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Thursday, May 19, 2005
Discipline
According to Timothy Burke, by referring in a previous comments thread to the notion of the “test of time,” I was putting forward “the proposition that the canon consists of works which achieve sufficient universality and depth of meaning that they continue to have value long after the historical moment in which they were initially published.” George Williams similarly claims that I used the phrase “to describe how the modern literary canon came to be.”
But I did no such thing.
Here is what I actually said:
No one who cares about these [literary] works believes that the facts of their printing have anything to do with why they have passed the test of time: They continue to be compelling reading, no matter how the words are presented.
There’s nothing here about canons, about “universality” or “depth of meaning.” I merely said that some works of literature survive over time because sufficient numbers of readers continue to find them worth reading. Period.
I am returning to this subject for two reasons: 1) I am perhaps in danger of being perceived as some sort of Roger Kimball-like defender of all things traditional in matters of art and culture. I am not. In fact, I don’t believe in canons or in the idea that works of literature are to be admired for their “universality.” I do believe that literature has aesthetic value, and that the experience of reading fiction and poetry is most immediately an act of perceiving their aesthetic qualtities. But apparently all one has to do is use an otherwise innocuous phrase like “test of time” (the simple meaning of which is, I think, obvious to almost everyone) to be categorized as a reactionary scion of Matthew Arnold, or worse.
2) It is a measure of how far literature--as in seriously intended novels, stories, or poems considered collectively--has become entangled in the thickets of academe that even to note that some works do survive from generation to generation makes some people begin to reflexively discourse about “the canon.” In this way, both the traditionalists and the canon-busters are really just dancing a furious pas de deux. The former want to preserve the canon because they think it does indeed embody universal values that need to be passed on. The latter need to preserve it because if they didn’t have it to kick around some more they really wouldn’t have anything else to do. Meanwhile, those who might be interested in literature for other than its utility in this version of the culture war can only become inreasingly frustrated as they watch this absurd performance and as literature continues to be hostage to the prerogatives of academic literary study--as purely the “subject” of an academic discipline that continues to evidence less and less interest in it except to the degree that its lingering intellectual cachet keeps the discipline alive.
At any rate: If you want to take me to task for my backward views, please attend to what I actually wrote rather than construct a straw man of your own to slap around a little.
Comments
...otherwise innocuous phrase like “test of time” (the simple meaning of which is, I think, obvious to almost everyone)...
I’m not sure the “simple meaning” of the test is “obvious to almost everyone.” After all, as you know, lots of folks have learned to hear “the canon” whenever anyone says “test of time,” and as a result they might have lost a handle on what else “test of time” could be referring to other than some position in the canon war.
To my mind, the standard, plausible use of “test of time,” both in 18th-C. Scottish aesthetics and today, acknowledges that survival is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for aesthetic (or literary) value. Some works deserve to survive but don’t, and others would die a natural death if it weren’t for some form of life support (fashion, marketing, an enigmatic author, etc.) that has nothing to do with their aesthetic character.
What the test shows is really quite modest, then: works that a little labor might reveal to have survived because of their aesthetic (or literary) value. Or: if you are interested in aesthetically successful works, your odds of finding one might be higher if you choose (at random) a work that has passed the test of time than if you choose (at random) from the list of all works in print.
Of course, some are skeptical even of this modest
Let me throw out the idea that “passing the test of time” is somewhat like “moving to a higher league” in sports. Sometimes a very good role-player at a lower level can be a very good role-player at the higher level; whereas a big star at the lower level can fail entirely at the higher level.
Ambrose Bierce is still read, for example, whereas many of the more ambitious authors of that time (who are really quite good) are not. Or compare Edward Lear and Carlyle, or Christian Morgenstern and [various ambitious German poets of that time]. Or Mussorgsky and Satie, vs. many much more prolific and skilled composers.
There are various distinctions mixed in there, but the point is that it’s one thing to be noticed in your own time, and a different thing to be noticed at a later time, and that this doesn’t have to do so much with ambition or success or even quality, but whether you bring something unique to the higher level.
"Only time will tell If we stand the test of time”.
Van Halen 1984, “Can This Be Love?
I apologize sincerely for the close-to-angry (or maybe just angry) nature of my responses to your posts. I appreciate you continuing the conversation.
I will note two of the things you have said:
1) “No one who cares about these [literary] works believes that the facts of their printing have anything to do with why they have passed the test of time”
2) “I merely said that some works of literature survive over time because sufficient numbers of readers continue to find them worth reading.”
And I merely said that the facts of their printing have a great deal to do with whether or not sufficient numbers of readers can actually read them, much less find them worth reading.
Don’t dismiss as irrelevant my approach to studying language and literature, and I promise to treat you with the same respect. Deal?
the facts of their printing have a great deal to do with whether or not sufficient numbers of readers can [1] actually read them, much less [2] find them worth reading.
Re (1): Perhaps you think the test of time is the sheer-mere fact of survival. It isn’t, at least not according to the philosophers who’ve labored to clarify the notion (e.g., Savile).
Re (2): Facts about printing (and fads and marketing and literacy, etc.) may influence audience judgments, but they do not influence whether the books are in fact worth reading for their aesthetic merit.
For my part, facts about printing are very interesting and important. Especially when they’re attended to by folks who bother to develop accounts with real predictive power of how printing facts influence the prevalence of verdicts in a group.
Such facts--and causal models that might explain them--are interesting and important, but they are systematically irrelevant to normative questions about literary value.
1. Facts about printing never bear on whether something passes the test--rather, such facts bear on whether
With noteworthy and crucially important exceptions, works that deserve to passClearly, facts about the printing of works bears on whether sufficient (though sufficient for what?) numbers of readers can actually read them.
I actually did not directly reference you in my own entry, Daniel
I agree with part of what you’re saying here, but I think it’s not the whole story. You’re asserting that literary works survive because sufficient numbers of readers find them worth reading, but you seem to think that’s a sufficient statement in its own right, as if it references some self-evident process of readership in which readers spontaneously encounter literature generation after generation and judge it worth reading or not.
There are literary works which continue to be read largely without “canonization” in any respect, without pedagogical compulsion or the advice of literary taste-makers, which generation after generation really do rediscover and find valuable.
But think of how many of us first encounter literary works of enduring value. Not on our own, but because they have been assigned to us by a teacher. Or because they are described in some authoritative manner as being of value. That’s how I first read Thomas Hardy, Henry Adams, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, JD Salinger, and many other authors’ work. I was assigned them, instructed in how to read them, told what their value was, and tested on my understanding.
In most cases, I found what my teachers said persuasive because of my own experience of reading these literary works, though I have to say that Thomas Hardy in 10th grade was a bit of a slog. I found value on my own as a reader once led to the texts.
But this means that the circulation of literature is never just a kind of unsupervised process of readers surveying a vast field of writings from the past, judging it innocent of any social or institutional pressures, and transmitting forward what they judge of value. The canon is there as a presence in the process, the judgements of expert critics, teachers, taste-makers, and so on. We are led to some literature and led away from some literature in many different contexts. Some literary works stay in circulation because of the dedicated efforts of genrations of literary critics who see value in those works even when many readers no longer do; some literary works stay in circulation because readers insist, strenuously, that the work is valuable even when expert critics do not agree. There is a spontaneous, popular, disorganized “wisdom of crowds” in the finding of aesthetic merit--but there is also a process of canon-making that is institutionalized that is also very powerful.
The romance novel is an instance of literature “standing the test of time” without necessarily being formally taught or institutionalized. Don Quixote read romance novels. Madame Bovary read romance novels. Tom Sawyer read romance novels. Paolo and Francesca did. Romeo and Juliet. Kleist reported that in a provincial German library he visited, every single book was a romance novel.
And in general though not universally, Kleist, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Flaubert, and Twain thought that the romance lovels were crap. So the romance is a durable, popular anti-canonical genre which had enormous influence on serious literature.
To me, medievalism is more fun when you realize that you’re reading pulp. From the beginning the vernacular romance was an alternative to the high Latin culture of its day.
By now, some of the old crap has been canonized and is read by serious people. Romance is a pop, happening form, though, and today’s romance readers won’t read Yvain or Sir Walter Scott. New stuff is being produced for them, and the first AI novelist will almost certainly write a romance novel.
gzombie: I don’t dismiss anyone’s approach to studying literature. Perhaps we have a different understanding of “literature.” I think of it as those texts that have indeed stood the test of time because of their continuing appeal to individual readers. You think of it as an ideological category whose appeal to readers in general needs to be explained.
TB: I too was first introduced to many works of literature in an academic setting--largely in college. However, while I was indeed assigned them, I was not “instructed in how to read them” (except generically) or “told what their value was.” I mostly learned how to read literature simply through continued reading on my own, and although I may have been given opinions about value, I always tested them against my own. I assume this is the way most people who read fiction or poetry extensively came to their own literary maturity.
JE: I was speaking of individual works and not entire modes or genres. Still, even genres persist over time because writers and readers in succeeding generations find that they continue to speak to their own present concerns.