Literary Theory’s Edginess: Texts, Problems, and the Array of Questions

Abstract

LITERARY THEORY’S EDGINESS: TEXTS, PROBLEMS, AND THE ARRAY OF QUESTIONS ROBERT RAWDON WILSON University of Alberta Nor are they symbols. But, dribbling precious water into the scoops of earth around the shrubs that burst and die of sheer scent, you might call them metaphors, they stick so close to the mind. To the mind, and to the real. Vincent Buckley, “Theories” ^Bertrand Russell once urged students of logic to bear a number of puzzles about with them (47). It would be a way to reinforce the mind’s alertness, to make it wary in the face of conclusiveness. Perhaps the logician might never determine whether (say) the set of all sets that are not members of themselves is, or is not, a member of itself, but there would be cognitive rewards for puzzling it about: an awareness that knowledge is never, or seldom, as certain as the knowledgeable claim. For the study of literature nothing seems to correspond to Russell’s playfield of puzzles and paradoxes. The paradoxes that literary critics discover seem more straightforward. They do not test the mind in the same manner. Literary paradoxes are vehicles for irony, ways to describe contradiction, contrariety, and complexity. They are resolutions of doubleness, not irreconcilable propositions that appear to fly away from each other, and, like the difference between bread and cheese, they are easily held together. The testing and reinforcement that Russell had in mind does not seem readily available to students of literature in the form of paradoxes. It may be that the study of literature does not require cognitive testing and reinforcement to the degree that logic does. I shall not attempt to solve that puzzle, but I do think that intellectual reinforcement of some kind should be desirable. What could it be? What would promote the intellectual versatility that might help a literary student in analyzing texts and dealing with the vast swarm of textual facts that make up the study of literature? In this essay, I shall argue that an awareness of literary theory, even if one is not truly interested in theoretical questions as such, English Stud ies in Ca n a d a , x v iii, i , March 1992 fosters an alertness about texts (dragging forward difficulties that might hide unobserved) and a ready openness in dealing with textual phenomena. Literary theory is an edgy business. It calls attention to edges: of words, of genres, of texts, even of the profession of literary studies. The metaphor of edges appeals to those who have an interest in theory: they see themselves somewhere beyond normal professional preoccupations, a cutting edge per­ haps, certainly as having the edge on their colleagues. Those who dislike literary theory (finding it trivial, obnubilating, barbaric, destructive) may also feel themselves on the edge. Their teeth set on edge at the least, they may also sense that they have become preterite, passed over, excluded (im­ portant journals will not publish them), forced to the edge of rear-guard actions. All the animosities about theory as well as all the enthusiasms re­ spond to the metaphor of edges. Theory could easily drive one over the edge towards either horror or bliss. What, other than honing one’s knife even more ferociously sharp, should be done about theory? I shall argue that it is possible to incorporate literary theory fruitfully into English department pedagogy and research. Theory can be made an aspect of the curriculum without displacing already present (canonical) texts. It can be made acceptable to those who dislike it, and, though this will not please those who specialize in its study, more capable of performing useful conceptual work. The study of literature can be formulated as a range of conceptual problems. Theory then becomes a matrix of questions: an array of queries that may be raised at any moment in reading; paths for probing more deeply and more widely any literary text and for recasting old problems. (I take it, as this essay will make clear, that literary theory works most rewardingly when it probes particular texts, subverting or framing, and that it is a lesser enterprise when it concerns, reflexively, only itself. Finetuning the model, however exciting, seems a...