Before
I begin, I should like to consider what is meant by the
term 'literary text', and what is meant by the
objectivity of it. According to Terry Eagleton, [1] the
definition of 'literary', as advanced by the Russian
formalists, (who included in their ranks are Viktor
Shklovsky, Roman Jakobson, Osip Brik, Yury Tynyanov,
Boris Eichenbaum and Boris Tomashevsky), is the peculiar
use of language. Literature is said to transform and
intensify ordinary language, deviating from the everyday
colloquial tongue. The literariness of the language
spoken could be determined by the texture, rhythm and
resonance of the words used. There is a kind of
disproportion between the signifier and the signified, by
virtue of the abstract excesses of the language, a
language that flaunts itself and evokes rich imagery.
Eagleton argues that what distinguishes the literary
language from other forms of discourse is the way it 'deforms'
ordinary languages in various ways.
Under the pressure
of literary devices, ordinary language is intensified,
condensed, twisted, telescoped, drawn out and turned
on its head. [1]
According to Wolfgang
Iser, [2] a literary work has two poles; the aesthetic
and the artistic. The artistic pole is the author's text,
and the aesthetic is the realisation accomplished by the
reader. Hence the literary work cannot be considered as
the actualisation of, or identical to, the text, but is
situated somewhere between the two. Iser speaks of the
text as a virtual character that cannot be reduced to the
reality of text or to the subjectivity of the reader, and
it derives its dynamism from that virtuality. Readers
passing through the various perspectives offered by the
text relate the different views and patterns to one
another, thus setting the work and themselves in action.
Objectivity in literary texts had been discussed since
the days of Aristotle, for he originated the literary
theory that emphasises the objective features of the text
and the authorial intentions revealed by those features.
His Poetics analyses the objective features of
Greek epics and dramas as means that are more or less
appropriate to the full realisation of various literary
intentions.
The idea of objectivity in the text is also analysed in
the first chapter, Theory before theory of Peter
Barry's Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary
and Cultural Theory. [3]
1. The literary
text contains its own meaning within itself. The best
way to study the text is to study the words on the
page, without any predefined agenda for what one
wants to find there.
2. The text will reveal constants, universal truths,
about human nature, because human nature itself is
constant and unchanging. People are pretty much the
same everywhere, in all ages and in all cultures.
3. The text can speak to the inner truths of each of
us because our individuality, our "self,"
is something unique to each of us, something
essential to our inner core. This inner essential
self can and does transcend all external social
forces.
4. What critics do is interpret the text (based
largely on the words on the page) so that the reader
can get more out of reading the text.
But can readers, each
having their own subjective view, reconcile their
responses to the grandiose generalisations above?
To begin my discussion using reader-response theory, I
should like to start with Stanley Fish's concept of
phenomenology. In his books Surprised by Sin: The
Reader in Paradise Lost and Self-Consuming
artefacts: The Experience of 17th Century Literature
(1972), Fish focuses on the reader's experience of
reading literature. Fish argues that a work of literature
becomes reality for the critic through the act of reading,
a process he terms 'reception'. As reading occurs through
time, the experience of literature involves a continuous
readjustment of perceptions, ideas and evaluations, with
the meaning of the work encountered in the experience of
it. Literature becomes a process in which its criticism
involves the processing of phrases and sentences in a
slow sequence of decisions, revisions, anticipations,
reversals and recoveries. This view reflects Fish's
definition of phenomenology as defined in the preface to
his book Surprised by Sin -
Meaning is an
event, something that happens not on the page, where
we are accustom to look for it, but in the
interaction between the flow of print (or sound) and
the actively mediating of the reader-hearer. [4]
This means that
however subjective a reader's response is to the text, it
is the continuous shaping of the events of the reader's
mental process that slowly adjusts the thoughts to
finally reach an understanding of the actual meaning of
the text. Hence according to Fish's phenomenology theory,
what starts out as a subjective process of the reader
ends up in the reader achieving the objective of the
literary text. According to Fish, the objectivity of the
text is no longer distinguishable from the subjective
inferences of the reader in the process of reading. To
him, meaning and form are co-extensive with the reader's
experience, and the phenomenology of time determines the
meaning and form of a work.
Fish breaks the traditionalist mode by making the work
disappear into the reader's experience. Fish regards the
text as a rigorous, authoritative controller of the
reader's developing process, with meaning created in the
reader by the author as the text develops during the
reading process. The kind of reader he is aiming at is
the 'informed reader', one who not only possesses a
mature grasp of language, but is also able to deal with
literary conventions, to make appropriate choices
concerning connotations, implications, suggestions etc
about the text while reading it. [5] This enables the
objectivity of the literary text to be retained
throughout the process. This view bears a resemblance to
Husserl's idea of phenomenology, when the critic/reader
is asked to empty his mind of all pre-conceived ideas and
to respond directly to the text, hence discovering in the
process, the unique mode of consciousness of the author.
Interpretation of the text is possible, as the reader's
consciousness melds with the author's, as described by
Georges Poulet in his lecture, Interiority and
Criticism.
Take a book, and
you will find it offering, opening itself. It is the
openness of this book that I find so moving. A book
is not shut in by its contours, is not walled up as
in a fortress. It asks for nothing better than to
exist outside itself, or to let you exist in it. In
short, the extraordinary fact in the case of a book
is the falling away of the barriers between you and
it. You are inside it; it is inside you; there is no
longer either outside or inside. [6]
Poulet goes on to
describe the significations grasped by his mind when the
object (the book) he holds is no longer a mere object,
when it becomes animated. He becomes aware of the
consciousness found within the book, the consciousness of
the author.
Hans Robert Jauss, an exponent of the reception theory,
coins the term 'horizon of expectation' in describing the
criteria readers use to judge literary texts. These are
the criteria that would help the reader judge between a
poem, a drama, an epic or a tragedy. One example is that
of judging a poem in accordance to the period in which it
was written, for example whether it is a Spenserian love
poem or a poem by Pope from the Augustan period. But it
does not tell us the true value of the poem. Hence the
objectivity of the poem is distinguishable from the
subjectivity of the reader's response, because the
reception of different groups of readers from different
ages and periods would differ. Taking again the example
of a poem by Pope; during the second half of the
eighteenth century, commentators began to question
whether Pope was a poet at all and to suggest that he was
a clever versifier who could put prose into rhyming
couplets but lacked the imaginative power to create great
poetry. Yet today, we appreciate Pope's poems for their
wit, complexity, moral insight and renewal of literary
tradition. [7] This is because the 'horizon of
expectation' only tells us how the work was valued and
interpreted when it appeared, but does not establish its
full meaning.
According to Jauss, it is equally wrong to say that a
work is universal, that its meaning is fixed forever and
open to all readers of any period. Hence, there is no
single predetermined 'adequate' reception of a given text
on which the literary theory needs to focus. Instead, all
actual receptions in the past and present are valid, with
their particular characteristics becoming the objects of
study. Thus historical knowledge is of importance to the
reader. This approach contradicts what the
phenomenologists have to say about the universability and
openness of the text. He goes on to elaborate that a
literary work is not an object that could stand by itself,
nor is it a monument which reveals its timeless essence
in a monologue.
Iser, another major proponent of the German reception
theory, who, like Jauss, also draws heavily on the
phenomenological hermeneutics of Ingarden and Gadamer,
decontextualises and dehistoricises the text and the
reader, which means that the reader always reads the text
in relation to his or her extra-literary norms, values
and experiences. This brings forth the concept of 'concretization'
in a text where the text is 'completed' in reading,
meaning that the 'gaps' in the text are said to be 'filled'
by the reader in the act of reading or producing the 'virtual'
work referred to earlier. While Iser does not set the
boundaries of the text's determinacy and the reader's
filling of the 'gaps', the phenomenological aspect of his
work calls for the reader's experience to be the central
concept. Unlike Jauss, Iser's subjectivity of the reader's
response becomes less distinguishable from the
objectivity of the text. [8]
These views bring certain questions to mind. Whose
opinion are we to accept? Would the opinion of the first
readers of the text be questionable? (This question has
actually been answered in cases where certain authors
were not accepted by their peers but became regarded as
literary greats posthumously). Should we work on the
assumption of collective acquiescence? We could try using
hermeneutics to find the answer.
Husserl thought of meaning as the 'intentional object'.
By this he meant that it was neither reducible to the
psychological acts of a speaker or listener, nor
completely independent of the mental process. Meaning is
not as objective as a table is, but neither is it simply
subjective. It is an 'ideal' object that can be expressed
in a number of different ways but retain its meaning.
Hence, it is considered that the meaning of the literary
work is fixed (or objective in its meaning, in accordance
with the definition above), identical in every sense to
the mental object the author had in mind, or 'intended',
at the time of writing.
A slightly different position is taken up by the American
hermeneuticist, E.D. Hirsch Jr., whose work Validity
in Interpretation is indebted to Husserlian
phenomenology. Hirsch does not see the author's intended
meaning as his mental process at the time of writing, for
that would nullify any attempt to determine the objective
meaning of the text. By not getting into the
consciousness of the author, your interpretation of the
work is not influenced by it. One might take the view
that this differs somewhat from the phenomenology theory
of Fish, because the authorial intention or the
consciousness is rendered invalid within Husserlian
phenomenology. He also speaks of the 'intrinsic genre',
where the sense of the whole is the means by which an
interpreter could understand the text. This relates
closely to the concept of horizon, which sets the
boundaries of the text. Yet it goes further to specify
that the genre is merely a rough guide to the meaning of
the text, reached in part through educated guesses. Hence
one can say that the subjectivity of the reader is
indistinguishable from the objectivity of the text. This
is because Hirsch's author-centred theory of meaning, in
taking this rather strict sense of intention, considers
verbal meaning as the will of the author. This allows for
limitless 'intentional acts', which in the end would
reach the same conclusion (or meaning).
Hirsch takes a referential view of the theory of meaning.
He defines verbal meaning as 'a willed type'. Hence the
idea of meaning is initiated personally, leaving the text
to not exist outside the interpretation of the reader. An
important facet of Hirsch's author-centred theory of
meaning is his differentiation between meaning and
significance. He found that these two have often been
mistaken for each other, which led to the banishment of
the author as the ultimate source of meaning for the text.
When the disciples of the new hermeneutic refer to the
meaning of the text changing for the author, they are
actually referring to his change in 'response' to the
text rather than some idea of a revising of his text.
This clearly points to a difference between 'response'
and meaning. This boils down to the need to differentiate
between the meaning (what the text on the page represents)
and significance (the relationship of meaning and almost
anything else). [9] A change of significance does not
lead to the change in meaning.
But the objections that some critics (and I myself) have
are the fact that not all authors of literary texts are
known (take Beowulf for instance). The second objection
to this theory is as quoted by Pogemiller, writing of
Hirsch;
Two possibilities
are available as candidates for what makes up radical
historicism: time and individual perspective. If time
is the key ingredient, then the realisation must be
made that each new moment brings with it a new
perspective and new language, which will have to be
accounted for with regards to interpretation. Given
the argument by radical historicists that only the
present texts are available for interpretation, this
view of time must be ruled out. No text would be
available 'in the present'. If individual perspective
is the key, then historicist dogma reduces to simple
psychologism: men in general, being different from
one another, cannot understand the meanings of one
another.
Heidegger also rejects
the objectivity of the reader for he argues that the
distinctiveness of human existence is that of 'givenness':
our consciousness projects things into the world, and at
the same time receives the thing from the world. We can
never adopt an attitude of detached contemplation, and
this is the facet of the theory that is adopted by
Gadamer in Truth and Method. He says that the linguistic
nature of all interpretation includes the possibility of
a relationship with others. There can be no speech that
binds the speaker and the person spoken to. Hence when
understanding another person, we assimilate the point
into our lives, living as much as possible in that person's
contexts and symbols. Hence history poses no problems for
interpretation. The interpreter interprets from within
history with the gap filled by the 'continuity of custom
and tradition, which determine the patterns of thought
and language of the contemporary culture'. [10] Hence a
bridge is built between history and interpretation.
Pogemiller writes,
Within his new
approach to the gap problem, Gadamer takes the
traditional position of the new hermeneutic in
combining interpretation, understanding and
application into one entity. He writes: "understanding
always involves something like the application of the
text to be understood to the present situation of the
interpreter. . . . [we must regard] not only
understanding and interpretation, but also
application as comprising one unified process."
So the objectivity of
the text is linked to the response of the reader, if we
are to accept the implications of Gadamer's view.
In the introductory page of her book, Elizabeth Wright [11]
writes of psychoanalytic criticism as contributing to the
creative process, both before and within the language,
hence leaving implications to aesthetics. To illustrate
the idea in psychoanalytic theory that reading might be
another form of rewriting the text by the reader (the
virtual dominion created by the reader to temporarily
store his/her perceptions and impressions), hence
rendering the objectivity of the text to the subjectivity
of the reader, I would like to quote Wright on Freud:
Freud detects
three particular analogies between this writing
apparatus and the perceptual apparatus, to which
Derrida draws attention: (1) the celluloid
corresponds to the protection that the psyche
institutes for itself against an excess of stimuli
from without; (2) the fact that the paper is re-usable
represents the endless capacity of the perceptual
system for responding to the sensory stimuli without
becoming overloaded in any way; (3) the impressions
that actually remain in the underlying wax-'legible
in suitable lights', as Freud puts it (XIX, p. 230)-
stand for unconscious traces which remain hidden in
the unconscious. Derrida fixes upon the writing
metaphor, especially through the third analogy, which
brings out the continuous interaction of those hidden
traces with the succeeding script. The unconscious is
thus active at complex and profound levels as the
marks of repression are inscribed. Blurrings and
obliterations take place beneath the concealing paper.
Derrida sees the possibility of the unconscious as
thus active in all experience with the signifiers of
the repressive order, which is only a form of
rewriting, becoming 'legible in certain lights' (Wright
p.136).
The seductiveness of a
text involves it being slowly unveiled to the reader who
is trying to grasp the textual and contextual meaning.
Wright differentiates between 'structural' and 'post-structural'
psychoanalytic theory by putting the former in the
context of the reader of both literary and life texts,
determined by a history that precedes the reader. So it
is the reader who is transformed. This would mean that
the objectivity of the text remains and becomes
distinguishable from the reader. In the latter analysis,
the reader engages in a dialectical play that moves the
text to a new meaning, undermining the old power and
exposing the text as being self-contradictory. She
summarises the differences as being non-differentiable
since -
the reader /
writer distinction is no longer valid because making
sense of the sign system implicates both: each is
caught in a net of signs, is up against language.
Reading, writing and criticism are part of a
continuum whereby readers write in the act of reading
and writers are shown to read in the act of writing.
[11 p.122-123]
As to how the author
impacts the consciousness of the reader through the use
of narrative techniques, Iser proposes that the
structures of the literary text are fixed but the lines
joining them are variable. An author might try to
influence the reader's imagination, but none worth their
salt would lay the whole text bare before the reader,
since it is by activating the imagination of the reader
that the author can hope to involve him. [12]
David Bleich found fault with Hirsch's argument that when
a reader shares the meaning of the words with the author,
this makes the meaning of the words in the text objective
and determinate. He also notes Hirsch's argument that
literary forms and conventions also create meaning, which
to him is a mere triviality in interpretation since it
does not amount to a dispute. To Bleich, Hirsch's
argument fails when there is verbal ambiguity. [13]
Bleich says;
By deciding on a
purpose in common and in advance, and by then
pursuing this purpose in dialectic with the response
statement, the knowledge developed is understood as
one sort among many likely interests of each reader.
The ethical precepts formulated from the dialectic
between the reading experience and one's own life
experience represent genuine, usable, consequential
knowledge, as opposed to ritual locutions or
sanctimonious declarations of having discovered the
true moral purpose of the author. [Bleich p.158]
Hence, Bleich is
inadvertently saying that there is no existing standard
of right and wrong, with the reader determining the
interpretation of the text most suitable to his or her
needs. In this case, there is no clear distinction
between the objectivity of the text and the subjectivity
of the reader.
So what is the text? Iser feels that the text only takes
on life if it is realised. This is another way of stating
Poulet's position. So, if the text is in an object which
the subject creates, there is no way one can
differentiate the text from the reader. The paradoxical
situation that we are encountering now is that there
exist no 'text' before there is a reader.
This argument is further complicated by the idea of the
implied reader being of a specific kind, an informed one,
who can fill in 'textual gaps'. Would that mean that the
objectivity of the author (and the text) no longer exists?
According to most of the reader-response theories, they
do not, except in the realm of the imaginary, until they
achieve Konkretisation, to quote Ingarden. [14] But there
exists also an ambivalent attitude of some theorists who
initially tried to draw the line between text and reader,
but eventually reached the similar conclusion of the text
not being distinguishable from the reader. Perhaps the
text would remain only a mere hypothesis. In which case,
how would one critique the 'inspired text', such as the Koran
or the Bible? The question remains as yet
unanswered by the reader-response theorists.
References
1. Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory, 2nd ed. Blackwell
Publishers, Oxford, 1996, p.3
2. Readers and Reading. Ed. Bennet, Andrew. Longman
Publishing, New York, 1995, p.20-21
3. Barry, Peter. Chapter One, "Theory Before Theory.
Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and
Cultural Theory". Manchester and New York:
Manchester University Press. 1995
4. Bennet p.35-36
5. Bennet p.237
6. The Structuralist Controversy: The Language of
Criticism and the Science of man. Ed. Macksey, Richard et.
al. John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1970. p.57
7. Selden, Raman & Widdowson, Peter. Contemporary
Literary Theory. 3rd ed. University Press of Kentucky,
Kentucky, 1993. p.53.
8. Selden and Widdowson. p.55
9. Pogemiller, Dwight. Hermeneutics and Epistemology:
Hirsch's Author Centered Meaning, Radical Historicism and
Gadamer's Truth and Method Premise. vol. 2, no. 8, Sept
27, 1995 p.10
10. Pogemiller p.10
11. Wright, Elizabeth. Psychoanalytic Criticism: Theory
in Practice. Methuen: London, 1986, p.5
12. Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader. John Hopkins
University Press: Baltimore, 1974, p. 285
13. Bleich, David. Subjective Criticism. John Hopkins
University Press: Baltimore, 1978, p.95
14. Iser p.274.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Poetics.
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to
Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester and New York:
Manchester University Press, 1995
Bennet, Andrew. Ed. Readers and Reading. New York:
Longman Publishing, 1995
Bleich, David. Subjective Criticism. Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press, 1978
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory, 2nd ed. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1996
Fish, Stanley. Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise
Lost
Fish, Stanley. Self-Consuming artefacts: The Experience
of 17th Century Literature (1972)
Hirsch, E. D. Jr. Validity in Interpretation
Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader. Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press, 1974
Macksey, Richard et. al. ed. The structuralist
Controversy: The Language of Criticism and the Science of
man. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1970
Miall , David S. and Kuiken, Don. The form of reading:
Empirical studies of literariness
Pogemiller, Dwight. Hermeneutics and Epistemology: Hirsch's
Author Centered Meaning, Radical Historicism and Gadamer's
Truth and Method Premise. Verbatim 2.8 (1995): 10
Selden, Raman & Widdowson, Peter. Contemporary
Literary Theory. 3rd ed. Kentucky:
University Press of Kentucky, 1993
Wright, Elizabeth. Psychoanalytic Criticism: Theory in
Practice. London: Methuen, 1986
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