On Theory, Literature and Interpretation: A Review

In last week’s readings, Jonathan Culler commiserated with us, admitting that literary theory is seldom, if ever, what we would presume it to be and seldom does what we’d presume it would do. Contrary to what many would expect and prefer, literary Theory is NOT the systematic account of the nature of literature and the methods of analyzing it. Comprised of the disparate fields of anthropology, art history, film studies, psychoanalysis, science, social and intellectual history and sociology, literary theory is a body of thinking and writing that challenges and reorients thinking within its own field of origin and beyond. Its main effect is to dispute common-sense views about meaning, writing, literature and experience. It is irreverently interdisciplinary. It is analytical and speculative. It critiques the notion (and possibility) of common sense, and it is reflexive. As such, theory is intimidating, a resource for constant upstagings between successive generations of theorists.

Our Norton anthology maps out this site of discord by highlighting the central tension between theorists and antitheorists and noting the latter’s insistence that we return to purer days when theory meant systematic reflection on the nature of literature and its production. The problem created by such a return is that it presupposes a static definition of literature and selectively promotes certain modes of scrutinizing it. The narrowness of that definition and the bias present in its preferred mode of analysis actually proves that there is no position free of theory and no way to exclude ourselves from its practice. Said simply, where there are analysis and interpretation, there is theory.

Like Frankenstein’s Creature, theory is a repulsively constructed corpus, built to make sense of an increasingly unknowable world. Taking on a life of its own, the monster causes us to question some of the most unnerving questions of artistic production and human existence. In its quest to be regarded as a valuable and viable being in the eyes of society, it habitually vanquishes several of the people, paradigms and ontological positions treasured and held most dear by its creator(s).



A surprising development from last week’s reading and discussion came as we moved toward defining literature. While many of us anticipated that ‘theory’ would be the more challenging concept to define and conceptualize, it soon became clear that ‘literature’ would be no less unwieldy term to manage. Culler provided us with five points that theorists have made about literature:

1. Literature as the ‘foregrounding’ of language: understanding literature as an organization of language that emphasizes its own strangeness and, in so doing, distinguishes itself from language used for other purposes.

2. Literature as the integration of language: understanding literature as language that is likely to exploit relations between form and meaning or theme and grammar, and marking an argument about how each element impacts the whole.

3. Literature as fiction: understanding literature as a linguistic event that both utilizes narrative form and leaves the work’s relation to the world open to interpretation.

4. Literature as aesthetic object: understanding literature as a marriage between form and content in a text.

5. Literature as intertextual or self-reflexive construct: understanding literature a web of interconnected, inter-referential texts that draw upon one another to create meaning.