Death of Literary Studies 3

In my experience, only a small minority of people thinks very frequently about the general importance of literary study. The two characters depicted above and all the English professors who led them to where they are, are not included in this minority.
To get a grip on this and find a way into understanding how fortunate we actually are that universities have neglected to dissolve the English major and department, let me return to the history of literary studies' attempt to transform itself into a science. A way of understanding this scenario is to represent approaches to literary texts through the essential questions they ask.
In a conference talk in the mid-1990s, Anthony Easthope suggested that the questions we ask of literary texts have followed a general historical pattern. (In the following, the questions are Professor Easthope's, and my own understanding of them comprises the elucidations.) Easthope proposed the idea that early on, in an era of a sort of proto-history of modern literary criticism around and before World War II, critics asked, "What was the author's real experience?" This question, as I suggested previously, failed to provide a basis for scientific objectivity. And so next, a structural or semiological question arose: "Can we identify the linguistic structures that make a text great?"
When this too proved inadequate to the rigors and requirements of scientific inquiry, the Derridean abandonment of the idea of a locatable textual "meaning" set in, together with the traditional sense that literature does indeed have some sort of social value. A major question posed after 1968, according to Easthope, involved the notion of ideology's influence on a literary text. So the question one asks of a book develops along the lines of one of the following: "What ideological structure is this text upholding?" or, "Does this text uphold a tradition of high culture or a trend in popular culture?" or, "Is this a work of high art or low art?"
Easthope implied that these questions did not seem useful for long because it became generally agreed that an ideology is present in both high and popular art. Soon a more pointed question concerning ideology predominated critical methodologies: "What kind of power (or gender) issues are treated in this text, and how?" This general question embedded itself in literary studies and now plays an influential role, for various reasons, in many approaches to literature.
But Easthope said that another question quickly replaced this as the most eminent: "What kind of psychological construct, or fantasy, does the text provide?" (He alluded here specifically to the writings of Roland Barthes, especially a book called The Pleasure of the Text, first published in 1973.) By this point, the emphasis turned particularly to the experience of the reader him or her self, and away from the text as a scientific object. Significantly, Stanley Fish at about this time was constructing the basics of reader-response criticism, and the "deconstructive" properties of language -- which is to say, the many ways in which any combination of words might be personally interpreted -- were being explored. Literary study, at that point, became specifically reader-centered: What does the text provide me with, and moreover, how do I affect the text?
Easthope's last question, a question for the 1990s maybe, devolved to: "Why am I reading?", with the observation that all reading experience occurs in some specific chosen context, usually institutional -- you are paid by the university to read Wordsworth, or you pay the university to require you to read Wordsworth, or you pay to see a movie which is not about Wordsworth. That is, no one reads Wordsworth unless there is an institutional reason for doing so. There is no other reason to read Wordsworth; i.e., reading Wordsworth has no value or application in itself, but is an institutional game one plays to fulfill certain requirements made for the acquisition of something else -- a paycheck, or a degree (which you hope will get you a decent paycheck), or status in the world of Wordsworth studies. More on this later.
Now this all sounds a bit sardonic, as exceptions do in fact exist -- there are people who read Wordsworth outside institutions, just not very many. And from the 1950s through the 1990s, there have been and are people asking many questions of literary texts other than those described here. They have just done so more quietly, less obtrusively, often struggling to find outlets for their ideas in critical or popular magazines -- which must publish whatever will be read by the most people.
To keep the discussion clear for all, what we are saying here is that you can ask questions of books, poems, plays. You can ask any question you want and re-read the text to find out how the text answers your question. The answer as you shape it is your work of literary criticism. You can ask whatever question is in vogue at the moment in literary studies. Or you can ask, for example, "Do I like

this book? Why do I like it?" and your answer will provide a framework for a standard book review. Or you can ask a more specialized question, such as, "What is this book telling us about the relations between the genders?", or more specifically, "What is this book telling us about power struggles between the genders?", or even more pointedly, "What is this book telling us about the ways in which men exercise power over women?" You can build a whole academic career, from graduate school to retirement, answering just one of these questions about dozens of books.
You can ask any question you like of a book or a poem.
This observation springs helpfully from reader-response theory. You will naturally ask the questions which most interest you. Easthope's final question slyly implies that one's motivations for questioning are essentially self-centered, and to be questioned themselves: "Why am I reading?" may require some very clever self-analysis in crossword-puzzle style to come up with a reply which is ethically or pragmatically satisfying. "No, really -- I really am interested in the number of times a mule appears in modern American fiction." "Hey, everybody's gotta make a living." Your own life replaces the text as the text.
You can ask any question you like of a book, and you can give any answer for which you can provide some coherent rationalization. "What is this book telling us about the social relations between economic classes?" "What is this book telling us about the ways in which myths represent psychological states?" "What is this book telling us about the oppression of gay people?" "What is this book telling us about the similarities between Eastern European families and Native American families?" "What is this book telling us about the formal similarities between the writings of William Faulkner and the writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson?" "What is this book telling us about the experience of second-generation Asian-Americans who face racial discrimination in public schools?"
You can take a more traditional formalist approach and replace any "what" in the above questions with "how." You can take a conventional deconstructive approach and ask which of its own particular ideas, constructions, concerns or ideological dispositions the book is in fact defeating. Or like Roland Barthes, you can ask what kind of a rush the book is giving you.
Often the book itself will point you in the direction of one of these questions, but you don't have to assume it will. You are fully entitled, for example, to ask the Asian-American question of Conrad's Heart of Darkness if you like -- even though Conrad's book is about Africans and Europeans, and at the time it was written there was no concept as we understand it of "Asian-Americans." And if you can invent a credible logic in reply, you can probably (because of a current preference for readings which treat non-Caucasian subject matter) find a journal to publish it.
How many people realize it, I do not know, but we are on very tricky moral ground here. On the one hand I am criticizing literary studies for removing itself from any responsibility to make discussions that are meaningful outside college English classrooms and journals. And on the other hand I am ridiculing it for asking questions that the texts themselves clearly say little or nothing about.
The prime questions to raise about all this, I think, are: Is there more to literature -- and should there be more to its study -- than inventing unique and unusual meanings? Do literary critics have any responsibility to make discussions which are meaningful outside the field of literary study itself?
One reply to these questions concerns academic freedom: Anyone should be free to ask any question he or she likes, and to frame any answer. My questioning of the questions is out of line; asking any question one likes is a basic academic, as well as human, freedom. However, in very basic moral terms, the issue is: Does the fact that one has the moral right to do a thing imply that one should do the thing? And the answer is, of course: No, one has a responsibility to make a judgment about what is appropriate, useful, helpful, authentic, true, beautiful, or meaningful -- however your carefully considered definition of appropriate behavior develops.*
In the breezy world of literary studies, two responses to such a claim are possible. One is that, because of the predispositions of our culture, literary studies are self-contained, like crossword puzzles and games, and do not have any impact on the world at large; and in this context, there is little sense that they should have any impact. Thus, our culture's indifference licenses us to say whatever comes into our minds, like small children misusing grammar or speaking outright gibberish without correction because there are usually no real consequences to what small children say. My position in this essay is that the study of literature is very widely characterized this