tzvetan todorov

7/24/2019 Tzvetan Todorov - What is Literature for (1)

1/21

What Is Literature for?

Author(s): Tzvetan Todorov and John LyonsSource: New Literary History, Vol. 38, No. 1, What Is Literature Now? (Winter, 2007), pp. 13-32Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057987.

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2/21

What

Is

Literature

For?

Tzvetan

Todorov

As

far back as

I

can

remember,

I

see

myself

surrounded

by

books.

Both

of

my

parents

were

professional

librarians;

there

were

always

too

many

books in our house.

They

were

always coming

up

with

plans

for

new

shelving

to

hold

them; meanwhile,

the

books

accumulated

in

the

bedrooms

and the

hallways,

forming fragile

piles

that

I

had

to

crawl

between.

I

quickly

learned

to

read

and

began

to

devour classic

stories

in

children's

versions: the

Arabian

Nights,

the

tales

of

Grimm and

Andersen,

Tom

Sawyer,

Oliver

Twist,

and Les

Mis?rables.

One

day

when

I

was

eight,

I

read

a

whole

novel;

I

must

have been

very

proud

because

I

wrote

in

my

diary: "Today

I

read

On

Grandpa's

Knees,

a

223-page

book,

in

an

hour

and

a

half "

As

a

student

in

junior high

school

and

high school,

I

continued

to

love

reading.

It

always

gave

me

a

shiver of

delight

to

plunge

into the

world

of

the

writers?classics

or

contemporaries,

Bulgarian

or

foreign?whose

books I

now

was

reading

in

complete

editions.

I

could

satisfy

my

curios

ity,

live

adventures,

experience

fright

and

happiness,

without

putting

up

with the

frustrations that

troubled

my

dealings

with

boys

and

girls

of

my

own

age,

among

whom I

lived.

I

did

not

know what

I

wanted

to

do

when I

grew

up,

but I

was

certain that it

would

have

something

to

do

with

literature.

Would

I

be

a

writer

myself?

I

gave

it

a

try:

I

composed

poems

in

doggerel

verses,

a

play

in

three

acts

on

the

lives of

dwarfs

and

giants, I even started a novel?but I didn't get past the first page. I soon

felt

that such

writing

was

not

my

vocation.

Without

knowing

for

sure

what

would

come

later,

I

chose

my

major

at

the

university:

I

was

going

to

study

literature. In

1956

I

went to

the

University

of

Sofia;

my

profession

would be

talking

about

books.

Bulgaria

was

then

part

of the

Communist

bloc,

and

all

humanities

disciplines

were

shaped

by

the

official

ideology.

Literature

courses

were

half

scholarship

and

half

propaganda:

literary

works

past

and

present

were

weighed

and measured

according

to

the

standards

of

Marxism-Le

ninism.

We

were

required

to

show

how

books

represented

the

correct

ideology?or,

otherwise,

how

they

failed to do this. Neither

believing

in

Communism

nor

being

especially

rebellious,

I

retreated into

a

stance

that

many

of

my

countrymen

took:

in

public,

silence

or

lip

service

to

New

Literary

History,

2007,

38:

13-32

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3/21

14

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

the

official

slogans;

in

private,

an

intense life

of

meetings

and

lectures,

devoted

especially

to

authors that

no

one

would

suspect

to

be

the

spokes

people

for Communist

doctrine,

the

ones

who

had been

lucky enough

to

write

before

the

imposition

of

Marxism-Leninism

or

those

who

lived

in

countries

where

they

could

write

freely.

To

complete

our

university degree,

we

had

to

compose

a

master's

thesis

at

the

end of

our

fifth

year.

How could

I

write about

literature

without

knuckling

under

to

the

dominant

ideology?

I

chose

one

of the

only paths

that

let

me

avoid

the

orthodoxy.

I

concentrated

on

the

study

of

things

that

had

no

ideological

value

in themselves.

For

instance,

in

works of literature, the material nature of the text itself, its linguistic

form.

I

was

certainly

not alone in

doing

this: the

Russian

Formalists

of

the

1920s

had

blazed

this

trail,

and

others

soon

followed them.

At the

university,

for

instance,

our

most

interesting professor

was a

specialist

in

versification.

For

my

thesis

I

did

a

comparison

of

two

versions

of

a

long

novella

by

a

Bulgarian

author

from the

beginning

of

the

twentieth

century,

and

I limited

myself

to

the

grammatical

changes

he had made

from

one

version

to

the

other:

transitive verbs

replaced

intransitive

ones,

the

perfect

tense

became

more

frequent

than

the

imperfect.

.

.This

way

everything

I wrote

escaped

the

censor,

and

I

ran no

risk of

violating

the

ideological

taboos of the

Party.

I

will

never

know

how

this cat-and-mouse

game

would

have ended?

not

necessarily

in

my

favor.

A chance

came

along

to

leave

for

a

year

"in

Europe,"

as we

used

to

say

at

the

time,

that

is,

on

the other

side of

the "Iron Curtain"

(an

image

that

we

did

not

think

at

all

exaggerated

because

crossing

it

was

just

about

impossible).

I

chose

Paris

because

its

reputation

as

the

city

of

arts

and literature

dazzled

me

This

was

a

place

where

I could

pursue

my

love

of literature

without

limits,

where

I

could

unite

my

private

convictions

and

my

public occupation,

and thus

escape

the

collective

schizophrenia spread by

the totalitarian

regime

in

which

I had

been

living.

As it

turned

out,

things

were

a

bit

more

difficult

than

I

thought.

In

the

course

of

my

studies

at

the

university,

I had

gotten

used

to

paying

attention

to

the

features

of

literary

works

that

escaped

ideology: style,

composition,

narrative

modes?in

short,

literary

technique.

Because

at

first

I

was

sure

that

I

would

be

staying

for

only

a

year

in

France,

since

that

was

the

length

of

the

passport they

had

given

me,

I

wanted

to

learn

everything

about

these

subjects.

They

were

neglected

and

marginalized

in

Bulgaria,

where

they

did

little

to

advance

the Communist

cause,

but in

France, the land of freedom, they would be studied in depth Yet I had

trouble

finding

any

such

courses

in

Parisian

universities.

Literary

study

was

divided

up

by

nations

and

by

centuries;

I had

no

idea

how

to

find

the

professors

who

paid

any

attention

to

the

things

that interested

me.



4/21

WHAT

IS LITERATURE

FOR?

15

And itwas certainly difficult for a foreign student like me to find his way

around the

labyrinth

of

academic

institutions

and their curricula.

I had

with

me a

letter from

the dean of the

faculty

of letters of the

University

of Sofia

to

his

Parisian

counterpart.

So

one

day

in

May,

1963,

I

knocked

on

the door

of

an

office in the

Sorbonne

(at

the

time

the

only

Paris

university),

the

door

of the dean of the

faculty

of

letters,

the

historian

Aimard.

When

he

had

read the

letter,

he asked

me

what

I

was

looking

for.

I

told

him that

I

wanted

to

continue

the

study

of

style,

lan

guage,

and

literary theory?in

general.

"But

you

can't

study

these

things

in

general

What

literature do

you

want

to

specialize

in?"

Feeling

the

floor

collapsing

under

me,

I

replied

rather

pitifully

that French literature

would do.

I

realized

at

the

same

time that

my

French

was

getting

mixed

up;

it

was

a

bit

shaky

at

the

time. The dean

cast

a

condescending

glance

and

suggested

that

I

would

do better

to

study

Bulgarian

literature with

a

specialist?there

must

be

some

in

France.

I

was

a

little

discouraged,

but

I

continued

my

quest,

asking

around

among

the

few

people

I

knew.

And

so

one

day

a

professor

of

psychology,

the

friend

of

a

friend,

hearing

me

explain

my

troubles,

said: "I know

someone

else

who is interested

in

these oddball

subjects;

he's

a

teach

ing

assistant

at

the Sorbonne named G?rard Genette." We

met

in

a

dark

hallway

in

rue

Serpente,

where

there

were

several

classrooms,

and

we

hit it

off

right

away.

He

explained

to

me,

among

other

things,

that there

was

a

professor

with

a

seminar

at

the

?cole

des Hautes

Etudes,

where

we

could

see

each other

again.

The

name

of this

professor

(I

had

never

heard

it

before)

was

Roland Barthes.

The

beginning

of

my

professional

life in France is linked

to

these

encounters.

It did

not

take

me

long

to

realize that

one

year

in

Paris

was

not

going

to

be

enough

and that I

needed

to

stay

longer

in

France.

I

registered

with

Barthes

to

do

my

first

doctorate,

a

dissertation that

I

submitted in 1966. Soon after, I was appointed to the CNRS (National

Center

for Scientific

Research),

where

I

have

spent

my

whole

career.

Meanwhile,

at

Genette's

suggestion,

I did

a

French

translation

of

the work

of the

Russian

Formalists,

little known

in

France,

under the

title

Theory

of

Literature,

that

came

out

in

1965.

Later,

Genette and

I

ran

the

journal

Po?tique

and

an

associated

monograph

series,

and

we

tried

to

influence

the

literary

curriculum

at

the

university

to

free it from

fragmentation

into nations and centuries and

to

open

it toward

what

literary

works

have

in

common.

In

the

following

years

I

gradually

settled

into French

life.

I

married,

had children, and became a French citizen. I

began

to vote and to read

the

newspaper,

becoming

more

interested

in

public

life,

because

I

was

discovering

that

it

was

not

necessarily

controlled

by

ideological dog

mas,

as

it

was

in

totalitarian countries.

Without

falling

into

unqualified



5/21

16 NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

admiration,

I

was

happy

to

see

that

France

was a

pluralist

democracy,

respectful

of each

individual's

freedom.

This

realization

in

turn

had

an

impact

on

my

attitude

toward methods of

literary

analysis:

the

thought

present

in

each

work,

the

values that it

transmits,

no

longer

had

to

be

squeezed

into

ready-made

ideological

containers,

and

therefore I

no

longer

needed

to

set

them aside and

to

ignore

them. This

led

me,

not

to

deny

what

was

then called "structural

analysis"

of

literary

works,

but

to

include

the

useful

things

from

that

analysis alongside

other

forms of

study

in

pursuing

the

overall

meaning

of the

work.

Structural

analysis

had become like philology: something that one doesn't attack but that

one

doesn't

especially

feel

the need

to

defend

either.

Since

realizing

this,

toward

the end of the

1970s,

I

have lost

interest

in

studying

the

methods

of

analysis

and have

instead

engaged

in

analysis

itself. In

other

words,

I

devote

myself

to

the

discovery

of the authors

of the

past.

From

that

moment

on,

my

love

of

literature

was no

longer

confined

by

my

education

in

a

totalitarian

country.

So I

needed

to

acquire

new

tools

for

my

work:

I

felt the need

to

learn about the

discoveries

and

concepts

of

psychology,

anthropology,

and

history.

Since

now

the

authors'

ideas

returned

to

center

stage,

I

decided,

in

order

to

understand

them

better,

to immerse

myself

in the

history

of ideas about man and societies, in

moral and

political philosophy.

At

the

same

time

the

object

ofthat

study,

literature,

took

on

new

dimen

sions.

Literature does

not

emerge

from

a

void but

from

an

environment

of verbal

utterances

with

which

literature shares

many

characteristics. It

is

no

accident that the

boundary

between literature and

other

discourses

has often

shifted.

I

felt

myself

attracted

by

these

other forms of

expres

sion,

not at

the

expense

of literature but

alongside

it. In The

Conquest

of

America,

to

understand better how

very

different

cultures

encounter

one

another,

I

read the

accounts

of

Spanish

travelers

and

conquistadores

of

the sixteenth

century

along

with those

of

their Aztec and

Mayan

contem

poraries.

In the

course

of

my

reflections

on

our

moral

life,

I

immersed

myself

in

the

writings

of

people

who

were

taken

away

as

prisoners

to

Russian and

German concentration

camps;

this led

me

to

write

Facing

theExtreme.

The

letters

of

several

writers

enabled

me,

in

Les Aventuriers de

Vabsolu,

to

question

an

existential ambition: that

of

offering

one's life

to

serve

beauty.

The

texts

that

I

was

reading?personal

narratives,

memoirs,

historical

works,

testimonies, reflections,

letters,

anonymous

texts

from

folklore?did

not

have,

like

literary

works,

the

status

of

fiction,

because

they directly

described

lived

experience. However, like literary works,

they

let

me

discover unknown

dimensions of the

world,

they

moved

me

profoundly,

and

they

made

me

think.

In

other

words,

the

field

of

literature has broadened for

me,

because it

now

includes,

alongside

poems,

novels,

short

stories,

and

dramatic

works,



6/21

WHAT IS

LITERATURE

FOR?

17

the immense domain of narrative written for public or personal use, essays,

and reflections.

If

someone

asks

me

why

I

love

literature,

the

answer

that

I

immediately

think of is

that literature

helps

me

live.

I

no

longer

seek

in

literature,

as

I

did

in

adolescence,

to

avoid wounds that real

people

could

inflict

upon

me;

literature

does

not

replace

lived

experiences

but

forms

a

continuum

with

them and

helps

me

understand them. Denser

than

daily

life but

not

radically

different from

it,

literature

expands

our

universe,

prompts

us

to

see

other

ways

to

conceive and

organize

it. We

are

all formed from what

other

people give

us:

first

our

parents

and then

the other

people

near us.

Literature

opens

to

the infinite this

possibility

of interaction and thus enriches us

infinitely.

It

brings

us

irreplaceable

sensations

through

which

the real world becomes

more

furnished with

meaning

and

more

beautiful. Far from

being

a

simple

distraction,

an

entertainment reserved for educated

people,

literature lets each

one

of

us

fulfill

our

human

potential.

Literature Reduced

to

the

Absurd

As time

passed,

I

discovered

with

surprise

that the

important

role

I

assigned

to

literature

was not

recognized by

everyone.

This

discrepancy

struck

me

first of all

in

regard

to

what is

taught

in

schools.

I

have

no

experience

of

teaching

in

French

lyc?es,

and

only

a

little

at

the

university

level; but,

once

I became

a

father,

I

could

not

ignore

my

children's

pleas

for

help

on

the

eve

of

quizzes

or

when

homework

was

due. And

even

though

I

did

not

invest

myself

totally

in

this,

I

began

to

feel

a

bit miffed

to

see

that

my

advice and

help

tended

to

get

nothing

but mediocre

grades

Later

on

I

got

a

broader view of

literary

teaching

in

French schools

as

a

member,

from 1994

to

2004,

of

a

pluridisciplinary

consulting

board,

part of the Ministry of National Education. That iswhen I understood

that there

was

a

wholly

different idea of

literature,

not

just

on

the

part

of

a

few individual

teachers,

but

in

the

theory

behind the official

direc

tives that

guided

teachers.

I

turn to

the

Official

Bulletin of the

Ministry

of National

Education

(number

6,

August

31,

2000)

with the

lyc?e

curriculum,

specifically

the

guidelines

for

teaching

French.

Under the

heading

"Overview

of

studies,"

the

document

states:

"The

study

of

texts

helps

to

form

student reflections

on:

literary

and cultural

history,

genres

and the

construction of

meaning

and the

specificity

of

texts,

argumentation

and the

effects of

discourse

on those who receive it." The rest of the text

expands

on these

headings

and

explains

that

genres

"are studied

methodically,"

that

"registers

(for

instance,

the

comic)"

are

dealt with in the

next-to-last

year

of

lyc?e,

that

"reflecting

on

the

production

and

reception

of

texts

constitutes

an

object



7/21

18

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

of

study

in its own

right

in

lyc?e,"

and that "the elements of

argumenta

tion" will

now

be "considered

in

a more

analytic

way."

As

a

whole,

these instructions

are

based

on a

choice: that the aim

of

literary analysis

is

to

learn

about the instruments that

literary

analysis

uses.

Reading

poems

and novels does

not

lead

to

making

the students

think

about

the

human

condition,

about the individual and

society,

about

love and

hate,

and about

joy

and

despair,

but about critical

concepts,

whether traditional

or

modern. At

school,

pupils

do

not

learn

what lit

erature

talks

about but instead

what

critics

talk about.

In

every

school

subject,

teachers face

a

choice,

one

that is

so

funda

mental

that

they

do

not

even

notice it

most

of the time.

We

can

formulate

it this

way,

simplifying

a

bit for the

purposes

of the

discussion:

are we

teaching knowledge

about the

discipline

itself

or

about its

object?

And

thus,

in

our

case:

should

one

study,

above

all,

analytic

methods,

to

be

illustrated with

a

selection of

literary

works?

Or should

one

study

the

works that

are

considered

essential,

that

can

be accessed

through

the

broadest

range

of methods? Which is the

goal

and which is the means?

What

is

required

and

what

remains elective?

For

other

school

subjects

this choice ismade much

more

clearly.

We

teach, on one hand, mathematics, physics, biology?a set of disciplines

(the sciences),

always keeping

inmind their evolution. On the other

hand,

we

teach

history,

and

not

one

method of historical

investigation

among

others.

For

example

in

the

first

year

of

lyc?e

in

France,

it is considered

important

to

bring

to

life,

for the

students,

turning points

in

European

history:

Greek

democracy,

the birth

of the monotheistic

religions,

Renais

sance

humanism,

and

so

forth.

We

do

not

choose

to

teach the

history

of

mentalities,

or

economic

history,

or

military, diplomatic,

or

religious

history,

nor

the

methodology

and

concepts

of each of these

approaches,

even

if

we

use

these

concepts

when

the occasion

arises.

And

yet

the same choice arises for French (or

English

or

Spanish

. .

.

)

as a

subject;

and

the

current

way

French is

taught,

reflected

in

the

official

curriculum,

prefers

"the

study

of the

discipline"

(as

in

physics),

even

though

we

could

instead choose "the

study

of the

object"

(as

in

history).

The

official

text

that

I

quote

above shows this

choice,

among

its

many

other

instructions.

A

student

in

the first

year

of

lyc?e

must

above

all

succeed

in

"mastering

the

essential notions of

genre

and

register"

and

"positions

of

enunciation";

in other

words,

the student

needs

to

be

initiated

into the

study

of semiotics

and

pragmatics,

and into rhetoric and

poetics.

With

all

due

respect

for these

disciplines,

we

can

ask ourselves:

should

they

be the main

thing

to

learn

in

school?

All these

subjects

are

abstract

constructs,

concepts

created

by

literary analysis

in order

to

deal

with

literary

works;

none

of

these

subjects

derives from

the

literary

works

themselves,

from their

meaning

or

from their

history.



8/21

WHAT IS LITERATURE

FOR?

19

In class, most of the time, French teachers cannot just teach genres

and

registers,

modes

of

signifying

and

effects

of

argument,

metaphor

and

metonymy,

internal

and

external

focalization?they

must

also

study

literary

works. But

here

we

discover another

shift

in

literary teaching.

One

concrete

example

is

the

way

we

teach,

in

2005,

the

subject

"Lit

erature"

(Lettres)

in

the

last

year

of

the

specialization

L

(literature)

of

a

major

Parisian

lyc?e.

There

are

four

vast

subjects

to

study,

such

as

"major

literary

models"

and

"verbal

language

and

images,"

and

with

these

there

are

coordinated

literary

works,

respectively

Chr?tien de

Troyes's

Perceval

and

Kafka's

The

Trial

(along

with

Orson

Welles's

film).

However,

the

test

questions

the students

get

all

during

the school

year

and then on the

baccalaureate

examination

are,

in

an

overwhelming proportion,

of

just

one

single

type.

They

concern

the

function

of

one

component

of the

work

in

relation

to

the

structure

of

the

whole,

not

on

the

meaning

of

that

component

nor

on

the

meaning

of

the book

as a

whole

for

its

epoch

or

for

ours.

So

the

students

are

asked

about

the

role of

a

character,

of

an

episode,

or

of

a

detail

during

the

quest

for

the

Grail,

not

about

the

significance

of

that

quest

itself.

The

student

will be

asked

whether

The

Trial

belongs

to

the comic

register

or

to

the

absurd,

rather

than about

Kafka's

place

in

the

thought

of his

period.

How

could the

way

we

teach

literature

in

schools

have

come

to

this?

The

simple

answer

is

that

it

reflects

a

change

in

university

teaching.

If

most

lyc?e

teachers

of

French

have

adopted

this

new

approach,

it's be

cause

literary

studies

in

the

university

has

evolved

along

the

same

lines:

before

being lyc?e

teachers

they

were

students.

The

shift

took

place

a

generation

earlier,

in

the

1960s

and

1970s

and

often

in

the

name

of

"structuralism."

I

participated

in

this

movement.

Should

I

feel

responsible

for the

state

of

the

discipline today?

When I

came

to

France,

at

the

beginning

of

the

1960s,

literary

studies

in the university were, as I said, dominated by very different concerns

from

those

of

today.

Alongside

the

explication

de

texte

(which

was

essen

tially

an

empirical

approach),

students

were

mainly expected

to

accept

the

national

and historical

framework.

The

rare

specialists

who did

something

else

taught

outside

France

or

not

in

literature

departments.

Rather

than

reflecting

at

length

on

the

meaning

of

works,

graduate

students

made

exhaustive

inventories

of

all

that

surrounded

such

works:

the

author's

biography,

the

possible

prototypes

of

the

characters,

variants

of

the

text,

and

the

way

the work's

contemporaries

viewed

it. I

felt

the

need

to

give

balance

to

that

approach

with different

approaches

that I

had learned about from

my

readings

in other

languages:

from the Rus

sian

Formalists,

from

the

German

theorists

of

style

and

forms

(Spitzer,

Auerbach,

Kayser),

from

the

authors of

American

New

Criticism.

I

also

wanted

scholars

to

make

explicit

the

concepts

that

they

used in

literary



9/21

20

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

analysis,

rather than to

proceed

in a

totally

intuitive

manner.

Toward

this

goal,

I

worked with

Genette

to create

a

"poetics,"

that

is,

the

study

of the

properties

of

literary

discourse.

To

my way

of

thinking?now

as

then?the

intrinsic

approach

(the

study

of

the

relation of the

constituents of

the

literary

work

to one

another)

should

complement

the

extrinsic

approach

(the

study

of the

historical,

ideological,

and

aesthetic

context).

This

increased

precision

in the

tools

of

analysis

would allow

more

refined and

rigorous

study,

but

the final

goal

would

remain

the

understanding

of

the

meaning

of the

literary

works.

In

1969,1

organized

with

Serge Doubrovsky

a

conference

on

"The

Teaching

of Literature"

at

Cerisy-la-Salle.

Rereading today

my

concluding

comments

in the

debate,

I

find them

clumsy (they

are

the

transcription

of

spoken

remarks)

but clear

on

this

point.

I

presented

the

idea of

poetics

and

I

added,

"The

disadvantage

of

this

type

of work

is,

so

to

speak,

its

modesty?the

fact that it

does

not

go very

far

and

that it

will

never

be

anything

other than

a

first

step,

one

that consists

precisely

of

noting,

of

identifying

the

categories

at

work

in

the

literary

text,

and

not

of

speaking

of the

sense

of the

text."1

My

intention

(and

that of the

people

around

me

at

the

time)

was

to create a better balance between the intrinsic and the extrinsic, and

also

between

theory

and

practice.

But that is

not

how

things

turned

out.

The

spirit

of

May,

1968,

which

did

not

itself have

anything

to

do

with the direction

of

literary study, completely changed

the

structure

of

the

university

and the

existing

hierarchies. The

pendulum

did

not

stop

swinging

when

it

reached

the

midpoint

and

went

very

far

in

the

opposite

direction,

reaching

the

point

of exclusive concentration

on

intrinsic

ap

proaches

and

on

the

categories

of

literary

theory.

Such

a

change

in

literary

study

at

the

university

cannot

be

explained

by

the

influence

of

structuralism

alone;

or,

rather,

we

need

to

understand

how structuralism

acquired

such a

powerful

influence. This

brings

me

back

to

the

underlying conception

of literature.

During

a

period

of

over

a

century,

literary history

dominated the

university

curriculum. This

was,

principally,

a

study

of

causes

that led

to

the

creation of the

work:

social,

political,

ethnic,

and

psychic

forces

of

which the

literary

text

was

presumed

to

be the result.

Now,

this

history

could be

the

study

of the effects of

the

text,

its

diffusion,

its

impact

on

the

public,

and

its

influence

on

other

authors.

The aim

was to

situate the

literary

work

in

a

causal

chain,

while

the

study

of

meaning

was

viewed

with

suspicion.

Such

study

of

meaning

was

held

to

be destined forever

to

lack scientific

rigor

and

was

thus left

to

lowly

writers

or

newspaper

critics.

As

a

result,

the

university

tradition

rejected

the

view

of literature

as

the

embodiment

of

a

thought

or

of

a

sensibility,

or

as an

interpretation

of the

world.



10/21

WHAT IS

LITERATURE

FOR?

21

This

long

tradition has been

pursued

and taken to an extreme in the

recent

phase

of

literary

studies.

It has been decided

now

that "the work

imposes

the

advent

of

an

order that breaks with

the

existing

order,

the

affirmation

of

a

regime

that

obeys

its

own

laws

and its

own

logic"2

to

the

exclusion of

a

relation

with

the

"empirical

world"

or

with

"reality"

(words

that

are now

used

only

between

quotation

marks).

In other

words,

the

literary

work

is

now

portrayed

as

a

closed

object

made

of

language,

self

sufficient

and

absolute.

In

2006

in

the

French

university,

these abusive

generalizations

are

always

presented

as

self-evident. Not

surprisingly,

lyc?e

students

learn

the

dogma according

to

which

literature has

no

relation

to

the

rest

of the

world

and

they

study

only

the

way

the

parts

of the

work

relate

to

one

another.

This,

no

doubt,

is

one

of the

reasons

students

find the

literary specialization uninteresting:

in

just

a

few de

cades the number

of

those

getting

the baccalaureate with the

literature

option

has

gone

from

33%

to

10%.

Why study

literature when

literature

is

only

an

illustration

of the tools

to

study

literature? At

the

end

of

their

studies,

students of literature find

themselves confronted

with

a

brutal

choice:

either

they

must

become

in their

turn

teachers of literature

or

they

must

join

the

unemployed.

Unlike primary and secondary schools, the French university does not

have

to

follow

a

centrally

established curriculum.

So in the

university

the

most

varied

and

even

contradictory

currents

of

thought

are

represented.

Still,

the dominant

tendency

is

to

refuse

to

see

literature

as a

discourse

about the

world,

and this

tendency

has

a

noticeable

impact

on

future

teachers of

French.

The

recent

"deconstructionist"

movement

does

not

provide

an

alternative. Its

partisans

can,

it is

true,

raise

questions

about

the

way

the

literary

work relates

to

truth and

values,

but

only

to

find?or

rather,

to

declare,

because

they

know

this in

advance,

since this is their

dogma?that

the work is

fatally

incoherent,

that it succeeds in affirm

ing nothing,

and that it subverts its own values: this is what itmeans

to

deconstruct

a

text.

Unlike the classic

structuralist,

who

set

aside

any

question

about

the

truth

of

texts,

the

poststructuralist

is

willing

to

look

at

such

questions,

but

only

to

proclaim

that

they

will

never

be

answered.

The

text

can

only

state

one

truth,

namely

that

truth does

not

exist

or

that

it

is forever inaccessible. This

conception

of

language

extends

beyond

literature

and,

especially

in

American

universities,

concerns

disciplines

whose

relationship

with the world had

never

previously

been

in

doubt.

So

history,

law,

and

even

the

natural sciences

are

described

as

just

so

many

literary

genres,

with

their

rules and

conventions;

identified

with

literature,

which

is

only

supposed

to

obey

its

own

rules,

these

disciplines

have become in

their

turn

closed

and

self-sufficient

objects.

I

understand that certain

lyc?e

teachers

are

delighted

at

this

develop

ment:

rather than

hesitate before

the

unmanageable

mass

of

information



11/21

22

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

available about each

literary

work,

they

know that all

they

have to do is

to

teach

Jakobson's

six

functions and Greimas's six

actants,

the

analepse

and the

prolepse,

and

so

forth. It

will thus be much

easier,

later

on,

to

make

sure

that their

students

learned their lesson

well.

But

have

we

really

gained by

this

change?

Several

arguments

lead

me

to

prefer

the

approach

of

conceiving literary

studies

on

the model

of

history

rather

than

on

that

of

physics?as

seeking

to

inform

us

about

an

extrinsic

object,

literature,

rather than about the

arcana

of the

discipline

itself. The

first

argument

is

that there is

no

consensus,

among

teachers

and

researchers

in

the

literary

field,

about

what

should constitute the

core

of

the

literary discipline.

The

structuralists

now

dominate the

schools,

just

as

the

historians did in the

past

and

as

the

political

scientists

might

in

the future. There

will

always

be

something

a

bit

arbitrary

in

such

a

choice. Not all

practitioners

of

literary

studies

are

in

agreement

on

the

list

of

the

main

"registers"?nor

on

the usefulness of

introducing

such

a

concept

into

their field.

So

this

constitutes

an

abuse

of

power.

Besides,

the

lack of

symmetry

is

obvious:

while

in

physics

the

person

who

does

not

know the

law

of

gravitation

is

ignorant,

in

French the

ignorant

person

is

the

one

who has

not

read Les

Fleurs du

mal.

It is

a

good

bet that

Rousseau,

Stendhal,

and Proust

will

be

well-known to readers long after the names of today's theorists and their

conceptual

constructs

will

be

forgotten,

and

we

reveal

a

certain

lack

of

humility

when

we

teach

our own

theories

about

works

rather than the

works

themselves.

We?specialists,

critics,

professors?are

most

of

the

time

only

dwarfs

perched

on

the shoulders

of

giants.

Does this

mean

that the

teaching

of the

discipline

should

disappear

entirely

in favor

of the

teaching

of

literary

works?

No,

but each

kind

of

teaching

should

have its

own

place.

In

university

studies,

it is

right

to

teach

(also)

approaches,

concepts

used,

techniques.

Secondary teaching,

which

is

not

addressed

to

literary

specialists

but

to

everyone,

cannot

have

the same

object:

it is literature itself that is for

everyone,

not

literary

stud

ies.We should

prefer

the former

to

the latter.

Secondary-school

teachers

have

a

difficult

task:

to

internalize

what

they

learned

at

the

university

but,

instead

of

teaching

it,

to

make of it

an

invisible

tool. The

meaning

of the

work

is

not to

be

confused with

the

student's

purely

subjective

understanding

but

is based

on

knowledge.

To

reach the

meaning,

it

may

be

useful for

the student

to

have

a

limited

vocabulary

of

structural

analysis

or

information

from

literary history.

However,

never

should the

study

of

these

means

for

entering

the

literary

work

be

substituted

for

the

study

of

meaning,

which

is the

goal. Scaffolding may

be

necessary

to construct

a

building

but

the former should

not

be

substituted

for the

latter;

once

the

building

is

done,

the

scaffolding

is

meant

to

disappear.

The

innovations

of

structural

analysis

from

previous

decades

are

welcome

as

long

as

they

remain

a

means

and

do

not

become

goals

in

themselves.



12/21

WHAT

IS LITERATURE

FOR?

23

We need to

go

further. It is not

only

that we

study

a text's

meaning

badly

if

we

limit

ourselves

to

the

strictly

intrinsic

approach,

while

literary

works

always

exist within

a

context

and in

dialogue

with

it;

it

is

not

only

that the

means

should

not

become the

goal,

nor

the

technique

make

us

forget

the

end.

We

must

also

ask ourselves about the ultimate

purpose

of the

works

of the

past

that

we

consider

worthy

of

study.

As

a

general

rule,

the

nonprofessional

reader,

now as

in the

past,

reads these works

not

in

order

to

master

some

method

of

reading

nor

to

gather

informa

tion

about

the

society

in

which

they

were

created,

but

to

find

a

meaning

that

permits

him

to

better

understand human

beings

and the

world,

to

discover in

them

a

beauty

that enriches

his existence.

The

knowledge

of

literature,

in

turn,

is

not

an

end

in

itself,

but rather the

royal

road

leading

to

the fulfillment of each

person.

The

direction that

today's

literary

studies have

taken,

turning

away

from this horizon

("this

week

we

studied

metonymy,

next

week

we

go

on

to

personification"),

runs

the

risk of

leading

us

to

a

dead

end, and,

needless

to

say,

hardly

seems

to

lead

toward

a

love

of

literature.

The

reductive

conception

of

literature

appears

not

only

in

lyc?e

classrooms and

university

courses;

it is

abundantly represented

among

newspaper book reviewers and even among authors themselves. Is this

surprising?

They

all

went

to

school and

many

studied literature in the

university,

where

they

learned

that literature is

self-referential and that

the

only

way

to

appreciate

it is

to

show

the

way

its

constituent

parts

interact.

If

today's

authors

hope

to

receive critical

praise,

they

need

to

fit this

image,

however

pallid

it is.

Besides,

they

often

start out

as

critics

themselves.

We

can

ask ourselves whether this is

not

a reason

why

such

literature is

so

lacking

in

interest for

anyone

outside France.

Many

contemporary

works

illustrate

the

formalist view

of literature.

They

cultivate

ingenious

construction,

mechanical

means

to

generate

the text,

symmetry,

echoes and winks to the reader.

However,

this view is

not

the

only

one

prominent

in

French

literature and book

reviews

as

the

twenty-first

century

begins.

Another

trend is

what

we can

call

a

nihilistic

view of

the

world,

according

to

which

people

are

stupid

and

vicious and

in

which

destruction

and violence

are

the

main truth

and life

is

only

the

start

of

a

disaster.

In

this

case

we

cannot

say

that literature

does

not

describe

the

world: rather than

being

the

negation

of

representation,

literature

is the

representation

of

negation.

This fact

does

not

keep

such

literature from

being

the

object

of

formalist

criticism. For

this

criticism

the world

presented

in the

book

is

self-sufficient,

without

relation

to

the

outside

world;

so

it is

legitimate

to

analyze

it

without

asking

about the

relevance of

the

opinions

expressed

in

the book

or

about

the

truthful

ness

of

the

depiction

that

it

gives.

History

shows this

clearly:

it

is

easy

to

go

from

formalism

to

nihilism and

back,

and

one can

even

profess

both

simultaneously.



13/21

24

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

In turn, the nihilist

tendency

has one

major

exception,

and this con

cerns

the

fragment

of

the

world

occupied

by

the author

himself.

This

practice

derives from

a

complacent

and

narcissistic

attitude that

leads

the

author

to

describe

in

minute

detail

his

slightest

feelings:

the

more

the

world

is

repulsive,

the

more

the self is

fascinating

Even

saying

bad

things

about

yourself

does

not

destroy

the

pleasure.

What

is

essential

is

to

talk

about

yourself;

what

you say

is

secondary.

We

can

call

this third

tendency solipsism, following

upon

formalism

and

nihilism,

from the

name

of

that

philosophical

theory

that holds that

the

speaking

subject

is

the

only existing being.

The

implausibility

of this

theory

condemns

it

to

marginal

status,

certainly,

but

does

not

stop

it from

being

a source

of

literary

creativity.

One of its

recent

variants is

something

called

"autofic

tion,"

self-fiction: the author devotes

just

as

much

attention

to

telling

about

her

humors

but

in

addition

she frees herself

from

any

referential

constraint,

thus

profiting simultaneously

from

the

presumed

indepen

dence

of

fiction

and from the

pleasure

of

self-promotion.

Nihilism and

solipsism

are

obviously

linked.

They

are

both

based

on

the idea

that

there is

a

radical break between

the

self and the

world,

or,

in other

words,

that

there

is

no

shared

world.

I

cannot

declare

the

world totally worthless unless I first exclude myself. Conversely, I can

decide

to

devote

myself solely

to

the

description

of

my

own

experiences

only

if I

judge

the

rest

of

the

world

to

be without

value,

and,

moreover,

of

no concern to me.

These

two

visions

of

the

world

are

thus

equally

incomplete:

the nihilist

leaves

himself and those

who resemble him

out

of

the desolate vision that he

depicts;

the

solipsist neglects

to

represent

the human

and material framework that renders his

own

existence

pos

sible. Nihilism

and

solipsism

complement

the formalist choice

more

than

they

refute

it: in

each

case,

but

in

different

ways,

the external

world,

the

one

that I

have

in

common

with

others,

is denied

or

devalued.

In

this gesture, contemporary French literature is at one with the idea of

literature

that

we

find

at

the

root

of

teaching

and

criticism:

an

absurdly

limited

and

impoverished conception.

What Can Literature Do?

In

his

Autobiography, published

in

1873,

John

Stuart Mill tells

of

the

severe

depression

that

he

experienced

in

his

twentieth

year.

He

was

"un

susceptible

to

enjoyment

or

pleasurable

excitement;

one

of

those moods

when what

is

pleasure

at

other times

becomes

insipid

or

indifferent."3

All the remedies that he tried

turn out to

be

ineffectual and

a

lengthy

melancholy

settled in.

He

continued

to

carry

out

habitual

gestures

in

a

mechanical

way,

but without

feeling

anything.

This

painful

state

lasted



14/21

WHAT IS

LITERATURE

FOR?

25

for

two

years.

Then,

little

by

little,

it diminished. A book that Mill read

by

chance

at

this

moment

played

a

special

role in his

cure:

a

collection

of

poems

by

Wordsworth.

What

he

especially

found

there is the

expres

sion of

his

own

feelings,

exalted

in the

beauty

of the

poems:

"In them

I

seemed

to

draw

from

a source

of

inward

joy,

of

sympathetic

and

imagi

native

pleasure,

which

could

be shared

in

by

all human

beings

....

I

needed

to

be made

to

feel

that there

was

real,

permanent

happiness

in

tranquil contemplation.

Wordsworth

taught

me

this,

not

only

without

turning

away

from,

but

with

a

greatly

increased interest

in,

the

common

feelings

and

common

destiny

of human

beings" (121).

Literature

can

do

a

lot. It

can

hold

out

a

helping

hand

when

we are

profoundly depressed,

guide

us

toward

the other human

beings

around

us,

make

us

better

understand the

world,

and

help

us

to

live.

By

this

I

don't

mean

that it

is,

essentially,

a

Wellness

center

for the

soul; but,

because it

reveals the world

to

us,

it

can

also

transform

each

of

us

from

the

inside.

Literature has

a

vital role

to

play;

but

for

that

we

need

to

take

literature

in both the broad and

strong

sense

that dominated in

Europe

up

until the

end of the nineteenth

century

and

that is

now

marginalized

while

an

absurdly

shrunken

conception

of literature

triumphs.

Ordinary

readers, who continue to look to the books they read for something to

give

meaning

to

life,

are

right,

and the

professors,

the

critics,

and

the

writers who

say

that

literature

only

talks of itself

or

that

it

only

teaches

despair

are

wrong.

If

the

ordinary

readers

were

not

right,

reading

would

be

condemned

to

disappear

quickly.

Like

philosophy

and like the

humanities,

literature

is

made of

thought

and

knowledge

about

the

psychic

and

social world in

which

we

live.

The

reality

that literature aims

to

understand

is,

simply?yet,

at

the

same

time,

nothing

is

more

complex?human experience.

This is

why

we can

say,

rightly,

that Dante

or

Cervantes teaches

us

at

least

as

much about

the

human condition as even the

greatest

of

sociologists

or

psychologists,

and that there is

no

incompatibility

between the first

knowledge

and

the

second. This is

true

of

literature

in

general,

but there

are

also

specific

differences. The

thinkers of the

past,

those of the

Enlightenment

as

well

as

those of

the romantic

era,

tried

to

identify

them. Let

us

recall their

suggestions

and

add

some

others.

A first

set

of

dichotomies

sets

in

opposition

the

sensory

and the intel

ligible,

the

particular

and the

general,

the

individual

and the

universal.

Whether this is

through

poetic

monologue

or

through

narrative,

litera

ture

makes

us

live

unique experiences; philosophy,

on

the other

hand,

manipulates

concepts.

The

first

preserves

the

richness

and

diversity

of

what is

lived,

the second

favors

abstraction,

which

allows

the

formulation

of

general

laws.

A

simple

consequence

of this

contrast

concerns

the

more

or

less

accessible

quality

of

texts.

Dostoyevsky's

Idiot

can

be read

and



15/21

26

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

understood

by

countless

readers,

from different

periods

and

cultures;

a

philosophical

commentary

on

the

same

novel

or

the

same

thematic would

be accessible

only

to

a

minority

with the habit of

reading

such

texts.

On

the other

hand,

for those

who understand

them,

the

propositions

of the

philosopher

have

the

advantage

of

presenting

ideas

without

ambiguity,

while

the lived

adventures of the characters of

a

novel

or

the

metaphors

of

a

poet

lend

themselves

to

many

interpretations.

In

representing

an

object,

an

event,

a

character,

the

poet

does

not

make

a

statement,

but incites

the

reader

to

formulate

one:

she

proposes

more

than she

imposes,

she makes

the

reader

freer

and

more

active.

By

using

words

in

an

evocative

way

and

by using

narratives,

examples,

and

specific

cases,

the

literary

work

produces

a

vibration

of

meaning,

it

sets

off

our

faculty

of

symbolic

interpretation,

our

capacity

to

associate and

provoke

a

movement

whose

reverberations will continue

long

after

the

original

contact.

Poets' truth

and

that of the other

interpreters

of the

world

cannot

claim the

same

prestige

as

science because

poetic

truth

needs?for

confirmation?the

assent

of

many

human

beings,

now

and

into the future. Public

consensus

is the

only

way

to

legitimate

the

move

from the

statement

"I like this

work"

to

the

statement,

"This work tells

the truth." The assertive discourse of a scientist hoping to state a truth

possesses

another

advantage:

because

she

is

making

a

statement,

it

can

be

immediately subjected

to

validation;

it will

be

refuted

or

confirmed.

In

this

case we

do

not

have

to

wait

for centuries and

to

consult

readers

from

many

countries

to

know whether the author

is

saying something

true

or

not.

The

arguments

presented

call forth

counterarguments:

one

can

engage

in rational debate instead of

remaining

in

admiration and

reverie. The reader

of the scientific

text

is less

likely

to

confuse seduc

tiveness

with

exactness.

At

every

moment,

a

person

in

society

is immersed

in

a

web

of discourse

that

presents

itself to her as obvious truths, as

dogmas

towhich she must

subscribe. These

are

the

common

places

of

a

period,

received ideas that

constitute

public opinion,

habits

of

thought,

routines

and

stereotypes,

what

we

can

also

call

"dominant

ideology," prejudice

or

clich?s. Since

the

Enlightenment,

we

have

thought

that the

duty

of

a

human

being

is

to

learn

to

think for

herself,

instead of

settling

for the

ready-made

worldview

that she

finds

surrounding

her.

But

how

to

do this? In

Emile,

Rousseau

calls this

process

of

apprenticeship

a

"negative

education"

and

suggests

keeping

the

person

who

aspires

to

autonomy

far from

all

books,

in

order

to

avoid

any temptation

to

imitate

the

opinions

of

other

people

. . .

Yet

we

can

follow

a

different

logic:

received

wisdom,

especially today,

does

not

need

books

to

gain

control

of

a

young

mind.

Television

has

already

left

its mark The books that the

young

person

takes

hold of could

help

her

set

aside the "obvious

truths"

and free her



16/21

WHAT

IS LITERATURE

FOR?

27

mind. Literature has a special role to play here: unlike religious, moral,

or

political

discourses,

it does

not

formulate

a

system

of

precepts

and

thus

escapes

the

censorship

that strikes down

positions

that

are

explicitly

formulated.

Disagreeable

truths?for

humanity

as

a

whole

or

for

our

selves?have

a

better chance

of

being expressed

in

a

literary

work than

in

a

philosophical

or

scientific work.

In

a

recent

study,

Richard

Rorty

proposes

another

way

to

describe

the

contribution

of literature

to

our

understanding

of the

world.4

He

renounces

the

use

of

terms

like

"truth"

or

"knowledge"

to

describe

this

contribution and

suggests

that

literature

does

not so

much

provide

a rem

edy

for our

ignorance

of the world but rather cure us of our

"egotism,"

understood

as

the illusion

of

self-sufficiency.

Reading

novels,

according

to

him,

is less

like

reading

scientific,

philosophical,

or

political

works

than

it

is like

a

very

different

experience:

meeting

other

people. Making

the

acquaintance

of

new

literary

characters is like

meeting

new

people,

with

the

important

difference

that

we

can

discover

right

away

what

they

are

like

inside. We thus

know

every

act

from

the

point

of

view

of

the

person

who

does

it. The

less these characters resemble

us,

the

more

they

broaden

our

horizon

and enrich

our

universe.

This

internal

broadening

(similar

to

what

representational painting brings

us)

cannot

be

stated

in abstract

propositions,

and that

is

why

we

have

so

much

difficulty describing

it.

It

consists

instead

of

the

inclusion

in

our

consciousness

of

new

ways

of be

ing alongside

the

ones

that

we

already

had.

Meeting

new

acquaintances

does

not

change

the

content

of

our

mind;

instead

the

container

itself

is

transformed,

the

apparatus

of

mental

perception

rather than the

things

perceived.

What novels

give

us

is

not new

information but

a

new

capac

ity

for

compassion

with

beings

different from

ourselves;

in this

sense,

novels

are more

part

of

the moral

sphere

than

of

science. The ultimate

horizon

of

that

experience

is

not

truth

but love.

Should

we

describe the

new

understanding of the human world that

we

gain by reading

a

novel

as a

correction

to

our

egotism, according

to

Rorty's suggestive proposal,

or

as

the

discovery

of

a

new

truth of unveil

ing,

a

necessarily intersubjective

truth?5

The

difference

in

terminology

does

not

seem to

me

to

be the

crucial

matter

here,

provided

that

we

accept

the

strong

link that is made

between the world

and

literature,

as

well

as

literature's

specific

contribution

to

abstract

discourse.

The

boundary,

as

Rorty

points

out,

does

not

separate

the

argumentative

text

from

the

imaginative

text

but rather

from all

discourse,

fictive

or

factual,

that describes

a

human

world other

than

that of

the

subject:

historians,

ethnographers,

and

journalists

are all on the same side ofthat

boundary

as

the novelist.

They

all

participate

in

what

Kant,

in

a

famous

chapter

of

the

Critique ofJudgment,

considered

to

be

a

necessary

step

toward

a

common

sense,

in other words

toward

our

full humanness:

"to think

by



17/21

28

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

putting

oneself in the

position

of

any

other human."6 To think and to

feel

while

adopting

the

point

of

view

of

others,

real

persons

or

literary

characters,

this

unique

way

of

tending

toward

universality,

permits

us

to

achieve

our

calling.

The

intersubjective

truth of

unveiling

or,

if

one

prefers,

the

enlarged

world that

one

enters

thanks

to

the

encounter

with

a

narrative

or

poetic

text,

is the horizon within which the

literary

text

is

inscribed.

To be

truthful,

in

this

sense

of

the

term,

is

the

only

legitimate

requirement

that

we can

make of

it, but,

as

Rorty

perceived,

that truth is

thoroughly

linked

to

our

moral education. It is

instructive

to

reread,

in

this

con

text,

a

famous

exchange

about the

relationship

among

literature,

truth,

and

morality,

the

one

between

George

Sand and

Gustave Flaubert. The

two

writers

were

good

friends,

they

had

great

affection

as

well

as

great

respect

for

one

another,

yet

they

knew

that

they

did

not

have the

same

conception

of literature.

At

the end of

1875

and the

beginning

of

1876,

only

a

few

months

before

Sand's

death,

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