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Monday, August 28, 2006
Literary Morphology and Naturalist Criticism
PsyArt has just published an article of mine:
Literary Morphology: Nine Propositions in a Naturalist Theory of Form
This abstract gives the general drift of the (rather long) piece:
Naturalist literary theory conceives of literature as an adaptive behavioral realm grounded in the capacities of the human brain. In the course of human history literature itself has undergone an evolution that has produced many kinds of literary work. In this article I propose nine propositions to characterize a treatment of literary form. These propositions concern neural and mental mechanisms, and literary evolution in history. Textual meaning is elastic—through not infinitely so—and constrained by form. Form indicates the computational structure of the act of reading and is the same for all readers. Over the long term, literary forms become more complex and sophisticated.
Here are the nine propositions, without commentary or explication, listed in the order in which they were introduced in the main text.
1. Literary Mode: Literary experience is mediated by a mode of neural activity in which one’s primary attention is removed form the external world and invested in the text. The properties of literary works are fitted to that mode of activity.
2. Extralinguistic Grounding: Literary language is linked to extralinguistic sensory and motor schemas in a way that is essential to literary experience.
3. Form: The form of a given work can be said to be a computational structure.
4. Sharability: That computational form is the same for all competent readers.
5. Character as Computational Unit: Individual characters can be treated as unified computational units in some, but not necessarily all, literary forms.
6. Armature Invariance: The relationships between the entities in the armature of a literary work are the same for all readers.
7. Elasticity: The meaning of literary works is elastic and can readily accommodate differences in expressive detail and differences among individuals.
8. Increasing Formal Sophistication: The long-term course of literary history has been toward forms of increasing sophistication.
9. Ranks: Over the long-term literary history has so far evolved forms at four successive cognitive ranks. These are correlated with a richer and more flexible construction of the self.
From the introduction:
I have come to think of this work as critical naturalism. While I am not entirely happy with the term—"the natural” is a problematic notion—I prefer it to thinking of this work as deriving from some species of psychology. The problem is that none of these psychologies in themselves has much to say about literature. I find that one has to do quite a bit of conceptual construction to bridge the gap between what those psychologies can comfortably deal with and literature itself, especially literary form. Thus while I have made extensive use of those psychologies, I do not feel that my analytic and descriptive work is of them; it is only commensurate with them.
When I talk of critical naturalism I am thinking of biology as a disciplinary model. Biology involves the study of forms and their diversity, where that diversity is the result of a historical process, evolution. Biology is also, in the words of my colleague Timothy Perper, the study of worlds within worlds; there is the ecosystem within the environment, and the organism within the ecosystem. Some organisms are many-celled, and some are single-celled; in both cases we must study anatomy and physiology. When we study the anatomy and physiology of single cells are studying molecules and molecular processes. The most remarkable of those molecules are those of DNA and RNA; it is these molecules that make life possible. In the very small, biology is about how those molecules reproduce themselves and construct other molecules. In the very large, biology is about how vast populations of those molecules interact with one another through the mediation of phenotypes and environments.
To a first approximation, literature is like that. We have a large diversity of forms embedded in an intersecting multitude of histories. Works must be analyzed in the small, e.g. individual tropes and phrases, and the large, e.g. sonnet cycles and multi-volume novels. Where the biologist examines tissues and molecules, the naturalistic critic interrogates the mind in its brain. Considered one at a time, works yield analyses and readings. Considered in the many, we have periods and movements. Both biology and literature have a mystery at the heart of things, that of origins.
First I offer a general rationale for emphasizing the study of form rather than of meaning. After that I consider the embodiment of literature in the brain. Then we move to the conceptual heart of this essay, that literary works be analyzed as computational forms. I conclude with the long-term evolution of literary forms in human history.
Comments
Care to tell us why form has to be defined as sharable by all competent readers? That is asserted rather than demonstrated. Maybe it is obvious to you, though not to me. Also, the idea of a competent reader--what defines competence? If a reader fails to apprehend the form in the way supposedly sharable by all, does the reader demonstrate incompetence? If so, is competence a naturalistic concept or a cultural one?
Can there be controversies about form, the same way there are about interpretation?
I don’t know how to respond to your questions, Jonathan. You say that I assert, rather than demonstrate, that form is sharable by all competent readers. That is true of the above presentation of the article. But, unless I am badly mistaken about what I’ve done in the article, that is not true for the full article—which is, alas, long and technical. The assertion of sharability comes well over a third of the way into the article, after I’ve had time to lay out a fairly sophisticated neuro-cognitive account of the mind. And once I’ve introduced that assertion, I spend a fair amount of effort explicating it through specific examples.
I’d love to be able to give you a 25-words-or-less account of my argument, but sometimes you just can’t do that sort of thing. This is one of those times. If, however, you’ve read the paper and don’t find my demonstration convincing, or even plausible, then I need more specific questions.
. . . is competence a naturalistic concept or a cultural one?
Both. Human minds are encultured. But culture is not an arbitrary design writ on a natural tabula rasa.
Can there be controversies about form, the same way there are about interpretation?
Can there be controversies about form? Why not? The “same way” as about interpretation? The same way? It’s hard to tell. I’m reasonbly convinced that we don’t have a very good grasp of literary form, starting at the descriptive level. I’m sure we have a lot of work to do simply figuring out how to describe texts, even in the case of poetry, where we’ve got long lists of poetic forms and accompanying descriptions. If you look at only the descriptive aspects of my work on “Kubla Khan” and “This Lime-Tree Bower” you’ll get some idea of what I mean by that statement.
I don’t for a minute think that a more sophisticated descriptive apparatus will eliminate controversy about form. There will be controversy; that’s just how the world is. But I can’t predict what those controveries will be like. Nor do I think we’ll create this more descriptive apparatus without considerable controversy. But I believe that these controversies are more likely to be resolved than interpretive controversies.
"Most of my discussion will center on form itself, taking sharability for granted.” That’s what I was referring to. That act of taking that one aspect for granted. The more complex the description of form becomes in your paper, the less convinced I am that there will be a unanimity of construals. That seemed to be more a point of departure for you than a demonstrated conclusion, though admittedly I haven’t gotten through all the details in the argument yet. I’m sure my question was premature; I just thought I would ask for the *short* answer first.
Gotcha.
There are a number of issues here and, as far as I can tell, they are messy. It seems to me that, ultimately, sharebility requires empirical proof. Recall the definition of sharability: computational form is the same for all competent readers. How do we determine that computational form is the same for all competent readers? We could ask them, but who is going to know what “computational form” of a text means, much less how you describe it? Computational form happens in people’s brains and is unconscious. How do we observe that? It’s not simply that the observations haven’t yet been made, but that it is not obvious how to make them.
While I can discuss the problem of making observations, it gets messy and complicated. So let’s bracket the empirical question and ask another one: Would it be possible to adopt analytic and descriptive methods that would allow critics to reach substantial agreement on the (computational) form of a text? I think so. The only way I can think of to make that case is by demonstration: Analyze and describe some texts and see if other critics agree with the work. Of course, it’s not a matter of saying “yay” or “nay” to a given analysis, but of whether or not the interested critics can arrive at significant mutual agreement. The process starts when someone proposes an analysis of a text.
This is something that needs to be done case by case, that is, text by text. I don’t see any short cuts. For example, I’ve proposed a certain description of “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison.” Is it correct or not? If not, where and why did I go wrong? Maybe I’ll buy this or that counter proposal, maybe not. Let’s say that some unidentified “we” reaches agreement on that text. Let’s do another text, and another, and another.
Obviously, this process can go on for a long time. And maybe somewhere along the line we’ll figure out how to do the empirical work and get the funding to do it.
“2. Extralinguistic Grounding: Literary language is linked to extralinguistic sensory and motor schemas in a way that is essential to literary experience.”
To say anything meaningful along these lines would seem to require much more experimental evidence. Are cognitivists at all close to determining the neural pathways of denotation or connotation, not to say reading? I have not read a great deal on cognition as it relates to reading, but I would suggest your entire “naturalist aesthetic schema” hinges on a complete neurological account of syntax, reading and perception itself, and that is many years if not decades away, if it ever occurs. That said, I admire your speculations, and at the very least the lit. blog community would do well to ponder your central claim that literature has a definite (tho as yet unspecifiable) relation to neural and mental mechanisms.
There’s been quite a bit of work on the neural underpinnings of perception, cognition, and language, including reading. We’ve got more data than we know how to interpret. And competing schools of thought. Whether we’ll ever have a complete understanding of these matters is an open question, and not one that bothers me much. We can certainly do better than the we are doing now.
. . . your central claim that literature has a definite (tho as yet unspecifiable) relation to neural and mental mechanisms.
There is a reasonable group of scholars for whom that claim is non-controversial; the devil, of course, is in the details, which are mostly unknown. Norm Holland, for example, has been teaching a graduate course on “The Brain and the Book” at U. Florida, Gainsville, for a number of years and has a book-length manuscript on the subject. Mark Turner has established a cognitive science program at Case Western that centers on human creativity; Merlin Donald has been hired to chair the department. Elaine Scarry (at Harvard) has been drawing on the neurosciences in her recent lit crit. The Dactyl Foundation sponsored a very interesting conference on cognition, the neurosciences, and the arts last year, and U Conn at Storrs had a literary cognition conference earlier this year. And so forth an so on.
There is a reasonable group of scholars for whom that claim is non-controversial
I realize that, sir, but my point is that, similarly to say Chomsky’s theories, there are cogent if somewhat broad arguments offered (language/ reading/lit. has a necessary relation to brain function/structure) but hardly any hard scientific evidence correlating the reading process, and “concept formation” if you will, with specific biochemical or neural functions. There have been attempts to identify various cortical areas with linguistic and semantic abilities (or other higher cognitive functions such as math and logic), but there is little consensus: where does the transformation from visual sense data of syntax (brought about by patterns of ink on a page) to images/thoughts/concepts occur? Is it discreet, “modular” or more holistic? Obviously the brain functions associated with visual processing are involved as well. Cognitivists have yet to establish the biochemistry of how syntax becomes thought or “qualia.” Yes, they may eventually do so, but that may be decades if not centuries away.
Anyways, sir, I tend to think you are denying, at least slightly, your contrarian side here (indicated to some degree by your posts on Godshalk and character). Assuming a strictly inductive, biological-materialist perspective, literature could obviously end up resembling something like the barks of chimps, perhaps useful (or perhaps not) for advancing the genetic advantages of various human-primate literary factions, whether stalinist goons, neo-vichyians, or dixie fundamentalists, etc.
Assuming a strictly inductive, biological-materialist perspective . . .
That’s your jargon, not mine. I haven’t got the foggiest idea of what you’re talking about. You’re flying so high above the territory you can’t distinguish between land and water much less between hills and valleys.
That’s not so far from what you have been claiming: that literature should be interpreted as a type of biological and neurological phenomena. Obviously a biological “ontology” is materialist (i.e. opposed to transcendent accounts of mind or consciousness) and also has something to do with genetics and with evolution. One doesn’t have to be a hard-line Darwinian to realize that once bio-materialism (or bio-naturalism, if you like) has been decided upon, various cultural institutions--such as literature --lose their vaguely platonic or canonical aspect; instead of being timeless Masterpieces of Western thouoght or whatever, literary works are read as forms of human-primate communication, more or less, which serve some biological end, i.e. natural selection, adaptation, furtherance of the gene pool, etc. Separating cognitive studies from the more traditional types of evolutionary concerns thus seems a bit odd; though that’s not to deny that consciousness (and the perception of literary works) could turn out to be a type of complex, anomalous phenomena unique to humans. And in some sense your bio-naturalist theory of aesthetics would seem to depend on a “unified field theory” of consciousness, a theory which has hardly taken shape.
...literary works are read as forms of human-primate communication, more or less, which serve some biological end...
My most sophisticated statement on this kind of issue is in my book on music, Beethoven’s Anvil. There I take the line that music helps the brain by keeping its timing in good order; subjectively, this is experienced as anxiety reduction. To quote the hardest working man in showbusiness, “it feels good.” Of course, this idea’s a speculative wild-assed-guess (SWAG). I think we desperately need such SWAGs to “open up the conceptual space,” as it were. Getting this worked out is not going to happen through intellectual caution; we’re going to need some real invention. But that’s a meta issue.
Let’s assume I’m right about music. How’s that serve some biological end? Well, pretty much everything we do is mediated by the brain at some level. If the brain suffers in some general way, then everything suffers. And if we can help the brain in some general way, then everything gets better. Well, getting the brain’s timing trimmed up is pretty general. And so I think music’s benefit is pretty general as well.
That is to say, the biological benefit of music isn’t to be found in courtship, or parenting, or hunting, or digestion, or heat radiation, or any of those many specific biological requirements for survival and reproduction. The benefit is a general one, a general one that depends on the kind of group interaction needed for music-making. However it is the story-telling and poetry and play-acting have biological benefits, I figure it will be through a similarly general mechanism.
Now, just how one proves such an argument, that’s a tough one. It depends on a knowledge of brain operations that we probably don’t have to date. So, one has to take it on spec. I’m willing to do that. I’ve discussed these ideas with a first rate neuroscientist, Walter Freeman—who’s also something of a maverick, and others have given me a pass on these ideas. So, if I’m not exactly content, I do think such positions are reasonable and intellectually responsible. At the same time, and this is important, there is no substantial mainstream consensus on these questions. It’s not as though, in assuming this position, I’m abandoning the intellectual high ground in favor of a swamp. No, I’m abandoning a swamp made by others for a swamp of my own devise. Better, I’m abandoning a desert made by others in favor of a swamp of my own.
In any event, this is all theory. And theory is only one aspect of the program I have in mind. As I indicated in my note to Jonathan Mayhew, there’s also the practical business of analyzing texts. That needs to be done as well, and is not tightly coupled to my more abstract theorizing. That is to say, were I in a teaching situation, I could teach certain kinds of textual analysis indendently of my neural theorizing. One learns textual analysis by studying examples of it and doing analyses of one’s own.
FWIW, in my own intellectual history, textual analysis has preceeded theorizing. My theorizing is an attempt to set up a framework in which it is possible to explain the results of textual analysis. I think that my descriptive work on “Kubla Khan” and “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” is pretty strong. But it’s going to take a lot of work to explain why those poems have the shapes I describe. That’s where the speculative theorizing comes into play.
However [if] story-telling and poetry and play-acting have biological benefits, I figure it will be through a similarly general mechanism.
I don’t disagree with this, though might question the somewhat Panglossian tone of your approach (tho Panglossian perhaps endemic to cognitive types of inquiries). Obviously many literary texts are not so uplifting or positive, and there are writers who might argue for say a view of literature grounded in villains and machiavellians “types”: an “Iago meme,” if you will. The Iago meme might not function in some type of altruistic or “positive” fashion; indeed Iago meme most likely relates to carnivore-like activity, or territoriality, genetics, or “instincts” as much as it does to pure conceptualization. It is the sanitizing, cerebral, Cartesian aspects of cognitive studies that I find somewhat troublesome.
The literatteur should keep it in mind that great literary masterpieces--whether King Lear or Miss Lonelyhearts---are, perhaps, only memes: that is to say, sophisticated barks, and generally a bit less useful as political instruments than a .45--or Pentium IV equipped laptop.
A thousand days of rain
winds hold me down
the cold in your hand
the sky falls to the ground
Rip through the stars
to the bottom of the sea
spider webbed doorway
feel burning screams
Deafened ears, blinded eyes
several years to realize
still, so still
One hand on the floor
getting up black and blue
talk to the lawn
my sister who
Gideon´s bible, graveyard
I´ll never get old
lowered in dirt
she´ll never know