Theory of Literature

Paper Summary:

What kind of work does literature do in the world? What does a text do that a song does not? What difference does it make that we can read? And, indeed, why should we read at all? Does the written text have any redeeming value in our own age, or are we in a post-textual (as well as a postmodern and post-structuralist) age? What can the purpose of literature be when anything that is actually produced through the technology of the printing press (which once changed the world) now seems rather horribly quaint? What kind of work does literature do in the world, and what kind of work is it that we do as readers? These last two questions lie at the heart of this paper. They are not in fact the same question merely differently phrased. The paper argues that literature "the text qua text" and reading (the subject as agent consuming the text) can be quite different from each other. Before the writer sets forth his own ideas on the function and purpose of literature, he explores the ideas of others on the subject who have tried to define for their own times and places (and for their own writers and readers) what it is that literature does in the world.

From the Paper:

"But, while the impassioned literary warriors on either side might not want to admit to this fact, it might well be that there is no single correct way to analyze a text. Or rather there may well be no single correct way to analyze every text. There may be one best way for each text, requiring us to consider local definitions of analysis rather than universal ones. However, this moderate position is one rarely admitted to by either those who support or those who oppose reader-response models and it is in fact easy to understand why this should be the case: The two embody fundamentally opposing world views. Is the purpose of literature one that is determined by the creator or by the consumer?"

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