Chapter 2. Theory and Philosophy [00:04:29]

Now theory resembles philosophy perhaps in this: that it asks fundamental questions and also at times builds systems. That is to say, theory has certain ambitions to a totalization of what can be thought that resembles or rivals philosophy. But theory differs from philosophy--and this is something that I'm going to be coming back to persistingly in the second half of this lecture and many times hereafter: theory differs from most philosophy in that it involves a certain--this is by no means self-evident, and "Why should this be?" is one of the questions we're going to be asking--it involves a certain skepticism. There seems to be a doubt, a variety of doubts, about the foundations of what we can think and the basis of our opinions, that pervades theory, and is seen somehow or another to characterize its history. Not all theory that we read in this course is skeptical. Some of the most powerful and profound thought that's been devoted to the subject of the theory of literature is positive in its intentions and in its views, but by and large you will happily or unhappily come to terms with the fact that much of what you're going to be reading this semester is undergirded, or perhaps I should say undermined, by this persisting skepticism. It's crucial, as I say, and I'm going to be coming back to it, but it's just a point I want to make in passing about the nature of theory now.

Turning to the word literature, this is not theory of relativity, theory of music, or theory of government. This is a course in theory of literature, and theory of literature shares in common with other kinds of theory the need for definition. That is to say, maybe the most central and, for me, possibly the most fascinating question theory asks is--well, what is literature? How do we know it when we see it? How can we define it? Much of what we'll be reading takes up the question "What is literature?" and provides us with fascinating and always--for the moment, I think--enticing definitions. There are definitions based on form, circularity, symmetry, economy of form, lack of economy of form, and repetition. There are definitions based on psychological complexity, psychological balance, psychological harmony, sometimes psychological imbalance and disharmony, and there are also definitions which insist that somehow there is an epistemological difference between literature and other kinds of utterance. Whereas most utterances purport to be saying something true about the actual state of things in the world, literary utterance is under no such obligation, the argument goes, and ought properly to be understood as fiction--making it up as opposed to referring.

All right. Now all of these definitions have had currency. We'll be going over them again and finding them, I hope, more fascinating as we learn more about them; but at the same time, even as I rattle off this list of possibilities, probably you felt in yourself an upsurge of skepticism. You say, "My goodness. I can easily find exceptions to all of those rules. It's ridiculous to think that literature could be defined in any one of those ways or even in a combination of all of them. Literature is many things, a many-splendored thing," you say to yourself, "and it simply cannot be confined or trapped within a definition of that kind." Well and good, properly ecumenical of you, but at the same time it gives rise to a sense that possibly after all, literature just isn't anything at all: in other words, that literature may not be susceptible of definition, of any one definition, but it is rather--and this is the so-called neo-pragmatist argument--but it is rather whatever you think it is or more precisely whatever your interpretive community says that it is. This isn't really a big problem. It's kind of unsettling because we like to know what things are, but at the same time it's not really a big problem because as long as we know about the fact that a certain notion of literature exists in certain communities, we can begin to do very interesting work precisely with that idea. We can say there's a great deal to learn about what people think literature is and we can develop very interesting kinds of thinking about the variety of ways in which these ideas are expressed. And so it's not, perhaps, crippling if this is the conclusion we reach, but at the same time it's not the only possible conclusion. The possibility of definition persists. Definition is important to us, and we're certainly not going to give it short shrift in this course. We're going to make every effort to define literature as carefully as we can.