Introductory chapter LLCE

Introductory chapter
The aim of this chapter is to make you think about the concept of Literature, its evolution and how
the boundary with other types of writing has been blurred over the centuries. You will then be invited to
ponder over the weight of Theory in literary analysis and its transdisciplinary nature. The content of this
chapter is mostly taken from Jonathan Culler’s Literary Theory: A Very Brief Introduction (Oxford
University Press, 2007), which is a comprehensive guide to understand the use of theory in literary
studies.

I. What is Literature?
1. Why is it so difficult to define what Literature is?

Can you give a definition of what literature is? You might feel tempted to answer that it is “stories,
poems and plays”, but you know that it is more trying than that. Researchers on literary studies do find it
hard too. When assuming this task, there are two aspects that render it quite complex:

- First, literary studies rely widely on theory, a concept I will explain below and which intermingles
ideas from different disciplines. Likewise, when students and researchers on literature are
interested on a topic in particular, it is frequent that they also turn to non-literary works. To
illustrate this idea, Culler gives the example of the topic “images of women in the early twentieth
century”. In this case you might want to use Virginia Woolf’s texts, or Sigmund Freud’s case
studies, or both. It does not mean that these texts are equal, but each is crucial in answering to
the question.

- Secondly, we can apply qualities that are often attached to literary texts to non-literary works.
This is what is called “the literariness of non-literary phenomena”. Turning again to Culler’s
example, when discussing the nature of a historical event, we take into account elements taken
from literary narrative. That is to say, when historians explain an event, they describe why an
event led to another, using an introduction, development and outcome. Rhetorical figures do
shape non-literary discourses as well, stressing the importance of literariness in other types of
texts.
2. Historical variations of the term, or a bit of background1

First of all, it is important to remember that Literature (with capital “L”) and writing are two different
things. Literature encompasses poetry, drama and prose, but also folklore, epic tale, legends and
myths, etc. If we were to look for the etymology of the word, we would find out that in Latin, literature
means “the use of letters” or “writing”, but in Romance languages it took the additional meaning of
“knowledge acquired form reading or studying books”. This means that from its origin, Literature is
considered as “writing that gives knowledge and hence should be studied”.

1
In this section I will not only refer to Cullen’s second chapter (“What is Literature and Does it Matter?) but also
to Oregon State’s Guide to English Literary Terms (URL: https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-literature-
definition-examples).

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LLCE Introductory chapter

However, the body of texts —and I refer to “texts” in order to include lore and other forms of
literature that weren’t originally written— that deserve being studied as Literature has greatly changed,
as well as the way to do it. Before the 1800s, literary texts were part of a larger category of exemplary
practices of writing and thinking that also included sermons, speeches or philosophical treaties. In
English Grammar schools, for instance, students were not asked to interpret but to memorize them,
study their grammar and identify their structures and rhetorical figures.

It was in the late 18th century that the modern Western sense of literature was established, thanks
mainly to German Romantic theorists. It is particularly interesting to mention Madame de Staël’s On
Literature Considered in its Relations with Social Institutions, in which she added the premise of a text to
be imaginative in order to be considered as literary. In spite of this, the canon, that is, the group of works
that are considered worthy of study by Institutions, has varied enormously, as contemporary trends have
deeply altered what was traditionally considered as a work of lasting artistic or cultural merit.

Since belonging to a canon cannot be the only factor that defines what literature is, there have been
efforts to pinpoint other qualities that define modern Western Literature. As critic Derek Attridge
underlines, there is some consensus around the following three qualities that define modern Western
Literature:

- a quality of invention or inventiveness in the text itself;

- the reader’s sense that what they are reading is singular;
- a sense of “otherness” that pushes the reader to see the world around them in a new way.

In the next section we will see why Western culture treats certain texts as literature and how the
previous qualities are involved in such classification.

3. Steps to recognize a literary text

To open this section, we will begin by reading the following text:

This is just to say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving
for breakfast. Forgive me, they were delicious, so sweet and so cold.

Where can you come across a text like the previous? Believe it or not, it does matter when treating a
texts as literature. It is not the same receiving that message on the phone than reading it on a post-it on
the fridge or written on a book. In other words, some texts are treated differently than others because of
the attention they receive. Hence, the medium affects our perception of the text. If presented in an
anthology of poetry, one instantly tries to find a meaning beyond the apparent simplicity of the words.
Are the plums a symbol of anything? Why does the poetic persona write the poem? If they 2 ask for
forgiveness, then why do they add “they were delicious, so sweet and so cold” at the end? Is the
speaker really sorry?

2
They is used here as a neutral pronoun to refer to both she and he at the same time.

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 Introductory chapter LLCE

Now, let us have a look at the text in its original form:

This is just to say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos Williams, 1962

The form here is a convention that helps us realize there is something particular about what we are
reading. Literariness is often said to lie above all in the organization of language, which makes literature
distinguishable from language used for other purposes. The foregrounding of linguistic patterning –the
alliteration of the /s/ in “so sweet” and of /θ/ in “the plums / that were in / the icebox; the enjambment or
line break– does not hit the ear so easily, but the fact that it is organized in verses and presented as
literature pushes us to analyze it. The elements in the text are also brought together into a complex
relationship thanks to convention. In literature we are more likely to look for and exploit the relation
between different levels of language: form and meaning, theme and grammar, etc. In so doing, we try
to understand the contribution each element makes to the effect of the whole.

Finally, literature has a special relation to the world that we call fictional. This is not limited to
characters and events, but also to time or context, narrator or poetic persona. Readers are hence
invited to interpret, and language does have an important role here: it subverts our relationship to the
world and to contexts. As you may have noticed, it is not the same coming across a message saying
“Sorry I ate the plums” than reading “This Is Just to Say”. The relationship between text –or the event
recounted in the text– and situations in the world is distorted: we can assume that Carlos Williams is
informing that he has eaten the plums, but we can also decide that the poem is about guilt or a reflection
about human nature and its difficulty to make the correct choices. In any way, the poem establishes a
fictional and particular relationship to the world and this sense of otherness is a quality of literature.

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LLCE Introductory chapter

II. Theory and literature

1. What do we mean when we talk about theory?

The term theory has several meanings. We use it to refer to “a principle or body of principles offered
to explain phenomena” (Merriam Webster), as when we talk about “the theory of relativity”. We can also
use it in a more worldly way to signal “speculation”:

“Why does Alexandre look so sad today?”

“Well, my theory is that…”

However, speculation does not mean the same as guessing, as we can see in the example. When we
speculate, we are trying to find an explanation whose truth or falsity might be hard to demonstrate. If we
continue with the example of Alexandre being sad, our theory might or might not be affected by
Alexandre’s explanation that he “is just tired”, even if he swears it.

When we say “my theory is…” we are also trying to give an explanation that is not obvious and
involves a certain complexity. If we say “my theory is that Alexandre looks sad because he has just split
with his boyfriend”, it would be too evident a reason to be considered a theory. However, “my theory is
that Alexandre is thinking about breaking up with Paul because he is secretly in love with his best friend”
entails a complex interpretation that cannot be easily confirmed or disproved.

2. Theory in literary studies and the practical effects of theory

“Theory”, as used in class from here onwards, does not mean literary theory, or the systematic
account of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing it. It rather designates a body of
works from a wide range of disciplines that succeed in challenging and reorienting thinking in fields
other than those to which they apparently belong. Particularly since the 1960s, literary studies have
relied on writings outside its field because their analyses of language, mind, history or culture, for
instance, offer new and persuasive accounts of textual and cultural matters.

Relying on the works of anthropology, history, gender studies, philosophy or psychoanalysis to

analyze literature has one main effect, which is the disputing of “common sense”. Theory is often a
powerful critique of common-sense notions. It shows that what we take for granted as commonsensical,
is in fact a historical construction and shatters or unsettles any premises or assumptions about literary
studies. Here you have some examples of the questions that theory has triggered:

- How do texts relate to the circumstances in which they are produced?

- How is meaning constructed?
- Is the meaning of an utterance or text what the speaker had in mind?
- What is an author and what is their role?

The nature of theory is to undo, through a contesting set of premises and postulates, what you thought
you knew, so the effects of theory are not predictable.

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In order to give you an example of the use of theory to analyze literary works, I will use Mark Lilly’s
analysis of love poetry written during the First World War 3. In his essay, he uses gender theory to better
explore the homo-erotic and homo-sexual implications of poems written by (former) soldiers and
anthologized by Martin Taylor in Lads: Love Poetry of the Trenches (1989). First of all, Lilly comments
on the possibility of men to express strong feelings towards their comrades in war conditions. This is
however hampered by their belonging to an army, which is the expression of the most conventionally
masculine aspects of a country (Taylor, 65). As a result, there is a normative resistance to accept that
the expression of the deepest feelings of admiration in these poems could entail carnal desire.

During the First World War, poetry became however the vehicle for the expression of male-to-male
feelings in an unusually frank and direct way. Expressing love for a brother in arms becomes quite
frequent, though “love” can be read in a number of different ways. For a heterosexual reader, love would
simply express friendship and, in most cases, grief for its loss, which allowed these poems to be widely
published. But the multilayered nature of these poems shifts the meaning of “love” from brotherly
affection to physical tenderness (which Lilly calls homo-eroticism) and sexual desire (homosexuality).

Lilly notices that it is frequent in these poems to present male-to-male love as superior to man’s love
for women. Let us have a look at Chaplain Suddert Kennedy’s poem “Passing the Love of Women”:

Yes, I've sat in the summer twilight,

Wiv a nice girl, 'and in 'and,
But I've thought even then of the shell 'oles,
Where the boys of the old Bat. stand.
I've turned to 'er lips for 'er kisses,
And I've found them kisses cold,
Stone cold and pale like a twice-told tale,
What has gorn all stale and old.
[…]
Yes, I've known the love ov a woman, lad,
And maybe I shall again,
But I knows a stronger love than theirs,
And that is the love of men.

It is interesting not only that the poem is explicit about the physical expression of feelings between men
and women, but also about the lack of solace from religion when it comes to seeking for love. Being the
writer a priest, we would expect him to talk about the love of God as being its highest expression.
However, and according to some Gender Studies theorists, breaking sexual norms is emblematic of
transgression and rule-breaking.

3
As used by Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2009. Pages 144-147.

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LLCE Introductory chapter

Lilly argues as well that in order for poets to express their homosexual feelings, they ensure that
there is a barrier to their fulfilment. In many cases, this barrier is death, so the admiration for the male
body would never entail the physical fulfilment of their sexual desire since their recipient is a corpse:

A man of mine
lies on a wire;
and he will rot
and first his lips
the worms will eat.
It is not thus I would hev him kissed
but with the warm passionate lips
of his comrade here.

Herbert Read, “My Company (iii)”

The gory elements of Read’s poem are also present in other poems about a wounded comrade, the
wound being erotically-charged since it allows the tender expression of feelings among men.

To conclude, Lilly posits that a war context was a “safe” area to express feelings that were
otherwise suppressed, as their ordinary meaning is disrupted. We need to know their context to properly
understand these poems and the social response to them. It is important to notice that the British Army
exploited these feelings —which were considered good for morale— at the beginning of the war by
establishing what was called “Pals regiments”, which were founded upon the feelings of friendship and
loyalty established by members of the same community prior to the war. According to Gender Studies,
the continuum of feelings expressed in this poetry (and which resonate with Adrienne Rich’s theory of
the “lesbian continuum”) helps to deconstruct the notion of gayness as a distinct “Other” with their own
stable and separate identity.

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