Ten tenets of ·l iberal h .

umanasm

7}1 e personal account on pp. 9-J O . J I ond and third of the four questior
g rven earl ier J' . main y responds to tie sec
. m now gomg to

.~ :,:d ~n t~e impJica:i~ns oftbe fourth question. which asked what it is. exactly. that we learn ·when w
h gl1sh m the trad1twnaJ way. Of course. ,,ve ·,earn thin2.s about specific books and authors, but I me
d;r~ the more gen~ral vaJu~s and attjtudes which we absorb from English, and vvhi~h rem~in as a kind o
- .stilled essence of the subject ,vben alJ these specific details bave been forgotten. fhese are not usually
formulated
. and st ate d . b ut they are, ma
· sens~. all the more real for that. b emg · 1-
· s1mu · · both
taneousl)
pen,a s1 ve and im·isible. They can only be broue.ht to the surface by a conscious effort of ,,ill. of the kint
we are now trying to make. So what follows is;_. list of some of the elements which seem to constitute th
'distilled essence' of the subject, that is, the corpus of attitudes, assumptions, and ideas which we pic'k ur
probably unawares, as we do it. These seem to have been what we were learning '"·hen we studied Ell!!lt
- these are the values and beliefs ,.v hich formed the subject's half-hidden curricuiuiri:

1. Th e first thing, naturally. is an attitude to literature itself: good literatw-e is of timeless signiticance:it
somehow transcends the limitations and pecul.iarities of the age it was v.-ritte.n in, and thereby speaks to
,.vhat is constant in human nature. Such writing is 'not for an age. but for
all time' (as Ben Jonson said-0f
Shakespeare): it is 'news which stays news' (Ezra Pound's definition of literature).

2. The second point is the logical consequence of the first. The lilerary text contains its 0\.\·111~"tcan_ing
with in itself It doesn't require any elaborate process of placing it within a context, whether th15 br.

(a ) Socio-political - the conte>rt of a pai1icular social 'background' or political situation, or

J
 b) Literarv-historical - whereby the work could be seen as the product of ti , l't1 , . .
l . "" -or ;s shaped by the conve ntions of particular genres or ie erary mfluences ot other
Wfl 1et.,. ' '

(c) Autobiographical - that is, as determined by the pei·sonal details of the authoris life and thought.

Of course, as scholars, most academics would a~,t the value

of studyi~g these conte~ts, but as critics their adherence to the approach which insists upon the
primacy and self-sufficiency of the 'words on the page' commits them to the process which has
been called 'on-sight close reading'. Essentially, this removes the text from all these contexts
and presents it 'unseen' for unaided explication by the trained mind.

3. To understand the text well it must be detached from these contexts and studied in isolation.
What is needed is the close verbal analysis of the text without prior ideological assumptions, or
political pre-conditions, or, indeed, specific expectations of any kind, since all these are likely
to interfere fatally with what the nineteenth-century critic Matthew Arnold said was the true
business of criticism, 'to see the object as in itself it really is'.

4. Human nature is essentially unchanging. The same passions, emotions, and even situations
are seen again and again throughout human history. It follows that continuity in literature is
more important and significant than innovation. Thus, a well-known eighteenth-century
_definition of poet_rY. maint~ins that it is 'what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed'.
Likewise, Samuel Johnson famously denigrated Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy on the grounds
of its novelty, that is, its originality.

5. Individuality is something securely possessed within each of us as our unique 'essence'. This
transcends our environmental influences, and though individuality can change and develop (as
do characters in novels), it can't be transformed -hence our uneasiness with those scenes (quite
common, for instance, in Dickens) which involve a 'change cifheart' in a character, so that the
whole personality is shifted into a new dimension by force of circumstance - the miser is
transfonned .and changes his ways, or the good man or woman becomes co1Tupted by wealth.
Such scenes imply a malleability in the essence of character which is at odds with this
underlying assuniption of English studies-. The discipline as a whole believed i~ wha! is now
called the 'transcendent subject', which is the belief that the individual ('the subJect') ts
antecedent to, or transcends, the forces of society, experience,

and language.

. . . h t f life and the propagation of

6. Tl1e purpose of literature 1s essentially
,.. . the en ancemen
"f 1· t °
and criticism become overtly an d
h.umane values; but not in a proorammat1c
e
way: 1. 1tera ure,
,· d
' . ,- , · .
And as Keats sam,-,·we distrust
d.irectly political they necessarily tend towards, propagan
I · 1·t a.· ture which too obvious . 1v wan ts "LO
1iterature which has a palpable design upon us , t1at is, 1 eta
convert us or in fl uence our views.
7. Form and content in literature must be fused in an organic way, so that the one grows
inevitabl y from the other. Literary form should not be like a decoration which is applied
externally to a completed structure. Imagery, ·for instance, or any otl1~r p~etic fom1 which is
detachable from the substance of the work in this way, rather than berng mtegrated with it -
. . d b C I 'd . , IS
merely 'fanciful' and not trul y 'imaginative' (the distrnct1on ma e Y O en gem the
Biog;raphia Literariat

8. This point about organic fotm applies above all ~o 's!ncerity'. Sincerity (comprising tnrth~to..
experience, honesty towards the self, and the ~apac1ty for. h~man emp~thy_ and ~om passion) is a
quality \Vhich resides within the language of literature. It tsn ta fact 01 an mtentton behind the
work. which could be gleaned by comparing, say, a poet's view of an event with other more
'factual' versions, or from discovering independent, external information about an author's .
historv or conduct. Rather, sincerity is to be discovered within the text in such matters as the
avoid~1ce of cliche, or of over-inflated forms of expression; it shows in the use of first hand,
individualistic description, in the understated expression of feeling, whereby (preferably) the
emotion is allowed to emerge implicitly· from the presentation of an event. Moreover, when the
language achieves these qualities, then the truly sincere poet can transcend the sense of distance
between language and material, and can make the language seem to 'enact' what it depicts, thus
apparently abolishing the necessary distance between words and things.

9. Again, the next idea follows from the previous one. \Vhat is valued in I iterature is the 'silent'
showing and demonstrating of something, rather than the explaining, or saying, of it.

Hence, ideas as such are worthless in literature until given the concrete embodiment of
'enactment'. Thus, several of the expljcit comments and formulations often cited in literary
history contain specific denigrations of ideas as such and have a distinct anti-intellectual flavour
to them. Here we see the elevation of the characte1istic 'Eng Lit' idea of tactile enactment, of
~ensuous. im~ediacy, of the concrete representation of thought, and so on. According io this
idea (which_ 1s, of co~rse, itself an idea, in spite of the fact that the idea in question is a
?
profes.sed_ 1strust of ideas) words should mime, or demonstrate, or act out, or sound out what
1~1ey sigrn_f-y, rather than just representing it in an abstract way. This idea is stated with special
krvenc~, ; 111 the work of F· R· Leav1s. · (F 01· a cnt1que
·· · •the 'enactment' idea see 'The Enactment
ot
';:llacy', ~y th ~ pr~sent author, in Essays in Critidsm, July 1980. For a general discussion see
• mes Gnbble s L,tera,y Education: a Re-evaluation, Cambridge University Press 1983
c11apter ? ) IO Tl1 · b Of · · · • ' '
J\ ti . ..· · e JO criticism is to interpret the text, to mediate between it and the reader.
1eo1et1ca 1 account of the nature of .. d'
• · ·r
al1d wi 11 simp 1v 1 · attempted
·tea mg, or o f literature
. . .. .
tn 0oeneral isn't useful in cnt1c1sm,
b ·· • '
them and the t~~ -· p,. . . ' ~,~cum ercntics with 'preconceived ideas' which will get between
1. er11aps 111 t 11s phrase 'p 1·e · d ·d , - · ti
nature of this perva.s·iv d' t f. conceive I eas we get another glimpse mto 1e
e 1s rust o ideas ,, ·ti1111· l'b1 . .
notion that somet1ow all 'idea . , vi · eta 1 hurnarusm, for there seems to be the
·. s a1e precon · d' ·
reader and text if given half . , cei:e , m the sense that they will come between the
,, . · . a c11ance. 1 here is 111 · f ti . ed
F~ngl, sh empiricism', which can be defi.ned as ; act, _.1e ~tear mark here of what 1s cal.I
l:v ick 11t tu the sense::. or experienceu d' .~eterm.ma~on to trust only what is made
·1 I m:ct 1y. U,t1111·~t"l\: tl1·. r,.. . d
I
P 1 osnp iy ofJohn Locke ( 163 2_1704 )
1 . . a c;; -' • is ttutu .e goes. back at least to th. e
c·~oncerning. Human Understanding
0

1
·-:~:~oy
F· , w11chg1vesaphd
( 1690 ) ..
- h. l . . -i.....,k
o:s~p tea. expr~ss~on to rt. Hts uv_o
v,, lien direct sense impressions from the world ar , ~uts ~orwa, d the view that ideas are fonnt:d
c imprmted on the mind. The mind then
assem bles the·se, so z=>o-iving rise• to the process of thinking. Locke reiected
..,
·nti·ospec 1vc
1 1
-
. n as a source ofvahd knowledge and
specuIat10 ,

. . d o n f'wL..e need for direct experience

ms1ste . . and evidence of thin£s.
..., Traditional English studi·es, we mtg
. h.t
.say. has al\~ays
. been Lockeari m this sense. -

The above list contains a ~eries of p~opositio~s whi~h I think ~any tra~it!onal critics would, on the whole
subscribe to, if they were m the habtt of makmg the1r assumptions _exphctt. Together, ideas J'ike these, and
the literary practice which went with them, are now often refe1Ted to as 'liberal humanism'.