Living Close ... to Something

Alright! Here is my summary statement on what I presently see as the crux of this matter, then, I am out of it...promise!

Once upon a time man lived close to the gods; in fact, too close. Luckily, we (and by "we" I guess I mean we Greeks and we Hebrews, which may be the roots of a wonderful conspiracy) -- anyway -- we noticed that that closeness carried with it a lot of nasty, brutal stuff. We ended up defining barbarism and superstition in terms of that closeness. Thus, began the process of redefining our relationship with the god(s) in terms of distance, and that distance in terms of the language appropriate for representing them (him). This took a number of forms.  (of course discovery of the alphabetic technology fits in here, but none of that for now!) 

The one I am interested in is that pertaining to the birth of literature and the arts out of ritual and what we later would call "religion." The project, within classical Greece, of creating distance took us from priests to rhapsodes to poets to dramatists to rhetoricians. I would note in passing that "philosophy" was born in this context of articulating what that distance from the gods really meant (and maybe that is what philosophy is). 

Anywho... along came Christianity (too make a long story short), that great mediator between Greek and Hebrew, and redefined presence -- what it meant to live close to the gods. This re-construction somehow was free of the irrationalities of the past presences. 

Thus (ironically or dialectically) it somehow cooperates in the overall rationalizing process of distance. Distance, now, from what? Closeness to what? Somehow, a new notion of presence filtered through the various Jesus movements (some of which were deemed latently nasty, some deemed o.k.) and the Roman church. It was again re-instated with the advent of the printed vernacular Bible. (Again, the sacrament-centered Roman church and the book-centered vernacular churches are probably dialectical cousins cooperating in the process of reconstructing an idea of religious presence). 

To cut to the chase, what came out of this was secular literature. 

I think what we call the "literary" is that which stayed within the old, archaic vein of presence -- which I am inclined to call a mimetic sense of presence; but in doing so had to continue to go forward with the project of constructing distance. This lead to literary realism.  

To be an inspired poet now means to be inspired by something other than the spirit of the gods. (Does anyone take Milton seriously -- including himself -- when follows the epic form of invocation"?) And the ability to weave a coherent tale does not make the divine present. At most, it may serve as teaching a moral a lesson or serve as an allegory for the truly inspired tale of the New Testament. But neither one of those scenarios are "literary" -- properly speaking. 

On the other side of the coin, what we now call "religion," uses a wholly new sense of presence that is non-mimetic. How ever it that is God is made present, it is not by recounting anything, or imitating anything or re-presenting anything. Whatever it is, it is an immediate presence. Even if such was not achieved in practice immediately, this, I think, is the wedge that served to separate religion from art. And though it may seem like common sense now, I think quite a lot of conceptual reconstruction had to go down before that was possible.  

Again, I am asking how did narratives -- which originally meant, literally, stories about gods -- become stories just about people (and what is meant by "just" in this case). This is mainstream literature -- just stories about people or verses expressing the feelings of people. Yes, I am asking you to question what normally passes by unquestioned. Yes, it is hard for me too, to keep the question present before my mind.

I really feel the need to explain/understand how there could be such.  I  think "secular literature" and "religious presence" co-evolved somehow as partners. To assume that literature just is secular -- even to presume "secular" or "religious" by themselves are coherent notions -- begs the key questions. 

• Why are the significances in this "literature" perceived to be other than the significances in "religion"? To explain it merely as a matter of sects and denominations misses the point. 
  
• How did we become able to compartmentalize things in this way? 
  
• Why does no one read (perceive) a Greek myth as a religious tract? (It is not just because their gods are weird. There are plenty of weird things that, rhetorically, we perceive as "religion.") 
  
• Why is there no real history of christian literature? Why do the modern counter examples prove the rule? 
  
• Why is Dante or Milton considered literature and not religion and read from the pulpit? 
  
• Why was the book closed on the possibility of (someone new) making god present through inspired literary writing?
• How was the Bible so excellently insulated? 
  
• Why does literary criticism of the Bible always seem like an external threat to its integrity? 
  
• Why is the phrase "christian-literature" not redundant? 
  
• What ideological scaffolding is necessary to see sacred or spiritual literature as some specialized sort? 
  

I think the answer to these things has to do with how we understand closeness (presence) and distance. Somehow we have learned how to keep "religious" presence separate from "literary" presence whatever that might be.

I am realizing that all the theorists I like violate this separation of religion and literature -- but I have not yet understood what fundamentally supports that act -- I mean the basis of their views and how they came to be transgressive in the first place. 

Thank you, friends, for reading this. I would be grateful for any light you may shed on these matters.  

Myth Criticism and Positivism?

 1. First a rather naive question: Does anyone dispute the basic thesis that there are underlying patterns to otherwise separate world mythologies? (I am sure that there are empirically minded anthropologists who just ignore this issue ... but other than that...) 

     Alternatively, are there ways to accept that the patterns exist but to dismiss them as unimportant?

2. This is a more involved question about what a modern literary critic should do with the discovery of the archetypal patterns.  

     I realized something about Campbell (something I guess he got from Jung) -- a kind of positivism. Basically he says that the progress of science finally got to the human mind and discovered the structure of dreams, and it was this that made possible the modern interpretations of ancient myths. (As a side note, it seems clear that bypassing literature was useful in the popularization of the theory -- just turn to Star Wars!)  

    Now, this is goofy for a number of reasons (not the least of which: Campbell is in an English department, an purports to have gotten some of his ideas from Joyce). But it made me focus on its alternative. That is, what does it mean to look to the history of art and literature (not science) as the basic receptacle of archetypal criticism? 

    One might say straight off that the basic spirit of the various threads of modernist aesthetics was precisely to negate the sort of content one finds in myths. One might say also that the supposed new learning on myths is not new at all. 

    But there are other options, aren't there? Ones that are not dismissive? Ones that, although not going the popular therapy route, accept that primordial patterns are significant and need to be dealt with in some way.

    For example, 

           a. The case of Joyce: was he joking when he wrote a story that followed the pattern of the Odyssey? Did Campbell simply not get the joke?

           b. There is Girard, but is he concerned with the canons of literary criticism themselves? I get the sense that he is more of free lance theorist.

           c. There is Barthes, but I don't have a handle on that yet. Although they use the word myth a lot I get the sense of a big departure.

     

Strange Route from Philology to Bakhtin

This post is truer to the spirit of a journal entry, because it merely stitches together a few new things I learned today. I love finding out about fundamental sorts of things that I had never heard before!

I was looking up "Reader Response Theory" in the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory (which I consider invaluable) and I stumbled across the entry on "Philology," which I thought had something to do with etymological-type research. Apparently, from the Greek "love of words," it refers to the founding of the liberal arts tradition. Priority of place in this founding is given to a 5th C. text titled, "On the wedding of philology and Mercury..." by Martianus Capella. 

Anyway, a lot of interesting stuff here, some going backward into classical history, and some going forward to the establishment of schools. But I got sidetracked, in that Wiki sort of way. This text was said to be informed by "Menippean Satire" (related also to picaresque). That was intersting enough in itself. However, that sidetracked me on to Bakhtin, who is said to have developed a theory of the novel as a development out of Menippian satire. He is one of those guys I have heard of but really knew nothing about. And, at this juncture I cannot resist anything labeled "theory of the novel."

So, I encourage you to follow this up and give me feedback. Richard should be interested in that Dostoyevsky is central to the theory. I don't know what you will think otherwise; I am not sure what I think. Some of it seems counter to basic currents I travel in but there is something in this "plurality of voices" that sounded compelling -- if not true, at least something I need to add to my discursive frame of reference on literature.

    

Christian Hermeneutics

I think this blog-thing lends itself to simplification -- which perhaps serves a good purpose: focused rhetorical starting points for discussion. 

In that spirit, let's start with a rhetorical simplification of Jung/Campbell: you need pre-christian symbols to interpret art. 

I am reacting toward something I realized about Campbell: against orthodoxy, he embraces dualist inspired literature; and, again, against orthodoxy, he embraces Pelagianism (which he says is Irish and so Irish literature is etc. etc.). Now, on the face of it, it seems that the two heresies are exact opposites; and so Campbell is consistent only in being against orthodoxy. Seems kind of kooky -- his own little axe to grind. But, charitably, what is the point here? Is there a hermeneutical p.o.v., at least as that addresses artworks/literary works, that requires that we put orthodox theological beliefs, at least, to the side? 

(I guess there have been Christian theologians quite comfortable with asserting the basic inconsistency of orthodox faith and art.) 

It makes me wonder when something gets to count as "pre-christian." I mean the standard examples of goddess, anima, hero, shadow, sacrifice, rebirth, trickster, garden, fountain, underworld, sky-dome, etc.  -- what does it mean to give those a specific theological interpretation? And if you do, how difficult is it to say that the christian meaning "includes" the pre-christian?

Don't we need to make a distinction? -- (1) symbolic material needed for any (aesthetic) interpretation whatever, (2) the specific moral or theological message/theme we give to that material. In other words, I am trying to find a way of taking the basic archetypalist point without necessarily embracing the proposed "moral of the story."

 

I'll end with an example. Jung/Campbell say that the serpent in the garden is a symbol of the unity of opposites; and that Eve is a symbol of the feminine, which is in some way a-tuned to that kind of wisdom. Now -- what must a christian reject in this reading? Specifically, can one just re-read the basic message/outcome of that reading, or is it necessary to eliminate the whole symbol-reading-hermeneutic orientation? Obviously, a christian would have to reject the idea that the Genesis story is simply an attempt to repress the true moral of this story. But what else? 

Modernism as Purification of Medium

Ok. Isn't there some art history/aesthetics consensus around the idea that (at least at one time) progress was thought to mean (1) differentiation of the various arts and (2) purification of the medium. So, for example, abstract painting was the medium of "the picture"(or what?) minus the inessential attribute of representation. 

Does that sound right? Before moving on to the critique of that view, I have two questions. First, can we say that the extraneous aspect of the various arts was thought to be, in each case, representation? Second, can we app

ly this to the modern novel, and say that the attempt to do away with plot was a similar attempt to purify the medium of the written text of its extraneous need for representation?

Realism

I would like to present, out of this wide set of issues, a focused question: what would Plato say about realism in literature?

The emergence of good stories about real people seems to be a common concern for our theorists. Auerbach frames it in terms of the classical separation of styles, which corresponds to tragedy and comedy. He claims that for a classical Greek or Roman writer, the labors of ordinary people were seen as material unfit for serious, high, tragic drama. He claims that the possibility for drama about common people was not realized until the Jesus narratives. For the ancients, the labors of ordinary people were suitable only for comedy.

Interesting things come to light when this framework is placed next to Plato's critique of tragedy. First, it seems that Plato is worried that the tragic tales, even when they are about the gods and heroes, are all to applicable to the lives of ordinary people. Further, though I guess Plato was a kind of leveling humanistic thinker, I take it that he would not have been happy with a modern story that achieved a (high) serious tragic tale of real people.

I cannot resist saying a bit more. There are, then, two related issues. First, one concerning character and the representation of "real" people. Second, the construction of a narrative that unites tragedy and comedy. 

Many lines of thought branch out from this frame. Would you care to trace one out?  

My Vacation with Andre

thanks to Richard for having a sense of humor -- feel free to poke fun at any of my theory-laden beliefs, past and present!

Test the Theory

I would like to try out the Girardian theory on a novel (and I use the term loosely in this case!) that is on my 11th grade summer reading list. It is called Follow the River. 

Two women are escaping Shawnee enslavement. The ordeal makes them turn on one another. This, perhaps, begs some Girardian analysis. Would we say the two idolize each other; and so when the veneer wears off they hate each other? That works; they are both tough and admirable. 

How would such an analysis fir with other kinds of theories -- say a psychological one, where one woman is a "mother figure," and then the escape etc. is about the protagonist reconciling with, or freeing herself from that figure. Or an archetypal analysis, where the old woman represents the alternatively life-giving and death-issuing forces of nature; and then the journey has something to do with the protagonist reconciling herself to that.

Anima Imitation

Then there is the male author who creates this fantasy female character -- the unalienated woman who will through romance lead him out of his alienated state, as in Harold and Maude.

Is he imitating this anima image, and does the author then cast it off by the end of the novel? Flaubert, Hawthorne...

How does Girard handle gender? I noticed how he contrasts romanesque (the novelistic) with romance (the poetic), suggesting that modern literature requires a choice between the two. (Which by the way may fit with Bloom's framing of the modern novel as rejection Emile.) But does he draw on any of that Rougmont type material in critiquing romance?

Imitation

What do you say about the basic Jungian idea of analogies (a form of mimesis) between events in myths and events in the psychological life? 

Doesn't this notion of analogy insulate us from some of the grotesque aspects of pre-Christian myth? E.g. sacrifice as symbolic death and rebirth.

Could you say that, in general, he thinks imitating gods is good and imitating humans is bad?

Does Girard think that humans by their nature seek mediation?