Words that Mean Nothing, Part One: "Literature"

Searching for meaning. . . or something.
"Old Scholar (Vanitas Allegory)" by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1668. 

My lovely and brilliant sister has pointed out to me that I was carelessly imprecise in my use of the word "literature" in my post on Dante and modern Italian. She is, of course, 100% right. Conveniently for me, her disagreement--which I at least had the good instinct to ask for--has revealed to me that this blog is starting to take the shape of a public journal of my progress through literary study. It will be just that--a progression--meaning it will be messy, contradictory, and never fully complete. That being said, I will make every good attempt that I can to ensure that my considerations of this journey will be interesting, honest, and liberally seasoned with exciting thoughts and words from people who know a lot more than I do. And I will be disagreeing with myself. Often. Thanks, Lia!

Back to the word. I tried to give it a spin in the right direction; for the purposes of that post, I had decided that "literature" would mean "old (at least 100 years), dense (so that you could spend a lifetime thinking about it), and wildly imaginative (thrilling to the core, life-changing)."

It has become glaringly obvious to me over the past few days that this is a particularly bad definition of "literature." Luckily, in the introduction to his excellent book Literary Theory: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton gives a concise, witty, and illuminating summary of the problem of defining this word.

Eagleton's introduction broadly traces the rise and fall of certain ways of defining "literature" in the recent past. From reading this excellent book I have come to realize that the definition I have always used is one initiated and popularized by the Russian formalists like Roman Jakobson, who defined "literature" is a piece of  an "organized violence committed on ordinary speech" (qt. in Eagleton 2).

This is a definition of literature that, in my own education, has come out of my interest in modern poetry, with its premium on defamiliarizing and re-energizing language, which has lost its shockingly beautiful fecundity as it is increasingly used as a weapon of social, political, and economic control. Here, Eagleton offers one of my favorite lines: "If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur 'Thou still unravished bride of quietness,' then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary" (2). In this sense of the word, it is the kind of presence which I cultivate greedily.

Eagleton finally leads us to the conclusion that this definition of "literature" is simply one among many. Establishing an objective definition of literature, he says, is impossible; every definition of "literature" so far represents a set of criteria derived by certain people at a certain time with certain ideological aims. There is no definition of "literature" that arrives at an essential, fixed, and static quality or character. "Any belief that the study of literature is the study of a stable, well-defined entity, as entomology is the study of insects, can be abandoned as a chimera. . ." says Eagleton, because "by and large people term 'literature' writing which they think is good" (10-11).

My point in excluding Harry Potter from the same conceptual space as the one that contains Dante and Shakespeare, then, is to say that I don't particularly care for it, while I am enamored with those latter authors. My mistake, however, was to pretend that the word "literature" may absolutely not refer to works I don't care for. And although my initial objection to the Harry Potter series has been that it is a highly commercial franchise more than a raw, complex imagination of an astoundingly complex world, that exclusive, rather elitist view becomes a bit more complicated when I consider that Shakespeare himself got rather rich from his dealings in the theater, if not solely from his plays themselves. This is just one example of the trickiness in using a word like "literature" to attribute and enforce cultural, or even personal, values.

The title of this post, then, is not entirely accurate. "Literature" means something--but it has meant and continues to mean so many things as to disperse and dissipate its efficacy as a unified concept, especially one that we may use to assign (or revoke) value. A brief reading of the word's entry in Raymond Williams's paradigm-shifting book Keywords yields a good sense of how many meanings "literature" has accrued throughout its usage. According to Williams, it has meant, at different times: all written work of any kind; all famous writings; all writings deemed to be "polite" (184); explicitly fictional works; all written works of any genre or degree of realism which exerted a high degree of cultural influence. . . and on and on and on. At one time it has meant imaginative, creative work, and at another time the kind of writing which was utterly distinct from purely imaginative, artistic realms--something more "serious" and discursive, or instructive.

And that was just through the 18th century. Since then, "literature" has become an even more complex and, to an extent, vacuous word. It is a word to which we may apply Jacques Derrida's concept of being "sous rature" or "under erasure"--a word that undermines itself, but, in the absence of a suitable alternative, which we must continue to use. Eagleton's monumentally important point is that our cultural values and the ideological agendas each of us use to fuel our career through life are the basis for our definitions of words like "literature;" these words do not come to us from a gilded, laurel-wreathed, divinely-sanctioned manuscript. Or at least, when they do come from such a place, we would do very well to question the motives behind the bestower. Then it will be important to remember that the word "literature," as Eagleton keenly points out, tells us more about ourselves than it does about the things we are trying to describe.

Merry Twelve Tide!

"Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"
"Twelfth Night" by Jan Steen, 1668. 

In early modern England, Christmas fell, as it does now, on December 25. But it was also only the first day out of twelve of continuous, riotous "Drinking, Stage-Plays, Enterludes, Masks, Mummeries, Dancing, and all licentious dissolutenesse." The dissoluteness was so intense--and so much fun--that the Puritan rulers of parliament "banned" Christmas in 1647, which inspired further rioting in many major English cities and--in all seriousness--angry, defiant hanging of holly in doorways throughout the isle. Of course, the Puritans also saw Christmas as one of the "trappings of popery" and the "rags of the Beast"--meaning the Roman Catholic Church.

England at this time was in between its First and Second Civil Wars, during which the English Parliament had raised up an army against King Charles I, a king with strong ties to the Catholic Church, and a Catholic wife, Henrietta Maria of France. After the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I, who ruthlessly punished Catholic recusants and their sympathizers, antipathy between Reformers, who were often in power before Charles became king, and Catholics was at an all-time high. As with everything during this period in English history, Christmas and a general reform of the festive calendar became entangled in the contentious and violent interactions of powerful religious and political entities.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christmas Day was less important than the feast of the Epiphany, or Twelfth Night. This holiday is the source for the name of Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, or What You Will, and the play was often performed at the height of the revelry on this saturnalian feast day during which a "Lord of Misrule" would "turn the world upside down" and proclaim that gentlemen should wear pauper's robes, as well as doing hilarious things like putting his boots on his hands and his gloves on his feet. The play Twelfth Night is equally topsy-turvy, expressing what C. L. Barber calls a "festive pleasure in transvestism"--a form of socially-sanctioned transgression that remains provocative and fascinating today.

Shakespeare's play featured prominently in courtly celebrations of the Twelve Tide festival, the end of a festive season which actually would have begun with All Hallow's Eve. While this prominent subversion of order would have helped in many ways to consolidate the traditional roles and strictures of Elizabethan culture it temporarily suspended, Twelfth Night is not a simple play enacting a purely conservative and sin-alleviating social utility. Viola, the play's protagonist, is a young noblewoman who impersonates a younger boy in order to win the affections of her beloved Count Orsino. Orsino asks the cross-dressing Viola to woo the wealthy widow Olivia in order to endear him to her (Olivia, that is.) Oh, and all the female roles would have been played by boys.

Viola, then, appears onstage as a young boy pretending to be a young woman pretending to be a young boy, who is wooing an old woman in order to woo a middle-aged man. If this sounds confusing, then you're beginning to get it. C. L. Barber, in his book Shakespeare's Festive Comedy, writes that the sexual confusion in the play conveys "how much the sexes differ yet how much they have in common, how everyone who is fully alive has qualities of both." This is certainly not something the church authorities in Renaissance England (or today, for that matter) would have sustained.

Perhaps, though, this is something that the Twelve Tide revelers may have felt--even if they could not conceive of it as Barber has done--as they were celebrating their temporary license. The subversive impulse of the Christmas festival, then can be a move towards fullness, towards a more expansive view of human life--in addition to letting loose a little. Give Twelfth Night a read, or a viewing. Have a drink or two, enough to ask, as does Sir Toby Belch, "shall we make the welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the night owl in a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver?" Most importantly during this year's Twelve Tide, make sure you take a break from shopping and sitting in traffic long enough to enjoy some festive Misrule!

La cultura

Dante with his Comedìa; he stands between hell,
purgatory, and Florence

How important is literature to the culture of a given country? In what ways does a given culture value--and devalue--literature? In the United States, literature seems to be pushed aside so often as a scholastic chore and, come graduation day, an inutile afterthought. Reading seems to be flourishing--but my scope of "literature" here doesn't include Harry Potter or Fifty Shades of Grey. Just as surely as political figures are announcing that studying philosophy and the humanities in general is useless, they are funneling the sum total of the pittance allocated for education into STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subjects--oh, and the business schools, of course.

My closest foreign frame of reference is Italy. Undoubtedly a similar relegation of old (at least 100 years), dense (so that you could spend a lifetime thinking about it), and wildly imaginative (thrilling to the core, life-changing) literature is occurring in Europe. Yet there are differences, even among the ways previous generations have regarded la letteratura and la cultura. One of my favorite anecdotes in the history of modern languages is the story of how what we now consider modern Italian became the language of the new, unified kingdom, the amalgam of regions and city states brought together in the nineteenth century to form "the boot" in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Modern Italian is, actually, Tuscan--the form of Gallo-Italic language spoken in the city-state of Tuscany for hundreds of years. In fact, if you understand modern Italian and were to crack open a copy of Dante's Comedìa, you could read the text with near perfection, despite the fact that it was completed in 1320 CE! This fact is remarkable, but not coincidental. Because of the popularity throughout the Italian peninsula of Dante's incredible literary works--along with those of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch, innovator of the sonnet form of poetry), Giovanni Boccaccio, and Niccolò Machiavelli--Tuscan, the language of a 14th century poet, was chosen as the national language when the country was unified in 1861. For a rough equivalency, imagine everyone in Great Britain reading newspapers, watching TV shows, and texting in the language that Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales! 

Of course, the United States does not have an official national language--and I'm not arguing that issue one way or another. In many ways, the imposition of a language from one city-state onto an entire people is an affront to diversity, not to mention a highly problematic, and even authoritarian, appropriation of culture for nationalistic purposes. This is one of the potential pitfalls of strong cultural pride: a sense of superiority that can be manipulated by totalitarian leaders, as it was to horrific effect in Benito Mussolini's Kingdom of Italy.

But, in Italy, culture is also sacred, and there is much that is good about this reverence and respect for culture and literature that we Americans might take to heart. Italians care about their culture; they care about their food, their wine, their art, and their language. And, most importantly for my brief and limited purposes here, they care about their literature. I seriously doubt that Italian politicians will suggest that students stop learning Latin because it won't help them "in the workforce." And every day in school they will learn, and learn to love, the language of their country's greatest poet. A romantic notion, perhaps--but something to reflect on deeply as we make decisions about how we and our children will be educated in the 21st century.

HATE SPEECH

I'd like to talk about the term "anchor babies," a term many anti-immigrant, close-minded bigots have been flinging around these days. The hysterical vapidity in this term, "anchor babies," infuriates me, because my grandfather was one. Lorenzo Auda Poin was born in Chicago, where his parents, sister, aunts and uncles had immigrated, in 1919, and so became an American citizen under the 14th Amendment. He and his family then returned to Italy, but his status as an American citizen allowed him to come to New York to escape the rising tide of Fascism. It gave him the ability to flee this authoritarian regime under which anyone’s rights were subject to the whims of “Il Duce” and the Blackshirts. 

It also compelled him to join the US Army during World War II, in which he served bravely and was severely wounded, nearly losing his life, driving through a heavily-mined area to retreive equipment and weapons from behind enemy lines. He was a hero and awarded the Purple Heart and the Silver Star for “gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States.” That enemy was, at least in part, the army of the country of his parents, my great-grandparents. Somehow, I suspect most people who denigrate "anchor babies" have no earthly concept of the poignancy and difficulty inherent in a situation like that. 

He also, along with my grandmother, worked tirelessly to raise and support a family of intelligent, kind, thoughtful, tax-paying and law-abiding Americans. He was ready to sacrifice everything for his country. He has inspired me throughout my entire life to be a good person, to stand up for what is right, and to love and perpetuate what is good about this country. 

But some hateful, narrow-minded, unthinking, foolish, lazy-minded, short-sighted, self-righteous, fearful, and ultimately selfish and immoral politicians and citizens out there want to use this term, “anchor babies.” They think that immigrants are greedy, dirty, dangerous, untrustworthy, immoral subhumans who don't deserve to participate in our democratic experiment. They have never thought, apparently, for one second that one of those immigrants, one of those “anchor babies,” might one day grow up to save their sorry asses on a battlefield across an ocean. These detractors have never thought that the Christian values they themselves profess relentlessly might stand to apply to those who don't belong, or might not be converted to their faith. They don't want to let anyone who doesn't look like them, or doesn't pray like they do, into this country--and I say that is despicable. 

Make an attempt to open up that tightly-clamped fist; give a little. Consider for one second that these are real people you’re talking about, real human beings who want to live freely and give their kids a better life than the ones they have led. Stop using this hurtful rhetoric of exclusion simply to achieve political gain, or to give your party more power. It's no game. It's no game to the people who risk their lives to come to America, an act of immigration that should be the most powerful expression of praise to our country's legacy and promise. Stop regarding this issue as a game, broaden your concern from simply moving pawns and rooks as you see fit to conquer and move forward. Politicians: don't forget that your pawns have children, and your rooks have dreams.