What are the three things that make for "great literature"?
Apologies for this rather late reply, but the question proposed is one I found exceedingly difficult to provide a satisfying answer, especially after reading Terry Eagleton's Marxist Literary Theory: an Introduction, which argues that there is no such thing as "literature". Eagleton does have a point when he writes that defining "literature" as an object is doomed to failure because language (the most fundamental component of literature) is arbitrary and is subject to historical, material, economical and cultural changes. To define "literature" as an object is to give it ontological status. Having said that, does that mean that one should assign the same "literary" value to Homer's Achilles as Homer Simpson? To those of us who study literature, we seem to have an "intuitive" understanding of what is "literary". Eagleton argues that's an illusion, and that the English departments in universities should dissolve itself and talk about cultural studies instead. Perhaps. As an English student, I'm a little disturbed by that idea. I honestly cherish my Achilles and do not care much for Homer Simpson.
Even if this be a doomed enterprise, I am going to give my positive answer to the proposed question. The way I'm going to answer the question is this: I'm going to list out a set of almost universally acknowledged English literary works, and tried to look for three kinds of samenesses that are in all of these works.
The works are: Shakespeare's Macbeth, Milton's Paradise Lost, Austen's Emma, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Joyce's The Dead, Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
There are a few "essences", common answers to the proposed question, which actually do not answer the proposed question when we look at all the literature on the list. Is great literature:
1. philosophical? Nope: Aunt Jane and Uncle Oscar are hardly philosophical.
2. moral? Nope: Beckett doesn't seem to care about that.
3. English-ness? Nope: Waiting for Godot is actually French; Paradise Lost follows a Grecian tradition more than an English tradition.
4. the best seller? Nope: Austen-mania is a 20th century phenemenon; Beckett's play is hard to attract audience.
5. time-tested? Nope: True enough all these works are studied, but all of these works more or less had its ups and downs throughout literary history; they come back as "great literature" not because of any kind of time-tested values. Nobody reads Milton like one reading the Scripture like the 18th century (in the positive sense) and the 19th century (in the negative sense). Works like Wilde's play come back into the academia because of its deconstructive value, and certainly Wilde, nor the late Victorian audience and readers, had no such notion in mind.
6. Critical or conformative of an ideology? Nope: Shakespeare, Eliot, Wilde and Joyce were, but not Milton and Austen; Beckett simply doesn't care.
The following is my positive answer to the proposed question.
1. Great literature is a defamilarization of our common language. This works on both a technical and a cultural/social level, and this holds true for the list.
2. Great literature is "writerly"; this means that the reader is always part of the construction of meaning of the text. Great literature is never just a medium in which the author feeds his/her readers a message. Great literature makes room for multiple interpretations, all of them valid. Even a text like Milton's Paradise Lost, after we read it, we are beg to question not only theological questions, but Milton's treatment of these questions, and in that process we necessarily become the "writer" of the text. If you read a typical Young Adults novel, or a romance, or anything else "non-Literature" (with the capital L), it doesn't have this "writerly" dimension.
3. Great literature is taught in universities. This is the sad Marxist fact; if nobody teaches a work, there isn't ground for it to be great. Literature, as Eagleton argues, is an institution, in particular, the academia. All the works in the list are taught in universities, and are read over and over again.
So there you have it. My answer to the proposed question after a brief meditation (last night).
Even if this be a doomed enterprise, I am going to give my positive answer to the proposed question. The way I'm going to answer the question is this: I'm going to list out a set of almost universally acknowledged English literary works, and tried to look for three kinds of samenesses that are in all of these works.
The works are: Shakespeare's Macbeth, Milton's Paradise Lost, Austen's Emma, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Joyce's The Dead, Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
There are a few "essences", common answers to the proposed question, which actually do not answer the proposed question when we look at all the literature on the list. Is great literature:
1. philosophical? Nope: Aunt Jane and Uncle Oscar are hardly philosophical.
2. moral? Nope: Beckett doesn't seem to care about that.
3. English-ness? Nope: Waiting for Godot is actually French; Paradise Lost follows a Grecian tradition more than an English tradition.
4. the best seller? Nope: Austen-mania is a 20th century phenemenon; Beckett's play is hard to attract audience.
5. time-tested? Nope: True enough all these works are studied, but all of these works more or less had its ups and downs throughout literary history; they come back as "great literature" not because of any kind of time-tested values. Nobody reads Milton like one reading the Scripture like the 18th century (in the positive sense) and the 19th century (in the negative sense). Works like Wilde's play come back into the academia because of its deconstructive value, and certainly Wilde, nor the late Victorian audience and readers, had no such notion in mind.
6. Critical or conformative of an ideology? Nope: Shakespeare, Eliot, Wilde and Joyce were, but not Milton and Austen; Beckett simply doesn't care.
The following is my positive answer to the proposed question.
1. Great literature is a defamilarization of our common language. This works on both a technical and a cultural/social level, and this holds true for the list.
2. Great literature is "writerly"; this means that the reader is always part of the construction of meaning of the text. Great literature is never just a medium in which the author feeds his/her readers a message. Great literature makes room for multiple interpretations, all of them valid. Even a text like Milton's Paradise Lost, after we read it, we are beg to question not only theological questions, but Milton's treatment of these questions, and in that process we necessarily become the "writer" of the text. If you read a typical Young Adults novel, or a romance, or anything else "non-Literature" (with the capital L), it doesn't have this "writerly" dimension.
3. Great literature is taught in universities. This is the sad Marxist fact; if nobody teaches a work, there isn't ground for it to be great. Literature, as Eagleton argues, is an institution, in particular, the academia. All the works in the list are taught in universities, and are read over and over again.
So there you have it. My answer to the proposed question after a brief meditation (last night).
posted by Tristan at 6:33 p.m.
1 Comments:
I don't necessarily agree with all those arguments. Oh well, for me, I only concentrate on how literature could 'entertain' my soul, but do not mind if a piece of work should be classfied as "great literature."
"Great literature", to me, are a phrase just as arbitrary as "inappropriate behaviour", "best actress", "inflexible logics", "inspiring person" etc.
Kenneth
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