Literary History and the Concept of Literature Essay

Literary narrative and the pattern of belles-lettres I From the mid-seventies onwards, some(prenominal) has been said ab extinct the paper of history and literary history that has cast doubt on its noetic credibility. For example, Hayden Whites Metahistory (1973) embroil an influential analysis of the metaphorical foundations of 19th century history writing. In 1979, Jean-Francois Lyotard criticized grand narratives in La Condition postmoderne (The Postmodern Condition), and in 1992 David Perkins presented a whole array of sceptical epistemological and methodological arguments directed against literary history in Is Literary History Possible?.The questioning of literary history has not however resulted in the abandonment of large-scale literary-historical projects, quite a it has inspired attempts to base much(prenominal) ventures on better designs and better foundations. not least, many new ideas around the field project been put off in connection with the preparation of two major industrial plant of literary history sponsored by the ICLA. It is also natural to point to two conjectural publications from 2002 the collection of es conjectures, Rethinking Literary History, edited by Linda Hutcheon and Mario J.Valdes, and Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauers brief presentation of the ideas behind a history of literary flori burnishs in East-Central Europe. ii The Swedish project Literature and Literary History in Global Contexts, which was started in 1998 and will terminate in 2004, focuses specifi scratchy on close to theoretical problems associated with the writing of literary history. We who circumstancesicipate come, mostly, from various handle within oriental studies or from comparative publications. Since the project is sponsored by the Swedish Research Council we al mavin work, or once worked, at various Swedish universities.One of the special features of the project is the interest devoted to human beings histories of literature, a musical style where the general problems of literary history become especially clear and acute. (I shall return to this perhaps unfamiliar genre in a moment. ) triad important cruces in connection with arena histories of literature have been singled out for special banter within the project (i) the apprehension of the purpose of literature, (ii) the understanding of genres, and (iii) the understanding of interactions between literary cultures.These three sets of issues will be make the subject of four volumes of literary-historical studies and theoretical reflections, and these volumes will represent the main cover outcome of the project. In this paper, I shall concentrate on the first of the questions, about the notion of literature. I shall say a few words about the concept of literature itself, point out some of the difficulties that it occasions in a macrocosm history of literature, and conclude with a brief discussion of how such problems may be approached and dealt with. IIIn a sense, of course, at that show atomic number 18 very many concepts of literature if every nuance is interpreted into report, it may well be the case that each person has their own. even if, conversely, one looks at the situation very broadly, one can say that there is an everyday concept of literature in Western culture which is widely shared. That concept came into being in the course of the 18th century. before that, no exact counterpart to our present concept of literature existed both in Western culture or elsewhere, and the distinction between fantastic literature and non-fiction was not of primary importance in the classification of texts. sag Idema and Lloyd Haft have given a concise and clarifying account of how earlier cultures thought about texts and their basic divisions. As long as no to a greater extent than a few written works are in circulation in a given society, all texts are more or slight equally important and valuable. If there is a strikin g increase in the number of writings, with a corresponding differentiation in their content and character, the texts are resemblingly to be subdivided into the categories of high literature, professional literature, and usual literature.Literature (or high literature) is then the term for texts which are felt to be of general educational value and which are, accordingly, regarded as part of the necessary intellectual baggage of every cultured person. Works which contain utilizable knowledge but remain limited to one specific area, such as medicine or military science, are classified as professional literature. Works intended only to amuse, and which have (or are considered to have) no educational value, fall outside the scope of literature. We may call these more or less despised writings trivial literature.In the kind of intellectual culture described in this quotation, the perfect distinction among texts is the one between culturally important texts and culturally less signifi cant ones. In most such cultures classical antiquity, classical Chinese culture, classical Sanskrit culture, and so forth the class of culturally important texts would manufacture most of what we call poetry, history writing, and philosophy, and normally also other kinds of texts some administrative texts, some texts concerning magic, some letters, et cetera.Oral vernacular texts, or comparatively unadorned sham narratives, what we call fictional prose, would normally form part of popular or trivial literature. For complex social, economic, and cultural reasons, this way of classifying texts came to sustain great though gradual transformations in Western Europe from the belatedly 17th to the early 19th centuries. One of the very many critical factors behind the process must have been the growing importance of a new, more rigorous conception of semiempirical truth, associated with the natural sciences.High literature, in the special sense described by Idema and Haft, had alw ays aspired to truth in the sense of great human significance. As the distinction between empirical truth and empirical non-truth became more rigid and more significant and as many other, more or less related developments were taking define new groupings began to emerge in the textual universe. Poetry became dissociated from scientific writings, and in turn also from history, philosophy, oratory, and letters. On the other hand, fictional prose, especially in the pretense of the increasingly appreciated novel, came to be regarded as one of the genres of poetry.With this, our modern notion of literature had effectively taken shape, and the term literature (whose main marrow in the 17th and 18th centuries had been something like education or culture) successively developed into todays normal designation of the concept. v terce The late 18th and early 19th centuries saw the beginning of the writing of literary history of the history of national European literatures, of the histo ry of European literature as a whole and, at least from the 1830s onwards, of the world history of literature.World histories of literature thus comprise a genre which has existed for around 170 years. Among its modern instances are such impressive works as the German twenty-five volume Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft (New Handbook of Literary Studies), print between 1972 and 2002, and the Russian Istorija vsemirnoj literatury v devjati tomach (History of World Literature in niner Volumes) from 1983-94. vii However in the English- language world the genre is more or less extinct, and its very existence appears to be overlooked in the coeval international discussion about the globalization of literary studies.These debates are in the first place inspired by the widespread interest in colonial and postcolonial studies and place the last few centuries at the centre of attention, while the traditional world histories of literature are, in principle, universal in scope, and are meant to cover all multiplication and cultures. In many respects, it seems a good idea to have a world history of literature to fall back on. such works can relate the various literary cultures of the world to one another and put them into perspective. Thus they may create a much needed overview, much as a map of the world helps us to comprehend certain fundamental geographical realities.To some extent, works like the Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft and the Istorija vsemirnoj literatury do just that, and of course they also contain a wealthiness of information and intelligent discussion. Yet, despite their often remarkable qualities, world histories of literature are typically profoundly problematic for a number of reasons. 2 major problems have their roots in the very concept of literature. First, the concept is, in itself, an everyday notion. If employed without additional explications or stipulations, it is too imprecise and inconsistent to form the basis of a rea sonable classification.Second, the concept of literature is a relatively recent Western invention. Its application to other times and cultures will easily lead to anachronistic and ethnocentric distortions. On the whole, world histories of literature are content to sweep such problems under the carpet. They typically prefer to rely on the everyday notion of literature and to include the resulting contradictions in the bargain. For instance, the concept of literature is traditionally employ in such a manner that the criteria for a work to be classified as literature vary depending on the time and the culture one is speaking of.Modern literature is most often seen as consisting of just fictional prose, poetry, and drama. When there is talk of older periods, the concept of literature is however used very inclusively. ix For example, ancient Roman philosophy, history, and oratory are not excluded as being non-fiction instead, such writers as Lucrece, Caesar, and Cicero are considered p art of the European literary heritage. The same duality appears in the treatment of other literary cultures. Thus, for instance, the consecrated Vedic texts (circa 1200 circa 500 B. C.).