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Book Reviewed: Uttering the Unutterable: Aristotle, Religion, and Literature by Louis Groarke, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023

by Margaret Coats

Literature is shortchanged in the modernist and postmodern sphere of professors and critics. Traditional literary forms, including formal verse, tend to be ignored or devalued. The idea of a literary canon seems old-fashioned, and the term “literature” itself may be considered elitist, imperialist, misogynist, and foul from other points of view. Formalist literary theory (unlike writers known as formalist) regards literature as a structure of signs lacking profound content. And when knowledge is equated with science, there remains no place for literature as a knowledgeable, rational enterprise.

This is the situation Louis Groarke addresses in his book Uttering the Unutterable: Aristotle, Religion, and Literature (2023). He argues that we need to go back to classical philosophy, and to Aristotle in particular, to find an adequate way of discussing literature. In line with the mid-20th century group of critics called the Chicago School, Groarke finds that Aristotle provides a broadly useful concept of literary appreciation.

Literature expresses the transcendent, that is, it consists of words that give the reader an experience beyond what language can say. The transcendent is opaque to full disclosure—too big to handle. Aristotle offers a method of literary analysis that includes this ineffable aspect of literature, often neglected or denied by others.

The ancient Greek philosopher gives a generous account of human aspirations, finding that human beings are drawn toward the superlative. The transcendent is both meaningful and elusive. Aristotle brings together a naturalistic respect for science, or knowledge based on nature, and a quasi-religious reverence for God, understood as final cause of the cosmos. When using his metaphysics, or ideas about the supernatural, as a guide to understand literature, it is not Aristotle’s personal belief that matters. One need not suppose he is always correct, clear-minded, or consistent. Aristotelian realism does, however, stand in contrast to the skepticism pervading current literary theory.

Skepticism is useful when it puts complacent world views to the test. But as ancient skeptics understood, it is an eternally unfinished project. Doubt is a gift that keeps on giving. It goes from questioning to more questioning with no end in sight. Literary theory, moving from modernity to postmodernity, has proceeded into a radical skepticism that finds no value in reason, and denies not only truth, but the very possibility of knowledge, above all in the realm of the supernatural. In the second chapter of Uttering the Unutterable, Groarke discusses particulars of individual critics and schools of critical theory. For anyone interested in a clear survey of these movements and their big names, and the reasons for their restricted usefulness in understanding literature, the account is quite satisfying.

Aristotle’s realism simply accepts a basic fact of human experience. The world outside our wants, whims, and wills has an independent nature that imposes itself upon us. It forces us to make moral and political and religious decisions.

Ethics can no more be omitted from literature than from life. But critics often miss this point and assign literary value mistakenly. They may judge works from a trivial standpoint. They may identify the transcendent with physical gratification or political evil. They may consider moral instruction the essential or primary function of literature. Such diverse mistakes fail to comprehend literary experience that deals with the full range of good and evil. Aristotle clarifies matters by placing them in context. He finds wisdom incompatible with evil, though there can be shrewd or clever evildoers. His “theoria” is best described as contemplation, and contemplation of the transcendent evokes wonder. For the wise individual, therefore, literature and religion are convergent parallels aiming at a contemplative ideal.

Groarke adopts what he calls a “wisdom epistemology” of literature. While literature may feature argument, it is not made of logical structures, but of natural language. It has content and meaning. Knowledge of the most important, most fundamental, most overarching things is wisdom. This simplified—but not naïve—picture is what Aristotle uses to make sense of literature. He takes the knowledge perspective of ordinary people and their language seriously. “Unargued assertions of experienced and elderly people are as much deserving of attention as those supported by argument, for experience has given them an eye for things, and they see correctly” (Nichomachean Ethics V.11.1143b11).

No one thinks all texts are equal. Groarke defines literature as “verbal expression of superlative merit.” Defining terms is important, for definitions tell what is included (verbal expression) and what is excluded (texts not of superlative merit). A grocery list is not literature. Anyone reluctant to define terms places barricades against common sense in discussing literature.

A definition can correct common usage. There are assertions that “literature” can have no general meaning, but exists solely within cultural or historical contexts, having value dependent on its source. But literature may overlook or contradict social values. “Superlative merit” points toward its aim or effect on readers, whether or not a work accords with its time and place, or conforms to literary criticism of the present time.

Groarke’s “superlative merit” is a favorable evaluation that causes difficulty with several common usages. One is “popular literature,” or texts that seem to be of little merit, although the reading public enjoys them as entertainment. Among these would be gothic novels or children’s serial books. Another is the broad range of texts called “literature” that are the preserve of specialist scholars. For example, many sonnets written during the Renaissance era are poems of minimal merit, but they remain of interest to preserve and study.

Groarke as a philosopher leaves it to literary critics, over time, to decide which texts are literature. His purpose is to outline a worthy method, indeed, the one he believes to be most wide-ranging. In effect, it recognizes a canon of literature, but one that can be immensely larger than a “great books” list. Acknowledging current debate over the existence of a canon, Groarke insists:

“Literature is, in a single word, ‘superior.’ Even worthwhile texts may not be literature because they are not superior enough. Doubtless, there are well-meaning pundits who oppose any notion of ‘superior texts’ for all sorts of egalitarian reasons. It seems to me that these people do not believe in literature. Perhaps we could point to a crisis of faith in literature like the crisis in religious faith that has shaken modern-day Western civilization. But we cannot have what we call ‘literature’ without unequal texts.” (181)

To avoid a narrow or reductionist approach to literature, Groarke amplifies his definition (“verbal expression of superlative merit”), making use of Aristotle’s four causes. Literature encompasses a material cause (subject and language), a formal cause (genre), an efficient cause (author), and a final cause (aims and aspirations to impress on readers). These four overlapping perspectives contribute to understanding a literary work as a whole. Language of a poem deserves scrutiny, for example, but considering only word choice, sound, and sentence structure gives an underdeveloped notion of merit.

Thinking of the four causes explains more clearly why some critical methods are flawed. Deconstruction, for example, lifts things out of context and introduces extrinsic matters, thus waging war against the unity of a literary work. There are as well a number of “fallacies” to be judged in relation to these causes, but the lingering influence of the “intentional fallacy” is particularly hostile to good reading. This idea claims that though a text is available, the reader has no information about the author’s intent. Or that authorial intent (supposedly needed for understanding the work) can be garnered elsewhere—from the author’s biography or other works or presumed ideals or “community standards.”

The author, however, intended to write the work he produced. The text itself offers the definitive standard for interpretation. To eliminate this as the basis for conscientious reading is to give up on literature.

Can a reader find more in a poem than the author intended? Yes, for when a judicious reader ponders what the author chose to write, authorial input does not exactly equal output received by the reader. The reader contemplates with wonder and finds in this experience, and in reasoning therefrom, insights still based on the poem itself. As Groarke points out, medieval philosophers correctly distinguished between the thing and reasoning about the thing. This is very far from postmodern mythology about the “death of the author” freeing readers to import ideas not at all present in words of the text.

While there are careless and self-absorbed readers, the critical tradition relies on those with a gift of sensitivity to language and form, who are better educated through long experience of reading. Although Groarke does not say so, these may make de facto use of Aristotelian causes in their approach. I (the reviewer) usually say that additional interpretations based on the text arise because language (material cause) is larger than the author, and its vastness is shared with readers. As well, the author’s chosen genre (formal cause) is larger than his poem. It is shared with other authors who employ it, and with readers who may have greater experience of it than an author.

This review pays little attention to the author as efficient cause, but Groarke provides pertinent discussion of mimesis (imitation) as his procedure, with Aristotelian emphasis on imitation of universals. “Universals” represent “what may be,” rather than, or in addition to, what actually is. More important to support Groarke’s definition of literature as superior is his outline of ideas on the nature of genius.

The aim or end or effect on the reader of literature is its final cause—and this is most important, because it steers choices made by the author. Ideally, the author wishes to strike the reader with wonder, such that the reader is captivated and must read the poem again, or cannot put the book down. Literature transcends ordinary discourse, uttering the unutterable and opening up peaks of insight and emotion. Great authors feel a pull to communicate something of ultimate value.

Seen from a wisdom perspective, literature (superlative writing) has to be truthful. Falsehood is a defect. When we read literature as Aristotle understands it, we share a truthful vision of the world that helps make sense of it from a larger perspective. We experience laughter or sympathy or indignation or lightheartedness when these emotions are appropriate. Morality is the correct perspective. It does not follow that every reader acts morally, but the traditional view is that willpower follows understanding.

Contemporary antipathy to morality may be traced to Nietzsche, the “bad boy” of German philosophy, but Nietzsche borrowed heavily from ancient Greek Sophists. They saw morals as unrelated to nature, and rather as a product of culture enforcing chosen standards. No culture or moral system was better than any other. This view corresponds precisely to widespread current belief that truth is relative. If you have your truth and I have mine, human behavior is nothing more than pleasing ourselves, individually or collectively. Nothing more. Morality is dismissed as conformist, racist, oppressive, and unenlightened. Those who say we “ought” to rebel against morality do nothing but invent a “higher” morality (a new “ought”) to be obeyed by the more “enlightened.”

To recover the moral value of literature, Groarke says, means to reject the soft moral skepticism of the age. Aristotle as moralist knowingly investigates the complications of daily life, as well as the grey areas of moral interpretation. In his system, an amoral human being is a “brute” or savage beast. Aristotle’s moral realism precedes the mainstream of English literary criticism in finding moral value in literature. It is a form of knowledge—scorned by skeptics—yet which informs the entire range of human behavior and aspirations.

Finally, Groarke argues that Aristotelian criticism should conceive of literature in religious terms, not as a vehicle of doctrine, but as an opening to the transcendent. Human beings aim to be God-like in reflective, intelligent contemplation. Literature moves persons toward that fuller life Aristotle identifies with wisdom.

Groarke’s important book is an expensive university press publication, unlikely to be widely available. If your local library does not have it, ask to borrow it on interlibrary loan.

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Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable wrk in homeschooling for her own family and others.

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30 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Margaret, your great book review and the book itself certainly put “literature” in perspective. Formalists Modernists, and Postmodernists should be labeled “Delusional Neanderthals” lacking in rational epistemology, historical knowledge, cultural imperatives, and appreciation for the transcendent. In politics they are known as “progressives.”
    1. Aristotelian realism is a perfect place to begin the analysis of what constitutes literature. You noted that it need not be consistent. I once had a professor tell the class “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
    2. One of the first things I look for in poetry is the intent of the author. Why else do poets write? The message to me is intrinsically the most important aspect followed by rhyme and concluding with rhythm/meter. As you said, “The author, however, intended to write the work he produced. The text itself offers the definitive standard for interpretation. To eliminate this as the basis for conscientious reading is to give up on literature.”
    3. To understand intent, we need to appreciate the historical epoch, cultural context, belief system, and logic. Studying the background of the author then becomes imperative if I would fully appreciate what is the intent.
    3. I greatly appreciate4d your words that what the author is communicating resides in the mind of the author (that includes double and triple entendre that I often use) and in the mind of the reader who may discover even deeper and more profound meanings.
    4. I really love the way you put “truth” into perspective: “Seen from a wisdom perspective, literature (superlative writing) has to be truthful. Falsehood is a defect.” This does not mean that it may be written as a fantasy, metaphor, parable, or allegory. Jesus often spoke in parables, for example, with the wisdom to be extracted by the listener, but unmistakable in intent.

    These are just a few of my thoughts that your superlative essay brought to mind. I will be pouring over it again.

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Roy, you must mean, under 4, “This does not mean that it may [not] be written as a fantasy …”

      Reply
    • Louis Groarke

      Hi Roy, As the author of the book, I can’t disagree with anything you say. You put it eloquently. The book is hopefully very readable but also academic. As you know, the academy and many modern critics have rather different views than yours and mine. The book tries–in some academic detail–to make a careful argument for “literature” as cognitive and important for everyone, including philosophers. Thank you for your positive comment. L.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Roy, thanks for your serious attention and a whole list of reflections on Groarke’s book and my review. When you say that the first thing you look for in a poem is the poet’s message, you’re being an excellent Aristotelian reader, taking action as a thinking “final cause” of the work. There does need to be something there for you to receive, for as you say, “Why else do poets write?” They may have other motives, at least to begin, but I don’t know one who doesn’t wish for readers.

      I can’t entirely agree with the need to do historical and cultural study to understand meaning–but here I’m thinking of myself as a 13-year-old immediately captivated by Japanese haiku translated into English. And not long after I was reading the great Russian novels. The transcendence was there without the background or language. I had, however, already begun language study that I knew I would need for reading poetry in the original. Five years of high school French gave me that thorough knowledge of one other tongue that has led to workable fluency in more. Maybe I just approach the needed study in other ways than yourself!

      Reply
  2. James Sale

    An excellent review of what would appear to be an excellent book. We need more kickback against ‘relativism’; and I like the strong moral focus too. As Professor Mark William Roche quite recently said: “Morality is not one sub-system among others, such as that there is art, science, religion, business, politics, and so forth, alongside morality. Instead, morality is the guiding principle for all human endeavors” – from his book, Why Literature Matters. I hope with a forthcoming Trumpian overhaul of the education system in the USA, we get a lot more of these writers coming forward. I have myself a book coming out next year, Gods, Heroes and Us, which uses Greek mythology to substantiate many of the points raised above.

    Reply
    • Louis Groarke

      Hi James, I like the quote. The ancients (and particularly Aristotle) has a much broader view of ethics than we moderns who tend to reduce morality to a series of minimalist “Thou shalt nots.” Your books sounds like it fits nicely into the virtue-ethics tradition; there is so much wisdom (and a little bit of craziness) in the old mythologies. When I teach classical political philosophy, I always start with mythology. Good luck on the book, Louis

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks for your appreciation of the review, James. Aligned with Professor Roche’s opinion is that of Montesquieu, “Law embodies the spirit of love in society.” There are many reasons to hope for an overhaul of education in the US, though it may come from the bottom up, with schools largely controlled on the local level. The monolithic force is teachers’ unions, which may resist due to entrenched leadership, but that too can change. The recent election showed disgust for the status quo in numerous unexpected areas. New books including yours can make significant contributions.

      Reply
  3. Julian D. Woodruff

    Margaret, thanks for your discussion of what seems an important book with a corrective intent. But here’s the thing, and I hope I’m giving you a fair reading and making a point that is clear and valid. To sound a depressingly skeptical note, I miss here the recognition of objective criteria by which we recognize the transcendent in writing. Shouldn’t we be able to say confidently why Shakespeare’s sonnets are literature as opposed to that sea of mediocre Renaissance sonnets (the kind of thing one of my music history profs would call “this junk”)? Why would Wilde say of Byron–I hope my memory is right here–that he wasn’t really a poet? When we say that a reader may recognize elements and ideas beyond the author’s intent, can we avert the sense so current that “it’s really what the work means to you that’s most important”? Or (contrarily) maybe forever encountering and having to counter challenges to our appreciation of mastery and mystery in one dimension of writing or another is just a part of our current spiritual surroundings.

    Reply
    • Louis Groarke

      Dear Julian, As the original author, allow me a very brief answer to your excellent question. Yes, I argue that the term “literature” is an honorific and so, as you correctly point out, we need to be able to distinguish superior writing from mediocre or even just ordinary verbal expression. In part, I think the ability to distinguish the very good from the ordinary requires a good mind and a serious application to literature–i.e. lots of reading experience. There is no mathematical template or black-and-white recipe that one can use to distinguish literature but one can intelligently make sense of this (the way good movie critics evaluate film). In the book, I argue that one can use Aristotle’s four causes to focus on the ways in which we can fairly evaluate some texts to be literature: the eloquent use of language, the creative originality, the depth of thought, the emotive power, the effective of the genre, etc, etc. But yes, you raise an excellent question. All the best, Lg

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Julian, thanks for your reading and the various comments you’ve made on your own–as well as those that follow up the thoughts of others. Louis Groarke is deservedly first to reply to you, but let me also answer as I can.

      You’ve made two major contributions to the discussion. The first concerns OBJECTIVE CRITERIA TO RECOGNIZE what you call “transcendence,” but in context you mean criteria to recognize superiority in writing. If you do mean “transcendence,” I may answer Joseph Salemi on that topic some later day this week. But what you want is some objective means to immediately and clearly see that Shakespeare’s sonnets are better than most. Better than “the junk,” as your music history professor called it. But I think the music historian gave you no OBJECTIVE means to do this in music, and Groarke as philosopher and poet has quite rightly said there is no “mathematical template or black-and-white recipe” for the purpose in literature. As literary scholar and poet, I agree. No literary critic from the classic age until now has given one. The modern structuralists tried to apply the scientific method of linguistics to do so, but they quickly failed because science cannot even fully describe language, which is only a “material cause” of literature among Groarke’s four Aristotelian perspectives. This really shows how useful Groarke’s proposal of Aristotelian thinking can be! Judgment of value in literature, as he implies, is a process including several overlapping perspectives to evaluate each work as a whole by each intelligent and experienced reader or critic. We rely on the sum of serious and sensitive judgments over time, discounting those whose skepticism about or disbelief in literature leads them to deny the necessary tools of reason or truth or definitions. And the judgment is a process rather than a snap answer. Just think what grade you might get on an intro physics exam if you said “ten seconds” as the time when a projectile fired up at a certain speed returns to earth. Even in this easy objective question, where 10 seconds might be the right answer, you only get credit if you go through the process of writing down an equation about forces involved and solving it. Otherwise, you prove not that “10 seconds” or
      “great sonnets” is the right answer, but that you made a lucky guess or copied the answer from someone else’s test paper. We need to apply a proper process. or at least be able to see how a more thorough reader has done so, when we concur.

      Your other contribution to this discussion involves the vexed issue of authorial intent. I hope to say more on this in answer to Brian Yapko. But you have gotten something wrong here, and something else very right. It’s wrong to say that a reader who sees more in a poem than the author’s apparent intent simply prefers “what the poem means to me” rather than what it means to the author. A personal interpretation is ENTIRELY legitimate, and it often has to do with what Louis Groarke calls authorial imitation of Aristotelian “universals.” Brian Yapko in “Monica’s Consolation” wrote of Saint Monica’s hope for her wayward son Augustine–and to make this a “universal” hope, invented a fictional mother (a neighbor of Monica) with a wayward son. One commentor on Brian’s poem declared herself consoled by it because of her personal situation–something that was certainly far beyond Brian’s knowledge or intent when he wrote. Yet he was the “efficient cause” of that emotive effect in the reader, one “final cause” of the poem. And Brian may well have INTENDED such a thing in a generic or “universal” way. He enabled the reader to transcend what his poem said for an emotion and an insight beyond what his words could say. This is what Groarke means by “uttering the unutterable.” It goes utterly beyond a basic intent or purpose, such as you, Julian, had in your recent poem providing a brief logical reason why a female cannot be male. Conveying that information was your intent, but not your only intent. This is what I think you recognize (and other poets sometimes fail to), because you want in addition a “transcending” effect that will make the reader want to read your poem again and recall it. That is the transcendent effect sometimes found in comments where the poet replies that he did not intend the effect, but acknowledges it as coming from his words. And that’s the criterion for the reader–who needs to respond in relation to what is written, even when he discovers something the poet did not explicitly intend. As Groarke says, the basis for reading is to recognize that the poet’s intent is not some secret he keeps to himself, but what he did in fact write. That’s how we judge the intent of writers in past centuries, almost none of whom left the slightest statement of intent outside their work.

      Thanks for thinking and entering the discussion, Julian!

      Reply
      • Louis Groarke

        Very nicely put, as the author I couldn’t put it better. Thanks both of you for the illuminating discussion.

  4. Brian A. Yapko

    This is an intriguing book review, Margaret, concerning a book by Louis Groarke which is likely to capture the imagination of many. I must confess to great ignorance concerning the philosophical underpinnings of literature. The only Aristotle I’ve ever read was in an Introduction to Philosophy course I got a middling grade in when I was an undergrad.

    The subjects presented in Mr. Boarke’s book and your analysis thereof provide valuable insights into the very definition of literature along with insights concerning its intrinsic and moral value. Knowledge as being equated with science is, to me, a grave misunderstanding which perfunctorily dismisses a massive amount of human wisdom and achievement. If this inherently atheistic point of view now dominates the field of literature and literary criticism, then Mr. Groarke’s work is not only compelling but desperately needed. Relativism is a corrosive way of looking at the world and one in which everything is destined to be reduced to component parts to the point where almost nothing exists. Life cannot be lived that way. This goes beyond “unweaving the rainbow” into territory where nothing matters. Literally nothing matters. So I’m glad to see the pushback here.

    That being said, I can quibble with Mr. Groarke’s ideas regarding the “superior” element of literature. I think it may be productive to look at literature on a continuum in which there are works of substantial literary merit on one end of the spectrum and works of no merit whatsoever on the other end. Most pieces will fall somewhere in between and there is room for disagreement about many (but not all) of them. In other words, I can recognize literature – at least from a definitional standpoint — as something that is not superior. But I still feel unclear as to what is literature. No, a recipe or laundry list is not literature. But is a science book? Probahly not. What about a history book? Probably not. But then what of Gibbon’s Decline and History of the Roman Empire? What of Suetonius? What is the frontier between literature and good writing? Is the Gettysburg Address literature? I would say so, but what is the philosophical justifcation for that?

    I’m not sure what to make of your interpretation of a poem that extends beyond the poet’s intent. You see that as part and parcel of poetry – the observer imparts meaning to the observed. I see that is a potential violation of the poet’s intent. But I don’t feel strongly on the subject and I suppose this can be open to interpretation. Still, I take care in what I write to try to elicit a response and an understanding from the reader and I find myself taken aback when the reader sees something in my work that is not what I intended, or that I would consider completely off the mark. Putting this in legal terms, I object when a fact is accepted which lacks evidentiary foundation.

    At some point, I believe we must be critical of a reader who injects his or her own subjective views into a subject where there is little to no foundation for it. The words are subject to interpretation — within reason — but not to reinvention. We see this lack of foudation in experimental theater all the time and it frankly irks me. I remember the movie “The Goodbye Girl” in which the actor character played by Richard Dreyfuss was cast in the lead of Richard III and then forced to play our favorite royal hunchback as a drag queen. It got laughs (at least in the 1980s) but the biggest laugh came from the fact that this was a perversion and distortion of Shakespeare which said more about the fey director and which was clearly NOT a legitimate interpretation. So I guess my question is: where do we draw the line on valid subjective interpretation versus subjective unfounded personal projection? This is a subject I will now be pondering for a long time to come.

    All told, a provocative review of a book which I may well want to read. Thank you, Margaret.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      I too have a difficulty with what Groarke is arguing. If genuine literature deals solely with “the Transcendent” or “the Unutterable” or “the Sublime,” or must affirm that the universe is suffused with moral significance, then a vast amount of what the world calls literature has to be excluded from our appreciation.

      Groarke seems to have no problem with this. Only literature that does what he requires can be called “superior,” and even otherwise worthwhile texts are excluded from that category because “they are not superior enough.” That strikes me as a rather aloof mandarin attitude. And I strongly doubt that a very sensible man like Aristotle would have shared it.

      Literature does a helluva lot of things other than guiding us to the contemplation of divinity. It can be comic, cruel, provocative, erotic, humdrum, bizarre, deceptive, savage, wheedling, argumentative, testy, satiric… I mean, holy smoke, I could fill up the page with endless adjectives!

      I think Groarke has fallen into the same sort of error that Timothy Steele has anatomized in his book “Missing Measures” — namely, insisting on splitting up a field into two divisions based on what is essentially a snobbish and elitist prejudice. Steele points out that the division of metrical compositions into “true poetry” and “mere verse” is a prejudice that has afflicted Western literary criticism for a very long time. The reality is that there are countless metrical compositions, some of them excellent and many others mediocre or just plain incompetent. But saying that the excellent ones are all somehow directed towards Truth, Goodness, Morality, and Propriety is simply false. It’s also rather Comstockian, if you ask me.

      It is not “relativism” to say that literature must be judged primarily on its aesthetic qualities and the creative skill of its makers. And to say that all “superior” works of literature must be directed towards lifting us up towards “the Transcendent” is just a disguised way of saying that writers must be guided by the catechism.

      The question is this: whose catechism do you have in mind?

      Reply
      • Louis Groarke

        Hi Joseph,
        Thank you for your comments.
        I do think you make some good points; I just don’t think they count against the argument made in the book. (But philosophers like good vigorous arguments anyways. It is good for getting to the bottom of things.)
        I don’t argue what you seem to think I argue, or at least, I don’t argue for such a simplistic version of a “moralist” position. (Not my term.)
        Wordsworth said that all poetry deals with morality because it has too–because all life has to do with morality. Perhaps you think Wordsworth was a snobbish elitist; I am not sure. He certainly celebrated peasants and rural life over the academic elite of his time.
        The account you give of morality sounds very modernist, very Puritan, very Kantian, very dour. Aristotelian morality embraces anything that has excellence. It is not about being prudish, or obeying a series of pedantic commands. Telling a good joke is a part of being moral. The good life includes great jokes. As you yourself suggest, there are lousy, mediocre, cliched jokes and there are jokes that his the nail on the head. (Excuse the cliche!) But that admission is enough for literature. Some writing works; some doesn’t for all sorts of reasons. Sorting all that out is not an easy task. (And not really the philosopher’s task.)
        As to the transcendence–well, the book goes into a great deal of what that is about. But I say explicitly, of course, atheistic literature can aim at and express transcendence. Here is William Empson’s last poem (“Let it go”):

        It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
        The more things happen to you the more you can’t
        Tell or remember even what they were.

        The contradictions cover such a range.
        The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
        You don’t want madhouse and the whole thing there.

        Empson, of course, hated Christianity with a passion. But I can’t see how anyone can read that without seeing some sort of straining towards transcendence. Different religions, cultures, philosophies treat transcendence differently, I am not arguing for or against this or that version of transcendence in the book.

        The transcendence is what is real but unutterable so literature gets to it–magically–through eloquence, humour, tragedy, cruel satire, nasty poetry (like the realist Martial), etc. But too much to say here. I better not run on. (Nothing worse than a long-winded philosopher.)

        Thank you for your vigorous comments,
        Louis

    • Louis Groarke

      Hi Brian, As the author of the book, I basically with your message, I don’t see much that I would disagree with. Perhaps a matter of emphasis (or my clumsiness) here and there, but I think that we are basically on the same page. Allow me a few responses.
      First, as an academic philosopher, I don’t think philosophers deal with literature very well. There is more effort today than before, but in the heyday of “analytic philosophy” literature (like ethics) was given short shrift. (Philosophy as a taught subject is interesting or not depending on the instructor.)
      Second, I like the idea of a continuum for literature; that makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t develop that idea in the book but I agree, that would be an interesting way to look at it. But one can only do so much in a book.
      Third, yes, reductionism is all around us and, mostly, spawns nihilism. It does not only hamper our appreciation and understanding of literature. Anything having to do with value in the world falls apart; science is important in its own right, but it is not all there is to knowledge or to understanding. I wanted to make that point with the book.
      Fourth, as to exegesis and “expanding” the meaning of a poem or test. I agree–anything that violates the author’s intentions or misconstrues the literary genre is anathema. But think of the Bible. The idea that there is more meaning in a text than we first realize is commonly accepted. We moderns can find something in the text that was not immediately obvious to earlier readers. Even authors or artists (as Plato says) do not always understand exactly why or how they came up with a good work of art. We are not all experts at our own self-psychoanalysis. Also, we don’t always know what the reader will find most intriguing, powerful, useful. We operate in a historical context; we do things, often relying on intuition. Interpretation here means exploring a work in conjunction with an absolute respect for what the author was intending to do. But as always, these are big topics and I cannot do them justice here.
      Thanks very much for your interest,
      I agree, there is a lot of work to be done,
      Lg

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Brian, thanks for your comments. You might want to read Groarke’s book if you are indeed interested in the recent and present state of literary theory and criticism. The evils you note in your second paragraph do exist, and as I say in the review, they are well summarized in the book’s second chapter.

      Your concerns about (1) the definition of literature and (2) the author’s intent as applied to interpretation of a work deserve response. With regard to the first, you fundamentally agree with Groarke that a definition is useful. You probably even agree with his including “superior” or “superlative” in the definition–because some texts must be excluded for literary study to make any sense. I will agree with you, as Groarke does, that there can be a continuum or scale of merit, such that poor poems are literature at a lower level. We scoop them up into the very large canon about which specialists know. There are reasons for the larger canon. I like many of those Renaissance sonnets of minimal merit, and I can find something to enjoy in almost all, because authors were conscious of writing within a tradition. This is one of the things often lacking (or at least not apparent) in poetry today.

      You want to know about the “frontier between literature and good writing.” I know a bit about that from work as an editor of scientific books. In science writing the principal aim is to convey information and ideas concerning future directions with clarity. Definitions and limitations must be precise, and supported by mathematical and graphical material which is essential to any “elegance” the writing has. Elegance is desirable: it means covering all cases with greatest brevity. This is sometimes necessarily tedious! You may recognize the ideal from similar aims in legal writing.

      The Gettysburg Address is not literature if these are the aims, so I would say there is a frontier between precision in some kinds of writing and desirable expansiveness in literature. Distraction! My daughter has just declared that Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer is literature, for the cleverness of advertising that people enjoy reading even if they have no intention of buying the products. This, I think, is entertainment-based ephemeral popular literature with a business purpose. It wouldn’t be accepted into the canon for study, but it appeals to readers who represent the final cause of literature. See how Aristotle’s causes serve our discussion! This lowly kind of literature also has a formal cause or genre–and that’s how we can bring in the Gettysburg Address. Speeches are one genre of writing, of which the best are accepted as literature. History writing is another genre in which the literary function of transcendence operates as readers contemplate the past. But I would say history writing can gradually fade into mere evidence for history, rather than literature still capable of inspiring readers. Now that we understand Gibbon’s blind spots and prejudices (shared by readers of his time), he says more of his day and age than of the decline and fall of Rome.

      On authorial intent, Brian, you agree that the “death of the author” is a modern myth serving critics who wish to insert their own theories into works of literature. This is, however, a position held by interpreters of renown who would allow readers to dismiss or distort freely the words the author wrote because they consider it an “intentional fallacy” to find intent in a text. Groarke, by contrast, identifies authorial intent with the work itself as basis for interpretation. The author’s intent was to write what he wrote! Indeed there is nothing else that is direct evidence of intent for the vast majority of literary works.

      Your hesitancy on this point is that of a living author who had a plan to fulfill before and during writing. He hoped to elicit a specific response from readers–and can be surprised at any other. But let me quite respectfully suggest that it is hubris on the part of an author to assume that he (the efficient cause of the work) has complete control of the other causes, namely of language, of genre, and of reader response. As Groarke has already replied, it is commonly accepted that there is more meaning in a text than we first suppose. “We” includes the author. The passage of time, and the number of readers, and different critical perspectives, have found much, much more in the classics than their authors could possibly have imagined. Please see what I said to Julian Woodruff about your poem “Monica’s Consolation” and the consolation you could not have explicitly intended to give to one reader.

      Another very small example is a comment I made to Cynthia Erlandson about her poem on a nursing home, identifying an echo of T. S. Eliot’s “Prufrock.” I was able to do this from the words of Cynthia’s poem and its topic of aging. Cynthia said she had no intent to quote Eliot, but may have unconsciously done so. It is a richer poem for the unintended echo.

      The nature of language and readers necessarily leads to many interpretations. I again quote the great critic Helen Vendler in saying that a poet who wants only one interpretation should keep his poem to himself. Or perhaps I’ll identify a variant of the “intentional fallacy” coming from disgruntled poets. By which I do not mean you, Brian! I acknowledge your concerns about misinterpretation, and I’ve certainly experienced it myself. I mean rather the poet who considers himself the only authorized interpreter of his poem, and feels he can correct readers and critics who find anything in it other than his plan and desires in writing. First of all, we have to admit a writer may not fulfill the intent he holds deep within and cannot get onto paper or computer. A common example is would-be poems of praise that strike readers as mere flattery. And really, isn’t it a pinched and impoverished outlook for an author to reject interpretations that do not suit his personal plan or interpretive view when the said author could hope to achieve multifaceted and transcendent work?

      Reply
      • Louis Groarke

        Nicely put, Margaret. The obvious example I use in the book is if someone were to write a comedy and all the audience wept or if someone write a tragedy and all the audience laughed, something would have gone wrong! Is it the fault of the audience or the writer? Well, I think we need intelligent readers and critics to figure all that out. Poems don’t mean anything at all; but when someone really reaches down deep and touches readers with some universal experience, there can be an expansion of meaning in sometimes unexpected ways. But this is not the same as a licence to misunderstand what the writer intended. Busy with end-of-term marking–hard to understand sometimes what the writer intended. 🙂 Cheers, L.

    • Margaret Coats

      Brian, this reply moves into your comment on production of Shakespeare, and the validity of interpretations in that mode. And this really is a move, because readers of the plays may interpret however they like, with the criterion for legitimacy being that they base their opinions on the words Shakespeare wrote. These are Shakespeare’s intent. Dramatic production also interprets the words, but as well, it is another art form, in which director and performers have legitimate scope for their own creativity based on the work of the dramatist. The World War II film of Henry V, starring Laurence Olivier, had as its principal intent the stirring up of patriotic feeling in aid of the war effort. Notice that I use “intent” here in relation to filmmaking artists, who in fact chose a good text for their art, as Shakespeare in the play evinces English patriotism. Their intent was different than that of Shakespeare, but congenial.

      Responsible producers of Shakespeare (like cinematographers of classic novels) usually recognize a need to serve well an audience that may be familiar with literature. They ordinarily make choices about portions to present. Hamlet would be six hours long if performed in full, so it never is. A two-hour movie can only do justice to a short story, so classic novels always receive drastic cutting. Audience and reviewers understand this, and base their response on the whole spirit of film or play versus the whole text. In effect, this meets the standard of interpreting a literary work as a unified whole.

      The Shakespearean production you excoriated as unfaithful and invalid interpretation was, however, experimental theater. By definition, experimental theater regards conventions of the stage as illegitimate and in need of violation. What you saw and described is experimental theater following its own generic practice by deliberate misinterpretation. This mode of theater has been with us more than a century. Its ways are said to be expressed in its own absurd classics, the Ubu plays of Alfred Jarry. I studied them in a college course on modern drama. It is, as you say, a reinvention when applied to classic drama such as Shakespeare.

      Louis Groarke’s work could be extended to challenge the worth of such modernist things as experimental theater. Recall that when Aristotle discusses literary works in particular, he focuses on Greek tragedy. As Groarke says, there is much work yet to be done–by philosophers, literary critics, and by writers and readers.

      Reply
      • Louis Groarke

        Hi Margaret, Brian, I do not feel qualified to comment on “experimental theatre” as a genre; I would have to look at it more closely. But I do think that one can critique a whole genre: “soap opera,” I take it, is a genre. One could say, in a way, that Tolstoi critiques the whole artistic genre of ballet. (Rightly or wrongly.) But one could complain that certain genres are narcissistic, anachronistic, self-indulgent, sensationalistic, shallow, false… etc., etc. One needs good readers and critics to figure all that out. Those are not a priori judgments we can make. But Aristotle provides some very good criteria we can use in working through all that. Best of the season, L.

  5. Paul A. Freeman

    A lot to mull over as I move from reading the page-turning Buchi Emechta’s ‘Second-Class Citizen’, about a Nigerian woman living in London in the 70s (I didn’t think I’d like this book because there’s little dialogue), to Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ – a literary masterpiece (and masterclass).

    I also read Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story ‘The Blue Carbuncle’ around Christmastime. There’s been much debate on whether ACD’s Sherlock Holmes works are literature or not, possibly on genre grounds. Being bias, I’d say yes, they’re literature

    Thanks for the interesting essay / review, Margaret.

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Sherlock Holmes is an interesting case in point. I would be more easily persuaded that those stories are literature, i.e. worth reading, than that they are good as detective fiction.

      Reply
      • Margaret Coats

        Julian, I like the Holmes stories’ mastery at gradual revelation of complex plot to the reader, but the introduction of criminal mastermind Moriarty dulled my interest in the series. If Moriarty was created by Conan Doyle to have a means of killing Holmes off, it worked.

      • Louis Groarke

        Hi Julian, I don’t quite grasp your point. The term “literature” is more general than the term “detective fiction.” Whatever the Sherlock Holmes stories are, they are something, They are not limericks, sonnets, Greek tragedy, comedies, autobiographies, etc. All literature belongs to some more specific genre and we take that into account (tacitly or explicitly) when we evaluate it. Maybe what you mean is that the Holmes stories are different from (and better than) Agatha Christie. That may be true but then you could write and essay and explain why you think that is the case, and I would read the essay and say: oh, he makes some good points! The Holmes stories are different (and better). But this is just to identify a new genre. In trade publishing they sometimes talk about about “genre literature” like sci-fi for young adults between 14 to 18 years-old. But that is not how the “genre” term is being used here. All that is meant here is that one way of understanding what a piece of writing is about is by taking into account the “kind” of thing it is. (A very Aristotelian thought, by the way.) Thanks for your comments, Louis

    • Louis Groarke

      Hi Paul, I think we use the word “literature” in two different senses. 1) To refer to poems short stories, plays etc. that aspire to special merit. And 2) to those texts that achieve that higher level of quality. I don’t think there is a clear dividing line between the two categories, just as there is no clear dividing line between cold and warm weather; but at some point, we do say: hey it is really cold. That makes eminent rational sense. Also, as the Chicago School argued, there are different genres: detective stories are a genre. And although one could argue about which genres are the most important, even the most literary, one could also argue about, for example, which are the best detective stories. I have a fondness for Raymond Chandler radio-productions–he manages some lovely lines at times–but, nonetheless, Chandler is not Dostoevsky. A lot to figure out there. Thank you for your contribution to the discussion.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Paul, for reading and appreciating the review–and for mentioning several “kinds of literature,” as Alastair Fowler (a reasonable scholar and theorist) spoke of literary genres. For me, genre is an important concept in deciding what is literature, because it narrows down the number of competing works to those comparable in important ways. That makes it much easier to decide on the best.

      There is a certain hierarchy of genres, but I’m willing to say the best in many genres have a claim to the title of literature. At this point in time, there is enough mystery or detective fiction to make the competition worthwhile. Just think–it would not have been so several centuries ago. Arthur Conan Doyle has a claim with Sherlock Holmes and stories like “The Blue Carbuncle” (which also belongs to the satisfying subgenre of British Christmas mysteries). Enjoy your holiday reading!

      Reply
  6. BDW

    as per Erisbawdle Cue:

    I cannot think there has been a greater philosopher than Aristotle, though at times I may have been swept away by Plato, Heraclitus, Lucretius, the German Romantics, Nietzsche, Santayana, Russell, etc.

    And I have been impressed with Aristotle’s observations on Greek poetry, especially his comments on epic, tragedy, and comedy; but, like all of us, Aristotle also had a horse in the race of literature.

    I do agree with Mr. Groarke that “’literature’ as cognitive…[is] important”, as the empirical laboratory of Language; and that Homer, and other Ancient Greeks had a “broader view of ethics” than “we[e] moderns”, who tends to devolve into morality.

    I also agree with Mr. Groarke that “the ability to distinguish superior writing from mediocre…or ordinary verbal expression”, as in any field—mathematics, history, physics, philosophy, chemistry, biology, etc., matters.

    In my youth I found Wordsworth inspirational; and even now I still find pieces of his poetry valuable touch-stones. But I have never found any worthy poem of Empson. Perhaps Mr. Groarke can think of a better one.

    There are definitely “worse things than a long-winded philosopher”.

    Finally, we @ SCP owe a modicum of gratitude (How can I say this without making it a slight?) to Margaret Coats again for keeping us alert to contemporaries we may be unaware of. This requires some sacrifice on her part.

    Reply
    • Louis Groarke

      BDW, As someone who has spent too much time studying Aristotle, I certainly cannot disagree with your first comment. What this book does is attempt to go beyond the “Poetics” analysis and provide a much broader, Aristotelian account of literature. (Yes, the “Poetics” is a great shorter work; I have something else dealing with that being published this year. I should say that I do not agree with much of the academic discussion on that score for reasons you would probably agree with. But enough of that.) I am not personally a fan of Empson’s poetry, which I find to be overrated. I cited his poem just to show that one can find a striving towards transcendence even in such an inhospitable landscape. As the author of the book, I must thank Margaret as well; it is nice when one is able to reach a larger audience including people who really care about poetry. Thanks, Margaret!

      Reply
      • Margaret Coats

        You’re most welcome, Louis. I’ll take this opportunity to let all know my review was unsolicited. No one asked me to do it; I was intrigued by the title found in the bio below a poem of the author’s published here at the Society of Classical Poets–and more by the succinct description of the book as “a traditional response to postmodernism.”

    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Bruce Dale Wise, for your attention and response. That’s what makes sacrifice worthwhile. Also I thank you for referring to other “contemporaries we may be unaware of,” since I suppose you mean poetry critic Helen Vendler and my recent elegy for her. I’m glad to know you noticed it. It and the discussion of it in comments treated authorial intent, something which has come up again here from a philosophical point of view, rather than from Vendler’s view as a critic and extremely popular teacher of poetry. Keep making the connections!

      Reply

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