Not a totally infrequent question, though it’s never been too difficult coming up with some kind of a response, until now. Considering that ‘fluid-texts’ (literary works that exist in multiple versions) often cross genres and mix-mediums, as a consequence, the elements that comprise each re-telling insist that the academic be constantly reaching outside of the literary-framework in order to better grasp and appreciate the differences across all incarnations of a work. In this regard, we’re doing our due diligence when we listen to a ‘theme-song’ at the beginning of each class as it relates to a text we’ve been reading. However, the songs themselves might not classify as literature… or?
Rather than discuss what constitutes a literary work (The Gettysburg Address is poetry, right?) we can at least establish that literature is any written text with the purpose of amusing, as in fiction. Of course, this is the more conservative definition, for what is a play, a speech, or any comedic performance if not some form of literature? Is Thoreau writing poetry, or is Walden a purist work of non-fiction?
Perhaps we can at least consider that all literature has some kind of narrative-structure. Even our Graff and Birkenstein essays have narrative-structure! But the form (or forum) of our work as academics, directly rejects the sort of subversion and sarcasm you might find in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, and likely finds the nonsense of Carrol’s Wonderland most disturbing.
What then does the academic stand to gain from this meta-comprehension of such literary works (discussing narrative, motif, metaphor, allusion, etc.)? This with respect to the notion that such discussions do not exceed a certain political or social boundary (as relevant to the time-period). However, this again forces the academic outside of their discipline, so that they might better grasp the context surrounding such events, and the literature ‘about them.’ Alasdair Macintyre summarizes this view, writing:
“That particular actions derive their character as parts of larger wholes is a point of view alien to our dominant ways of thinking and yet one which it is necessary at least to consider if we are to begin to understand how a life may be more than a sequence of individual actions and episodes.”
In other words, Macintyre finds that comprehending this tapestry of narratives is necessary in understanding the human-life in total. You could say that literature is the study of those narratives. Where these narratives lead, and the fluid-texts connected to them, often to ‘real-life’ conceptions about the political and social-order of the civilizations from which they’re derived.
The practice of criticism then becomes a constant method of searching for this connection between ‘real-life’ and literature, although to little end. Woolf’s new modernist novel Mrs. Dalloway seems to blow itself in, not subdued in allegiance to the industrial-revolution, rather bows to the ancients of Greek and Roman myth.
But what does the academic gain from such made-up stories of legend and myth? How can understanding such narratives provide deeper insights into different ways of looking at the world, as expressed through narratives? How is this applicable to ‘real life,’ or acted-out in a way that gives the academic-field of literature any meaning or importance at all?
These are all valid questions. But consider how the hallmarks of a fluid-text (repurposed literature) might shed importance on the other great academic traditions of history, law, philosophy, medicine, etc., the supposed professions that govern our world. They all have at least some connection to literature.
If human-beings can’t help but to reason and classify their world in terms of a narrative, then what is the study of literature, if not the study of humanity itself? Perhaps understanding the literary process can bring us closer to understanding some of civilization’s most strenuous issues, or simply closer to understanding human-knowledge in general. The possibilities for an academic of literature don’t seem bound by any one principle. The field’s applications might very well be endless.