This is part two of our survey of literary theory based on Paul Fry’s Open Yale course. You can find part one here. Ready to dig into the next two sessions for part two?
You can find the rest of this series here:
Introduction to Literary Theory Part 0: What am I talking about?
Introduction to Literary Theory Part 1: What is Literary Theory?
Introduction to Literary Theory Part 2: The Hermeneutic Circle
Introduction to Literary Theory Part 3: Formalism
Introduction to Literary Theory Part 4: Structuralism
Introduction to Literary Theory Part 5: Deconstruction
Introduction to Literary Theory Part 6: Psychoanalytic Literary Theory
Session 3 – Hermeneutic Circle
If you’re following along with the reading assignments, check out Gadamer’s “The Elevation of the Historicality of Understanding to the Status of Hermeneutic Principle” in The Critical Tradition. Personally, I found Gadamer’s prose to be very difficult to understand… but this paper really does have some really interesting stuff in it, particularly towards the end. My recommendation is to not worry about reading it too closely (particularly “The Classical Example”) : give it a quick read, check back here, then refer back to the paper if you want to dig deeper.
Alright, let’s talk about the hermeneutic circle. The basic idea here is almost trivial, but the consequences of it are interesting. When you engage with “text” of some type, you bring your understanding with you as you attempt to understand it. You start with an initial understanding or context but as you read you learn things which are added to your context, which in turn allows you to understand more of the text itself. There’s a “circle” here between your context and the text.
The example for this from the lecture is from Mark Akenside’s The Pleasures of Imagination:
Know then, the Sovereign Spirit of the world,
Though, self-collected from eternal time,
Within his own deep essence he beheld
The bounds of true felicity complete,
Yet by immense benignity inclined
To spread around him that primeval joy
Which fill’d himself, he raised his plastic arm,
And sounded through the hollow depths of space
As a person reading in 2022 (or later), our default definition for “plastic” refers to synthetic polymer materials, but that feels off here, unless we think it’s normal for the “Sovereign Spirit of the world” to have a prosthetic arm. If we know anything about the poem or its author, and about the the history of plastic, then we’d also be a bit confused why someone was writing about a prosthetic arm in the 18th century. If we’re reasonably well-read, then we know that “plastic” has a few meanings and the default one these days wasn’t the first usage; we’d know that, in this context, it means “formative”, “creative”, “pliable”, or even “well-formed”. If we don’t know that, then maybe we look it up. Our instant first picture of the scene may have included a weird prosthetic arm, but our new understanding allows us to update our picture of the scene to be more correct. At least, we’re pretty sure that it’s more correct now, but it’s hard to know for sure: to some extent, we just need to do our best.
This example shows a vocabulary issue arising from the text being old, but I hope it’s obvious how this could pop up in a number of ways. Foreign customs are another good example. Remember the scene from Dune where Stilgar spits on the duke’s table? For a moment, we – and Leto’s guard – see this as a rude gesture and a challenge, but we quickly learn that among the Fremen this is a sign of respect: water is scarce, so sacrificing a bit of your own is meaningful. The text teaches us this about the Fremen, which updates our understanding of the scene and the world as a whole. If we see this happen again, we’ll be ready to understand it. In Gadamer’s words, we’re “pulled up short” by the text and realize that our initial understanding was wrong for this work, so we need to update it.
Of course, this can also apply more subtlety, affecting some deeper meaning. Perhaps a text seems to make sense to you for a while, but then there’s a logical step that you don’t agree with or it comes to a conclusion that doesn’t sit well with you. Perhaps the text itself makes sense, but then you learn that it wasn’t based on as strong of evidence as you thought! Myers-Briggs makes a lot of sense at first, but maybe you come to like the idea enough that you look up how it was formed and find that, even if it makes intuitive sense, it’s not nearly as scientific as you thought it was. At this point, you have to make a decision: how do you update your understanding of what you previously thought you understood? Do you throw the concept away entirely or do you hold on to the bits that struck you as intuitively correct? Maybe you know someone who benefited from knowing their personality type, giving you some anecdotal evidence that it definitely has value in at least some cases. Perhaps you find value in knowing your personality type and don’t really care whether the theory is scientific. Would it make a difference what the authors intended: perhaps you like that the indicator was meant to help women entering the industrial workforce or perhaps you see it as opportunistic and condescending? Ultimately, this process is up to you as the reader: how much do you care about objective truth, the author’s intent, your personal relationship with the text, or the utility it provides you?
These examples are pretty personal, but how does this apply to something more broad? Let’s talk about historicism: an approach to studying a text by studying the historical process by which it came about. This practice involves “bracketing” your modern context, putting it away, and studying from the perspective of the person and time that whatever you’re looking at is from. The process focuses on where an idea came from and what factors at the time led up to it. There’s a lot of similarity here to formalism, which we’ll talk about more next post.
Let’s find an example. Have you read about the miasma theory? Before the discovery of germ theory, it was a popular theory as to how disease spread: disease was caused by miasma, which came from decay. The odor itself was the cause, so eliminating the odor would prevent the spread of disease. Standing downwind of a marsh could be dangerous, as you could be exposed to the poisonous breath of marsh creatures and swamp gasses, which would cause disease. Looking at the idea today, it’s pretty crazy: how could someone believe such a bizarre and magical theory? Well, how would we look at this theory through the lens of historicism?
Well, with no knowledge of germs or how diseases actually spread, what was a person to think? They knew that when there was an epidemic people tended to get sick around the same time and in the same place. Sometimes when someone is exposed to a foul smell they get sick. People don’t tend to become ill as often when they’re not around foul smelling things. They even knew that wearing a mask tended to keep you safe, or at least safer than not wearing one. The theory even has some practical applications: try to clean up refuse in areas where people live, try not to share air with someone who’s ill but wear a mask if you can’t avoid it, don’t go near dead bodies if you can help it, etc.
We really need to put all of our modern medical knowledge away while we try to reason through this theory historically, but when we do we find that it kind of makes sense, for the context of the time. We’re not finding any real “truth” here that applies to today, but we can understand the theory as something that exists in history.
Gadamer discussed the hermeneutic circle in terms of “historical horizons”, which he defined as “the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point”. “A person who has an horizon knows the relative significance of everything within this horizon, as near or far, great or small.” The thrust of this session’s reading assignment is Gadamer’s recommendation for how to handle this. Specifically, he does not think that we should attempt to somehow step into the historical horizon to see the work purely from the perspective of that horizon, leaving ours behind. Instead, we should “merge” our horizon with the historical one.
That’s pretty abstract, but the point is actually pretty simple: should you look for any truth that applies to you – today – when reading something from the past, or should you treat writing from the past purely as a historical artifact? Gadamer holds that to understand something only historically is to abandon any hope that what it’s saying could actually be true. This doesn’t just apply to history, but also to foreign cultures, or even just “other people”, in a sense. When you have a discussion with someone, do you treat what they’re saying as the means to understand something for real, or do you treat it as an end: merely a process to help you understand that individual. Of course, there isn’t just one answer here. When I ask a good friend what music they’re listening to lately, I’m probably looking for some recommendations that could apply to me: I’m using my friend as the means towards the end of finding new music. When your girlfriend’s dad asks you what music you’re listening to, they’re probably just trying to decide whether you’re a fuck-up: they’re focused on you as an end in yourself and appraising your character.
The alternative view to Gadamer was represented in the lecture material by E. D. Hirsch. Hirsch is focused on finding meaning in text and in respecting individuals as ends rather than using them as tools. A key thing to note here is that both Gadamer and Hirsch had some profound ethical reasons for their positions that are hard to compare directly. While Gadamer felt that looking at the past as a static thing with nothing to offer us today was condescending and limiting, Hirsch felt that objectifying the past – treating authors from the past as tools to be used for our purposes – was unethical. Try to consider how you would feel, personally, if someone in the future looked at your life from each perspective. Would you prefer that the future know the real you and your actual intentions, even if it means putting some distance between you, or would you prefer that the future engage with your ideas personally and learn from them, even if their conclusions aren’t the same conclusions you would come to?
To summarize:
Gadamer: To understand something only within its context is to abandon the possibility that it’s saying something that’s true. To look for a real truth – one that’s general or timeless – we must “merge our horizon” with the text we’re engaging with. In other words, we need to meet the author’s context half-way, neither reading from our perspective nor from the author’s perspective, but from a perspective that’s somewhere in the middle. We might not find the author’s intended meaning this way, but we can hope to find something that’s true.
Hirsch: People should be conceived as ends in themselves, not as the instruments of others. “When we fail to conjoin a man’s intention to his words, we lose the soul of each.” In other words, we shouldn’t merely plunder text to find what’s “true” for us. We should respect the author enough to find what they meant, even if it’s not what we want them to mean. Hirsch is more concerned with meaning than with truth, at least in this context. We, as readers, are free to decide how significant we feel the author’s meaning is to us – perhaps it’s not relevant to us or maybe the author’s meaning applies in a different context for us – but we must not force our context on to them or put words in their mouth.
I think that’s enough for this session, but if you’re curious, the lecture this session also touched on the personal politics of Gadamer and Hirsch a bit. I found it interesting, but I think it’s a bit too deep of a cut for the supposedly “quick” version I’m writing here.
Let’s move on to talking about the process of reading!
Session 4 – Read between the lines
Reading: “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach” by Wolfgane Iser. You can find it in The Critical Tradition. I liked this essay quite a bit and would recommend reading it if you’re reading any of the assignments. The reading is particularly good this week because Wolfgane is actually interested in novels, as opposed to the philosophy, religion, and history that our sources have been focused on thus far.
Let’s continue digging into the opposing stances held by Gadamer and Hirsch.
A consequence of Gadamer’s “merging horizons” approach is that you need to find something in your horizon that overlaps something in the horizon you’re merging with if you want to understand something. Basically, you need at least some shared tradition. Now, neither I nor Fry (our lecturer, if you forgot) think that this goes as deep as Gadamer thinks, but there is some truth to this. At the very least, the more my horizon overlaps with the author I’m reading, the easier it is to understand the work. Generally speaking, I can certainly understand a book from the 18th century written by an English speaking author much easier than I can an 18th century book written by a Japanese author. Hell, I had an easier time with Count Magnus than I did with some Haruki Murakami novels. But, I also think that there’s enough “human” horizon available to figure out anything, given enough time and research. Still, a shared tradition is definitely useful when trying to understand text.
Hirsch’s position isn’t diametrically opposed, but it is different. He believes that we should strive to understand an author in paraphrase, as opposed to taking the text as meaning in itself. “A text means what its author meant” (taken from Validity in Interpretation.) He also makes a distinction between the meaning of a text and the significance of the text: the meaning is static, unchanging over time, whereas the significance is the reader’s to decide. He sees objectivity in interpretation as a feasible goal and asserts that we can have this even in humanistic studies. This, he holds, is possible because “meaning is an affair of the consciousness and not of physical signs or things.”
Comparing these two approaches is tricky, but let’s try to work it out with an example.
What’s a good work of philosophy or religion to dig into? Harry Potter, obviously. What’s a non-controversial angle to use for a simple example? How about: Would Hermione be a TERF in 2022?
If we read Harry Potter as Gadamer, we would attempt to merge our horizon with Rowling’s by understanding where we’re coming from, where she’s coming from, and how those two perspectives mix. We’d be more concerned with finding a transcendental truth than in determining what Rowling meant. If we read it as Hirsch, we’ll consider what she meant, but decide the significance for ourselves.
As Gadamer, I’m trying to merge my horizon with Rowling’s. We’re different people: I call it a “sorcerer’s stone” and she calls it a “philosopher’s stone”. I was only about the age of Harry when the first book was published, so she’s a fair bit older than me. We have a lot in common though: we’re both English speakers, even if our dialects are a bit different. We were both raised in a Christian society. We both value the morals of courage, integrity, and faith in other people that the books demonstrated. Merging our horizons seems pretty easy, actually: our historical and cultural contexts are very similar and we share a lot of tradition.
So, what does our merged horizon think about Hermione?
Well, we definitely like her. We admire her intelligence and integrity. We empathize with her struggles being different when she’s called a “mud-blood”. We see her compassion for people who are different from her when she becomes an activist for house elves. We also see that she sometimes thinks that she knows better than other people how to help them or how they should live their lives… but we also see that this is a character flaw that improves as she grows up. We see how she can be a bit harsh, but ultimately cares about how people feel. We also know that she’s not afraid to disagree with the world when she knows the world is wrong. Ultimately, we see Hermione as a role model: she’s intelligent, progressive, brimming with integrity and courage, and empathetic towards people different from her.
Remember, as Gadamer, we’re not concerned with understanding Hermione in a historical context with no truth to offer us: we’re interesting in using our merged horizon to look for some real truth here that applies to us. We’re trying to find a real role model in Hermione that could apply for us today, even if it’s not quite what the author really meant.
Well, from this perspective, Hermione is definitely an ally of the trans community. I mean, that’s just obvious, isn’t it? I can almost hear her response to someone saying some shit like “when you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman… then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.” She’d be furious. She’d get red in the face and launch into a tirade. She’d have researched the topic extensively and have references ready at a moment’s notice, but she’d also take the time to sneak in some jabs. Her twitter account would be devastating. Even if this isn’t really Rowling’s Hermione, it’s the “true” one that continues to serve as a role model today. I wonder what causes she’ll take on in the minds of future generations?
Of course, that’s Hermione from my merged horizon (and, as far as I can tell, that of most fans.) However, Gadamer’s technique here could have different results for someone working from a very different background. I really doubt that anyone who idolizes TERF Hermione will find this particular blog and stick with it long enough to find this sentence, but I suppose it’s possible, and in this theory, that interpretation would be just as valid as mine.
I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.
— Emma Watson (@EmmaWatson) June 10, 2020
Well, how would Hirsch see it? Now we’re focused on the meaning that Rowling meant to convey. Unfortunately, it seems hard to avoid the fact that Hermione would be angry about the “bad science” behind stating that “transgender women are women.” Hermione’s very smart and courageous, there’s no way that she’d sit this one out either: she’d be tweeting non-stop and going on talk-shows if necessary. She wouldn’t cave to social pressure to conform: Rowling’s Hermione had a lot of integrity and didn’t shy from saying what she believed in, no matter how unpopular.
Fortunately, although (in Hirsch’s view), Rowling gets to decide the meaning, I get to decide the significance.
Well, what the fuck does Rowling know about trans people? When reading the books, I’m certainly not looking to learn anything on this topic from Rowling. I think her thoughts are significant when it comes to whether I’ll purchase merchandise that supports her and I think the effect that Rowling’s beliefs have had on the people who loved her work is a significant historical fact that shouldn’t be forgotten. But, Rowling didn’t really put much of her beliefs here into the books, so I’m personally fine with saying that I don’t think that Rowling’s personal beliefs are really significant for enjoying the books. But don’t forget: the significance is up to the reader. I, personally, can just ignore Rowling’s thoughts to continue enjoying the books, but maybe you can’t or won’t. Maybe for you, this topic is just too important to ignore, even if it doesn’t really come up much in the books. Maybe you feel betrayed. There is at least one joke about a man wearing a dress that might hint at some of these underlying beliefs: maybe this is enough for you to throw out your books entirely. Moreover, isn’t it significant that we, as a society, know Rowling’s real legacy? Do we want to simply forget the bad parts and move on so people in the future will have no idea how many people felt injured by Rowling’s stance? In Hirsch’s approach, it’s hard to argue what the author meant here, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t do what we personally want with that information.
So, that’s just a little example that I came up with, but I hope it illustrates these different views a bit. Neither stance is “the right one.” They’re different lenses we can try when we’re examining something.
We’re almost done with this session, but I want to wrap up by looking at what Iser said about the phenomenological approach to the reading process. Wikipedia defines phenomenology as the “philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness.” We don’t need to dig too deep into phenomenology right now, but the point here is that we’re going to look at reading in terms of how the reader builds the work in their mind while reading the text.
Iser sees reading as an arena between the author and reader: both need to bring their imagination to the experience. This reminds me a lot of how I run D&D games: I never want to give too many details, as that limits how much the players can bring to the game. The goal is to collaboratively build up the game by contributing equally. Iser sees reading the same way.
Each phrase, sentence, paragraph, chapter, volume, etc. is a unit with a little gap between it and the preceding and succeeding units. These gaps are opportunities for the reader to fill in the space with their own creativity. Fry explains these gaps as spark plugs: if the gap is too small then it shorts and if it’s too large then there’s no spark, so the goal is to set the gap to just the right size for a good spark to form. Iser explains how good writing strikes a balance between surprise and frustration. As you read, the text needs to set you up to expect things to happen in a certain way, but then it needs to surprise you. You need to have a little anxiety that things will happen the right way so you can find some joy in being pleasantly surprised. On some level, you often know how a book is going to end or what will happen to a character. Foreshadowing and common structures give you clues. But you still worry that it might not happen that way. Maybe the heroes will fail and evil will rule forever! If you’re never surprised, then it’s just boring. On the other hand, if you’re surprised too often – if the work is simply inconsistent – then it’s just frustrating. You can’t just change out the rules whenever you want or it stops feeling real.
Of course, this doesn’t only apply between sentences, it applies anywhere that isn’t fully defined by the text.
Consider how you imagine characters in books to look. Regardless of how much description is provided, there are infinite ways to imagine that. Your version might not match my version even if we both correctly interpret the text. Wait, it’s actually deeper than that, isn’t it? You don’t always have a single, static image for a character, do you? Maybe your conception of a character changes over time. Maybe it changes a bit with your mood. If someone asked you to draw a character from a book, would you know what to draw, or would you be frustrated with having to collapse a range of possibilities into a single image?
This is more relevant than ever these days, when goddamn near every film is an adaptation or remake of something else. No matter how perfect the casting and makeup are, it’s never perfect, is it? Even if you couldn’t think of anything better, there’s still a sense of loss: we had as many versions of the character as we could ever want – versions that would change and growth with us in our minds – and now we just have one. It can feel less like seeing one character come to life and more like seeing infinite versions discarded.
Seeing reading this way means that a book only really exists in its true form within the mind of the reader while they’re reading. This means that a book has infinite manifestations: every reader has their own version and even the same person might have different versions on different re-reads. It’s like reading music: the notes and words are there on paper, but the song only exists while it’s being sung.
So, this might be a bit strange, but bear with me. When you read a book, you’re building it in your mind, right? You’re allowing the text to inhabit your thoughts. It’s almost as if you’re allowing the author to possess your consciousness for a while. Well, not the author, but the text. But the text doesn’t entirely fill up your thoughts either: you don’t black out the moment you start reading. You’re aware of these alien thoughts that you’re processing. But, it goes deeper than this, doesn’t it? You don’t merely play host to the text itself, but you also see the text from a perspective that isn’t quite your own. You construct a new “I” that reads the book in your mind: a new “subject” which isn’t quite you. You’re even aware of this alien subject as it pilots your mind.
What do these alien thoughts and alien subjects mean?
It’s essentially just another way to describe Gadamer’s horizons! These alien thoughts in your mind aren’t quite you and they’re not quite the author, they’re somewhere in between. This is the merged horizon from earlier.
Well, that’s all for this session! Next time we’ll talk about Formalism, Russian Formalism, and New Criticism.