Theory Checklist

I. What is the Nature of and What are the Functions of

Literature?
The question of what ”Literature” in fact ’is’ is ^ J’fficult one. Why might a
seventeenth century treatise on religion be Literature, and scads of .poems
about love not be Literature? Is this Literature, or not - ?

Nobody Tiddley-pom How cold Tiddley-pom IIv/w cold Tiddley-pom

Are growing.

knows,

my toes, Well, if it isn’t Literature, what is it? It’s part of our culture, our
heritage; it’s in verse; it’s my toes, in all the bookstores.

Does literariness reside in the idea of quality (in which case a well written
book on brain surgery might be Literature), or in conventions (but many
works which follow the conventions faithfully are not Literature), or in
fictionality - that is, to be Literature it can’t be true - well, not literally, at
least? (The latter question points of course to a further, serious problem: the
truth status of narratives. Is an autobiography true, or is it someone’s
imagination of ’real’ events, moulded to tell a certain story of the self?)

Or, on quite another hand, is ”Literature” merely what your professor (as a
local manifestation of the power of the ruling class) says it is?

1. One might think of Literature as, for instance,

a. a body of texts marked by the imaginative verbal recreation of trie world

as we experience it

b. relying upon the powers of form, allusion, poetic qualities of language and
tropes to intensify and render complex such representation of experience

c. and both drawing on and referencing the forms, the genre and discourse
conventions, and specific examples, of previous literature

d. whose function is not simply to represent our experience but to offer

possible worlds which may expand and/or critique our vision of or
understanding of human life.

Then again, on might have quite other ideas about what constitutes this
cultural practice, or classification, that we call ”Literature,” for instance....

2. And/or is Literature an institution: that is, ”Literature” as a creation of the

joint workings of publishing houses, professional critics, prize-awarding
bodies, anthologizers, and the designers of curricula in universities and
schools. As such, its form and its definition or nature, as well as its ’body’ of
works, may be said to represent the interests of the professionals involved,
and to represent their political agenda and sense of their place in the society.

3. Is Literature, to raise another problem, or the same one in a different way,

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a. a self-contained body of knowledge which refers primarily to itself,

or

b. one instance of the ongoing engagement of writers in the historical and

cultural aspirations, anxieties and crises of the time, consequently responsive
to and formed by the immediacies of history and implicated in the forms and
discourse practices of their time?

These questions lead us to ask, among other things, what the role of
’aesthetic’ value or force as opposed to representational value and force are
in literature, what the real functions of ”literature” and ”Literature” are (that
is, works which we characterize as literature, and literature as a social
structure and practice), what the ideological and/or moral force of literature
may be said to be. II. What is the Nature of the Subject?

1. Questions of the nature of the reader and the author, and of their place in
the process of meaning and significance, lead us to the question of the nature
of the subject-that is, the experiencing self. Is the subject (here are some
possibilities)...

a. an integral entity existing independently of language, cultural meanings, or

the contexts of experience *

b. an entity which is created through one or more of: language and other
symbol systems; social interaction; responses to contexts; such that the
’subject’ might be said to be a social formation

c. a being distributed across different meaning frames and discursive

practices, a ’decentered’ subject, as the phrase is.

2. If the subject is in some manner an amalgam of physical and mental being,

what implications does this have for ethical existence, for the nature of
consciousness and knowledge, and (hence) for the nature and functions of
modes of communication such as literature?

3. If the subject is an entity or a continuum of experience which has an

unconscious and a conscious component; ^TTat is the balance between and
the relation between the two, what is the unconscious and how is it formed,
and to what elements of the unconscious and conscious self does literature
appeal?

in. Who is the Reader?

In brief,
a. is the reader an individual affected only incidentally by history and social
judgment, or is the reader the product of a ’reading formation’, a set of
cultural understandings and expectations and a set of conventions for
reading literature?

b. is the reader outside of and independent of the text, or is the reader in fact
a formation of the text, a ’self created through interaction with it?

The first of these questions has implications for interpretation and evaluation,
the second has implications for the role of literature, especially in the
socializing processes of the culture.

One must ask what the implications are of the apparent fact that one must be
’educated in’ the reading of ’good literature’ in order to appreciate and
understand it. Does this mean merely that appreciating literature is a
complex process, or does it mean that the reader is only a ’proper reader1
after a socializing process, so that ’literature’ is regulated and its
interpretations patrolled by guardians of correct reading? This of course gets
us back to many previous questions, including the nature of ’aesthetic’
experience. *

IV. What is the Relation of the Author to the Text?

0. Is the text the intentional production of an individual, or

1. Is the text an only partially intentional production whose unintended

determinants are one of or a combination of

a. the psyche of the author,

b. the psyche of the culture,

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A HANDBOOK OF STYLE AND STYLISTICS

c. the ideology of the culture,

d. the particular socio-economic conditions of the production (the placement

and role of the artist in the culture, who pays for the production, who
consumes it, what are the rewards of successful production, how are they
decided and, what are the material conditions of production)

e. the traditions of writing which pertain to the text

f. the traditions of the treatment of the particular subject-matter in the

culture and in the genre

2. Or is the text in fact almost entirely the production of the ideological and
cultural realm, in which realm the author is merely a function, whose role,
aspirations, ideas and attitudes are created by the society in which she lives.
In this case, the text is a complex structure of cultural and aesthetic codes,
none of which the author has created, arranged around traditional cultural
themes or topoi - whereas the author herself, while an existent being (her
existence and effort are not denied), has little to do with the ’meaning’ of the
text, as she herself is simply part of (or, constructed by) the circulation of
meanings within the culture.

V. What is the Relation of the Author and the Text to Society?

This issue is implicitly addressed in the preceding questions. As the author is

operating within a certain cultural milieu,

1. In what ways does she represent in her text, deliberately and/or

unconsciously, the understandings of the world that the culture holds?

2. In what ways does she represent in her text, again deliberately and/or
unconsciously, the understandings of what art is and does, the aesthetic
ideologies) of the time?

3. In what ways are the ideologies of the culture, and of the ’educated
classes’, embedded in the conventions, traditions, canons, style and subject
matter of the text?

Moreover the text not only will be an outcome of this situated imaginative
process, but will be structured in its production and in its reception by various
material social forces; consequently one must ask questions such as these:

4. Who is the intended audience, and how does that shape the production of
(the imagination of, the writing of, the editing of, the sale of) the text?
5. Who has a say in the text’s final form, directly (e.g. editors), or indirectly
(who will pay for it and why, who will produce and distribute it)?

6. How is it paid for, and how it is distributed, who has access to it, under
what conditions, and what effects might these conditions produce?

7. What status does that kind of writing have in the culture (e.g. what is its
cache, what is its authority, where in the education and enculturation system
is it placed, how does it relate to entertainment and to the cultural practices
that distinguish the elite)?

8. What cultural powers does the (successful) author have? VI. Where
Does ’Reality’ Exist?

o If art represents reality, as Aristotle argued (and most theorists since him
have agreed), then to theorize art we need to theorize ’represents’ and
’reality1. At a very basic level, does reality exist ’out there’, independent of
humans? - in which case knowledge must be homomorphic with (essentially
the same structure as) reality, else we couldn’t know reality or on the other
hand is ’reality (or are some aspects of the conglomerate of conceptions we
clump together under the heading ’reality) a product of the human mind, of
our systems and methods of knowledge, and of our symbols systems,
including language? How culture-specific is reality?

o Can we ever know reality, or is what we think is reality just a construct?

o If we can know it, what is it we are knowing? After all, we know

symbolically, so all we know are our symbols; and we know according to
constructs of the relations of things, so what we know are those relations. The
post-structuralist (or, structuralist, depending on your definitions)
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THEORY CHECKLIST

591

mamst Louis Althusser wrote that, in effect, what we know is our imaginary
relations to reality that we live in ideology, not in ’reality1. VII. What is
Representation (Mimesis)?

One must consider what it is to represent something, what gets represented,

what relation such representation might have to ’reality1.

Most compeUihgly, is literature a means of representing reality, or it is a

means of representing particular imaginative constructions that we take to be
reality but which may have ideological, cultural, political meanings which
ground and shape the ’reality1 we think we are looking at? VIII. What is the
Nature and Status of Language?

o What is the status of language and rhetoric in literature? Is the language of

literature in any way privileged, intrinsically or culturally? - Is it different from
other discourses? - If so why and how?

o Is there a particular literariness to some uses of language, as Roman

Jakobson, for instance, argues? Are there particular forms of language use,
such as ambiguity or irony, which forms mark a work as literary ( for instance
one school of contemporary theory, lead by the late Paul de Man, maintains
that rhetoric, by which de Man means essentially tropes, ways of saying
something by saying something else, are the hallmark of literary language)?

o Is language composed of signs which have their meaning only in reference

to, and through difference from, other signs, as in the popular Saussurean
model? Or is language an actual indicator of the’real world’?

o Do we speak language, that is, is language subject to our will and intention,
or does language speak us, that is, are we implicated in a web of meaning
located in and maintained by language?

DC. What is the Relation of ”Form” and ”Art” to Meaning?

o What is the role of Form in the meaning of the text? Is form anything at all,
and if it is, what is it?-- A means of constructing reader responses?- A means
of putting meanings into particular relationships with each other?

o And what is what we call ’art1 ? Is art an inherent property of human

existence, or is it a set of learned conventions? Does ’art1 have a privileged
role in representing experience, or is Pierre Bourdieu correct when, after the
exhaustive analyses in Distinctions, he concludes that ’art’ and taste in art
are merely class markers, so that what we think of as ’art’ does not have any
privileged representational force or qualities (other than social ones)? X.
Where is Meaning?

Does ’meaning’ reside in the author’s intentions, in the text, or in the

reading?

o If it is in the text, is it in the text now, or in the text as an historical,

culturally situated document, so that to fully understand the meaning we
might best understand the cultural and aesthetic codes and the traditions
and the meanings of the particular time of writing?

o If it is in the author’s intentions, is that in the conscious, or the unconscious

intentions? -In the intentions before or after the writing, or somewhere in
between? Can, in this case, the text have meanings of which the author was
not aware?

o If meaning is in the reading, is that an informed reading, or any reading,

and what difference does that distinction really signal? Is it in an ideal non-
historical reading, or in a historically and culturally placed reading? Present
your Theory in The 110 Most Beautiful Words in English

adumbrate

Dexterous, agile.

To very gently suggest.

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A HANDBOOK OF STYLE AND STYLISTICS

aestivate

4
5

ailurophile beatific

10

11

beleaguer

blandiloquent

caliginous

champagne

chatoyant

chiaroscuro

12

cockle

13 , ’” 14

colporteur conflate

15

-si 16
V 17
18

cynosure desuetude diaphanous diffuse

19
20

dulcet ebullient

21

effervescent
22

efflorescence
23
pli-rir

24

emollient
25

encomium

26
27
28
29

ephemeral epicure epiphany erstwhile

30

eschew

31

esculent
32

esoteric

33

ethereal
34

etiolate

35

evanescent
36

exuberant

37

felicitous
38

fescue

39
40
41
42

foudroyant fragile fugatioius gambol

To summer, to spend the summer.

A cat-lover.

Befitting an angel or saint.

To exhaust with attacks.

Beautiful and flattering.

Dark and misty.

An effervescent wine.

Like a cat’s eye.

The arrangement of dark and light elements in a picture.

A heart-shaped bivalve or a garden flower.

A book peddlar.

To blend together, to combine different things.

A focal point of admiration.

Disuse.

Filmy.

Spread out, not focused or concentrated.

Sweet, sugary.

Bubbling with enthusiasm.

Bubbly.

Flowering, the opening of buds or a bloom.

A good potion.

A softener.

A spoken or written work in praise of someone.

Short-lived.

A person who enjoys fine living, especially food and drink.

A sudden revelation.

At one time, for a time.

To reject or avoid.

Edible.

Understood only by a small group of specialists.

Gaseous, invisible but detectable.

White from no contact with light.

Vanishing quickly, lasting a very short time.

Enthusiastic, excited.

Pleasing.

A variety of grass favored for pastures.

Dazzling.
Very, very delicate.

Running, escaping.

To skip or leap about joyfully.

THEORY CHECKLIST

593

Beauty.

The finest piece of thread, a spider’s silk.

Happy, sunny, care-free.

Having to do with a wedding.

To overlap to form a regular pattern.

An altercation or complicated situation.

To infuse, instill.

Beginning, in an early stage. °

A naive young -..oman.

The place beside the fireplace.

To thicken.

To jade.

Dull; childish.

A gift given to a customer for their patronage.

A small gulf or inlet in the sea,

Listlessness, inactivity.

Weariness, listlessness.

The response to something funny.

To move musically or lively, to have a lively sound.

Slender and flexible.

Talkative.

Thick, lavish.

Sweet-sounding.

A message or letter.

One of two equal parts, a half.

A misanalyzed phrase.
Foggy.

Snowy, snow-like.

Fawning, subservience.

A concubine in a harem.

A work.

That part of the sea between the horizon and the offshore.

The creation of words by imitating sound.

A formal expression of praise.

A manuscript written over one or more earlier ones.

A complete solution for all problems.

A complete set.

A mixture of art work (art or music) from various sources.

A peculiarity.

Related to the sea or ocean.

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A HANDBOOK OF STYLE AND STYLISTICS

83 penumbra

84 peregrination

85 petrichor

86 plethora

87 porcelain

88 potamophilous

89 propinquity

90 Pyrrhic

91 quintessential

92 redolent

93 rhapsody

94 riparian

95 ripple

96 scintillate

97 sempiternal

98 seraglio

99 serendipity

100 surreptitious

101 sussurous

102 symbiosis

103 syzygy
104 talicman

105 terpsichorean
106 tintinnabulation
107 umbrageous

108 vestige

109 whisper

110 zyzzyva

XL In Conclusion

A half-shadow, the edge of a shadow.

Wandering, travels.

The smell of earth after a rain.

A great quantity.

A fine white clay pottery.

Loving rivers.

An inclination or preference.

Victorious despite heavy losses.

The ultimate, the essence of the essence.

Sweet-smelling.

A beautiful musical piece.

Having to do with the bank of a river or other body of water.

A small, circular wave emanating from a central point.

To sparkle with brilliant light.

Forever and ever.

Housing for a harem.

Finding something while looking for something else.

Sneaky.

Producing a hushing sound, like_ flowing water.

Interdependence of two different species.

The direct opposition of two heavenly bodies.

A symbolic object believed to have magical powers.

Related to dance.

Kinging.

Shady.

A small fragment.

Speaking without vibrating the vocal folds.

A kind of beetle.

These are some of the issues that are raised by the theorists on the course,
and some of the basic questions any consideration of the nature and function
of literature, ana of the meaning and function of particular works of literature,
must address.