two things:
1- It ought to provide us with a range of criteria for identifying
literature and an awareness of these criteria should inform our
critical practice.
2- It should make us aware of the methods and procedures which we
employ in the practice of literary criticism, so that we not only
interrogate the text but also the ways in which we read and
interpret it.
Literature and experience

Our understanding of a text is determined by our experience, both

literary and non-literary.
Experience is subjective, relative, individually and historically variable;
in the case of literature it is generated by language.
Literary tradition
Eliot argued that literature embodies timeless qualities and values which
can be seen as a form of cultural Heritage: The historical sense involves
a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence;
the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own
generation in his bones, but with a Keeling that the literature of his
country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous
order.
Eliot can be seen as representative of what could be called the
metaphysical approach to literature: literature is a repository of absolute
value and truth which does not need to be demonstrated and cannot be
challenged.
Practical criticism was initially a way of reading developed by one of
Eliots followers, Richards. The main critical categories which Richards
advocated sense, tone, feeling, intention seem unscientific.
Leavis advocated a reading method called close reading. Both
methods would pay very close attention to language and textual
structures, but more often their judgements tended to be informed by
ideas and values which lay outside the text and were related to the
generalized areas of experience and tradition.
Eliot, Leavis and others assembled a collection of literary works which
came to fork the cannon, that is a body of works selected and

elevated to canonical status which formed the backbone of literary

culture or tradition.
Literary production and consumption
These terms recognize that literature is not timeless but subject to two
contexts: that in which it is written, produced or created, and that in
which it is circulated, read and consumed.
The production and transmission process is assumed to be from the
author to the reader and the ideas or meanings communicated would
seem to originate in the authors mind, which are then relayed through
the poem, novel or play to the reader. The reader is then able to go back
along this axis to discover the authors intention and re-experience the
authors experience.
The author and authority
The concept of the author has been central to literary criticism. During
the late XIX century, the more you knew about the author, the more you
were likely to understand the literature he/she wrote. Literature was not
seen as separable from the figure who produced it.
Barthes argues that it is language that speaks and not the author; the
text leads. The multiplicity of meanings which make up a text is focused
not on the author, but on the reader: a texts unity lies not in its origin
but in its destination.
A more historical approach to authorship is taken by Michel Foucault: the
figure of the author is linked to the emergence in western culture of
what Foucault calls individualization, that is the central place occupied
by named individuals in the way that forms of knowledge are organized.
The author confers identity and status on various kinds of writing. He
provides a point of recognition.

Author-function: the ways in which an authors name is used to

control the circulation of literature. It is a way of restricting the form of
reading (Foucault).
With the emergence of bourgeoisie society, ownership and property
laws, literary texts became more significant as products and indicators
of individualism.
Foucault affirms that the authors function serves an ideological
purpose. The labelling of works according to authors can be viewed as
an impediment to the free circulation of knowledge in that the works are
already placed in a particular system of knowledge. According to
Foucault this is this way in order because of a predetermined and
ideological process which functions to maintain knowledge and
power in dominant sections of society.
Foucault also affirms that the convention of the author does not
precede a literary text, but rather follows it: the idea we have of authors
arise after their works have been in public circulation.
Intention and meaning
The meaning of a work of art is not exhausted by its intention. As a
system of values it leads an independent life.
Meaning is located in the work rather than in the authors mind (Barthes
death of the author).
There is still the sense of an essential meaning to be discovered. The
text becomes reified, an object and end in itself rather than a
transparent window on to the author.
Affective fallacy: Subjective, impressionistic responses to a text were not
adequate and ran the risk of being distortions. The context for the
meaning is the text itself: the internal relations of language and
form.

The implied author (Wayne): It implies the way the sense of an author
inheres in a text.
Work and text:
Text:
The author is not seen as the main producer of the text, no ris he
necessarily to be identified with it. The author too is a textual product or
effect: it is the language that speaks, not the author.
Literary texts are networks of meaning, composed of various discourses.
It is irreductible and open to repeated readings and reinterpretations.
Barthes sees meaning as generated by language. He would use text
in its widest sense.

Work:
It has the sense of an artefact over which the author has total control
and which reinforces the traditional model of intentionality and an
author-centred approach to interpretation. It also implies notions of the
author as an individual genius.
Reader:
Readers have often been thought of as the least significant element in
the author-text-reader axis.
An author-centred criticism, assumes that the author is both the origin
and object of literature and interpretation.
The rise of the readers importance in literary and critical theories has
shifted the emphasis of criticism and interpretation away from authorand text- centred approaches and has allowed for both, a more plural
set or responses to texts and also for more attention to the complex
processes of reading and interpretation.