Deus ex machina

While perusing through the different blogs for our class this weekend, I happened to stumble upon a group of related blogposts that intrigued me. They all are related to something that was brought up in Beardsley’s essay. Specifically, they all regarded the question of whether labeling something as literature should be a sort of normative judgment. That is, if I call something literature, does that mean that it is a good piece of writing?

Before I go on about my thoughts on this topic, I should point out that I think this is a conversation which deserves a discussion. In the majority of situations in which I have used or heard the term literature, it has been in a way that puts a positive connotation on the term. It is honestly a challenge for me to think of an instance where I labeled something as literature when it was writing of poor quality.

With that said, I think it would be a mistake to associate the term with only writing of a certain quality. In Tom’s post, he warns of the problems associated with “disengage one's sense of aesthetic value”, but I do not view this as a problem. I just think that we should only engage our normative judgments after the label of literature is already given. I agree with Avery’s post on this subject, in which Avery makes clear that there is such a thing as bad literature. Keeping with this line of thinking, after something is deemed to fit in the category of literature, it should then be determined what type of aesthetic value it contains.

This is not a direct response to Nicole’s post; instead, this is a comment on the discussion that her post started.

The main point that I wanted to comment on revolved around one excerpt from her blogpost:

“the attribute of being written is so fundamental to the mere word ‘literature’ that it would be wrong to try and change that.”

Brandon responded by stating that:

“just because something has been associated with one word for a long time does not mean that it would be 'wrong' to change it - it may very well be warranted to do so.”

I find this discussion to be intriguing to say the least, and it shows from the fact that I blogged about this topic yesterday. First, I should state that I completely agree with Brandon in that we should not view something as inherently correct simply because it has been popular in the past to view it in that way. Consequently, I think that we are correct in questioning whether something needs to be written in order to be considered as literature.

With that said, I think that, as a whole, I completely agree with Nicole’s point. As I stated in my post on this topic, it seems that popular usage plays a significant role in determining the denotation of every word. Furthermore, as Nicole states in her post, literature has always been associated with writing. Accordingly, I do not think it would be correct to view it any differently. Yes, there may not be great reason as to why being in a written form needs to be a necessary condition other than the reason that Nicole provided, but there is also not any great reason as to why we should include non-written forms of composition into the category of literature.

Unless someone can illustrate that we are ‘well warranted’ to include forms of non-written composition in the category of literature, I do not find any adequate reasons as to why we should we should not accept the common view of literature as only pertaining to forms of writing.

Q: “Does Beardsley’s definition of literature limit the concept of literature too much?”

According to Beardsley, literature is: “(1) an imitation illocutionary act and (2) being distinctly above the norm in ratio of implicit to explicit meaning.”

Now, I should first point out that this is not the best question, mainly due to the fact that we spent much of a class period discussing the strength of this definition. However, I do not think we completely ended with a solid conclusion to our discussion. Furthermore, I felt that, after my reading, there was certainly a strong possibility that Beardsley’s definition limited the concept of literature too much.

In this blogpost, my aim is to focus on the second part of Beardsley’s supposed definition. This is not to say that the first part of the definition is not as contentious; in fact, the first part may actually be more contentious, however I found Beardsley’s discussion on the importance of the implicit meaning in literature to be more interesting.

I do not think there is any question that most forms of literature that we are accustomed to contain a greater ratio of implicit to explicit meaning in comparison with what most would label non-literature. If I think of any type paradigm case of literature, I tend to remember it for the significance of its implicit meaning. For example, when reading the different stories in my Intro to Literature class, what I remember about them was the fact that each story’s meaning was, in most cases, never immediately evident. When comparing this to a supposed example of non-literature, lets say for example, a news article, I find just the opposite. In this type of writing, the meaning is almost entirely explicit.

Judging from these statements, it would seem that Beardsley was correct in putting the stipulation in his definition of literature that it must include an increased ratio of implicit to explicit meaning. However, I think that it is imperative that I question (as I did in my Q&A), whether this condition could be limiting the concept of literature too much. I.E, is there any forms of literature that do not have a greater amount of implicit to explicit in comparison with of other forms of composition.

After spending a brief amount of time attempting to find examples that run converse to Beardsley’s second condition, I would conclude that, as of this point, I would agree with him. He is correct in defining literature as necessarily including a ratio of implicit to explicit meaning that is distinctly above the norm.

Before I move on from this, one major problem still seems to exist. What ratio of implicit to explicit meaning suffices for a composition to be labeled as a piece of literature? Although, I agree with Beardsley’s point regarding implicit meaning, he is not clear about the level of implicit meaning that is required. I could be being overly concrete in making this a problem. Nevertheless, I think that this I an issue with his definition. If it is not clearly made known what the level of implicit meaning needs to be, the definition may not be as clear-cut as it should be.

1. Is there a certain threshold that a composition needs to pass in regards to its implicit meaning in order to be considered literature?

2. Can you provide an example of literature that you find is not distinctly above the norm in ratio of implicit to explicit meaning?

“Should popular opinion play any role in determining the denotation of a word? ”

In the middle of writing my Q&A for this week, I suddenly became confused. I was not confused because of the reading, or the topic as a whole; rather I was perplexed as a result of one specific contentious that was brought up in class. In order to illustrate the antecedents to my sense of puzzlement, I should refer back to our discussion in class.

During class last week, we had a loud discussion on the idea of whether literature should be limited to forms of writing. Many of us became very animated as a result of this strongly contentious argument. During this time, Dave pointed out the fact that no one could provide a sufficient reason in support of the idea that literature must be written. Actually, the only thing that people were doing was make the implicit implication that literature is written because popular opinion believes that to be true.

Of course, it is true that popular opinion feels this way. In fact, if you search the terms “literature definition” in Google, the first entry reads: “Written works, esp. those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit: "a great work of literature". Ignoring the problems with associating literature with aesthetic merit (at least for right now), it is evident that most denotations of literature include the stipulation that it must be a piece of written work. Accordingly, this relates back to the idea that popular opinion thinks that the category of literature should only include forms of writing. But, should this should this play any role in determining the definition of literature. I say this because it does not seem that there is any strong evidence in support of the idea that the category literature must be limited to forms of writing. Furthermore, as DKJ brought up in class, every part of a definition should be there for good reason, not just because we are accustomed to it.

I agree with the above statement, but it seems that the denotation of words come from how they are original used (please excuse my use of extremely commonsensical statements); thus, they are determined in part because of popular opinion. So, where does this leave us with literature? What if people have always used the term in terms of specifically written works, but we cannot come up with good reasons for why this should be included into the definition, other than the fact that “everyone thinks this”? In addition, for terms likes this in which a stringent definition may not be possible, can the acceptance of popular denotation without further questioning ever suffice?