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Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature Volume 32 Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature General Editors Tobias Döring · Winfried Fluck Ansgar Nünning · Donald E. Pease 32 Literature and Cultural Change Edited by Ingo Berensmeyer, Herbert Grabes † and Sonja Schillings Notice to Contributors The editors invite submission of manuscripts appropriate to the forthcoming volumes of REAL. The 2017 volume, edited by Tobias Döring, will be on “Meteorologies of Modernity”. The 2018 volume, edited by Donald Pease, will be on “Populist Imaginaries”. Each author will receive one copy of the yearbook and a pdf file of the article. Articles submitted for consideration may be sent directly to the volume editors or via an advisor. They should reach the volume editors by December 1 of the year prior to publication, and should not exceed 10,000 words (including endnotes and references). To facilitate processing, they should be sent in duplicate and on cd or disc; they must be typed in English, doublespaced, and should observe the conventions laid down in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003 sqq.). All rights including the rights of publication, distribution and sales, as well as the right to translation, are reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means - graphic, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, taping, or information and retrieval systems - without written permission of the publisher. © 2016 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG, D-72070 Tübingen www.narr.de · E-Mail: info@narr.de Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-8233-4187-1 ISSN 0723-0338 Editors Tobias Döring , LMU München, Department für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Schellingstr. 3, D-80799 München, Germany Winfried Fluck , Freie Universität Berlin, John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Lansstraße 5-9, D-14195 Berlin, Germany Ansgar Nünning , Universität Gießen, Institut für Anglistik, Otto-Behaghel-Straße 10, D-35394 Gießen, Germany Donald E. Pease , English Department, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA Advisory Board Jonathan Arac (University of Pittsburgh), Catherine Belsey (University of Wales), Marshall Brown (University of Washington), Ronald Shusterman (Université Jean Monnet), Werner Sollors (Harvard University), Arne Zettersten (University of Copenhagen) Text-editing and final layout: Stefanie Rück CONTENTS Foreword......................................................................................................III I NGO B ERENSMEYER , S ONJA S CHILLINGS Introduction..................................................................................................V Contributors...............................................................................................XV I. Theorizing Literature and Cultural Change H ERBERT G RABES The Role of Literature in Major Cultural Changes..................................3 W INFRIED F LUCK Hermeneutics of Change...........................................................................15 J EAN -J ACQUES L ECERCLE Structures of Feeling, Literature and Cultural Change.........................39 D ANIEL H ARTLEY A Defence of Transhistoricism: Literary History between Raymond Williams and Alain Badiou.................................................... 51 II. Literature as an Indicator of Cultural Change A NN L ECERCLE The Sixteenth Century, “Turning Point of European Eroticism” (Lacan), and Elizabethan Theatre.............................................................71 G ERO G UTTZEIT “The One Fixed Point in a Changing Age”: Watson, the Narrating Instance, and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives......................................79 C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER A ND K ATE M ACDONALD Beyond the Subversion/ Containment Binary: Middlebrow Fiction and Social Change................................................ 101 VI A LEXANDER S CHERR The Emergence of ‘Genomic Life Writing’ and ‘Genomic Fiction’ as Indicators of Cultural Change: A Case Study of Richard Powers’ Novel Generosity: An Enhancement (2009)..............................................121 III. Literature in Response to Cultural Change C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage: Richard Brome’s A Jovial Crew (1641/ 2) at the Dawn of the English Civil War......................................................................................145 I NGO B ERENSMEYER “The musique concrète of civilization”: Responding to Technological and Cultural Change in Postwar British Literature.............................169 S ONJA S CHILLINGS Hulga Sees Through to Nothing: Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Anxiety................................................................................187 M ARIA L ÖSCHNIGG ‘Nifty shades of green’: The Merits and Limits of Ecopoetry.............203 IV. Literary Change and/ as Cultural Change T OM C LUCAS “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society”: Isaac D’Israeli, Benjamin Disraeli, and the Literary Character.....................................225 V ERA N ÜNNING “Human Character Changed”: Virginia Woolf’s Conceptualisation of Literary Change in the 21st Century.................................................24 S NEŽANA V ULETIĆ Constructing Alternative Narratives, Triggering Cultural Change: Functions and Emplotment of Igbo Folklore in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964)..................................269 M ICHAEL C. F RANK Migrant Literature and/ as Cultural Change: The Case of “London Is the Place for Me”............................................289 5 Foreword Most of the contributions to this volume of REAL were presented at the international conference “Literature and Cultural Change,” held at Justus Liebig University Giessen (Rauischholzhausen Castle) from May 20 to 3, 2015. We would like to express our gratitude to the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) and the Giessen University Association, whose generous support made it possible to assemble an international range of established and emerging scholars. We gratefully acknowledge the commitment and support of Ansgar Nünning, Christine Schwanecke, Nora Berning, Natalya Bekhta, and Stefanie Rück, as well as the friendly staff at Rauischholzhausen Castle, for making the conference a success. For her assistance in editing this volume, thanks go to Liza Bauer for checking quotations, and special thanks to Stefanie Rück for her editorial precision and unflagging support. Our esteemed colleague and co-editor Herbert Grabes passed away quite unexpectedly on December 5, 2015. He had co-organized the conference, the topic of which had been his idea. We will always remember the energy, intellectual curiosity, and joy of discovery that he brought to our discussions. We can only hope that the published results would have found his approval. This volume, which contains one of his last publications, is dedicated to his memory. Ingo Berensmeyer Sonja Schillings I NGO B ERENSMEYER , S ONJA S CHILLINGS Introduction: Literature and Cultural Change The relationship between literary and cultural studies has never been completely free of tensions, mutual suspicions, and misrepresentations. The kind and scope of the connections between literature and culture - indeed the very definition of these terms and their (often implicit) theoretical and conceptual traditions - can still be a matter of debate. For cultural studies scholars, much of this debate over the last few decades was about questioning and expanding the prevailing literary canon and demoting literature from its privileged position in university curricula. On the other hand, some of those scholars of literature who, for various reasons, did not feel entirely at ease with these developments, rose to the challenge of rethinking the foundations of their discipline and the reasons for teaching and studying literary texts rather than other cultural products. Herbert Grabes, to whose memory we dedicate this volume, was always in the forefront of those eager to keep the lines of communication between literary and cultural studies open, so it comes as no surprise that he suggested the theme of the conference on which this volume is based. 1 Traditionally, literature has often been conceptualised as an art form that makes universal (human) values tangible and allows for a reflection and questioning of these values within and for a community. 2 1 See, for example, Herbert Grabes, “Literary History and Cultural History: Relations and Difference,” Literary History/ Cultural History: Force-Fields and Tensions (REAL 17), ed. Herbert Grabes (Tübingen: Narr, 2001), 1-34. Although that volume was more explicitly concerned with questions of historiography, it offers a good overview of (some) relevant positions in these fields from fifteen years ago. From Greek myths to Game of Thrones, shared stories have helped to shape communities and unify societies that may otherwise be deeply divided. With the rise of the concept of culture, however - itself frequently understood as the unifying fabric amongst humans (not in the sense of a fundamental meta-reflection but in the sense of everyday practices, a ‘way of life’ in Raymond Williams’s words) - a competing set of terms and arguments has emerged that tends to absorb functions and purposes previously ascribed to literature and literary 2 See, for example, the essays by Tom Clucas and Snežana Vuletić in this volume. The argument for an ethical cognitive function of literature is presented, for example, in Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992); for an incisive philosophical critique of this position, see Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, Truth, Fiction, and Literature (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994), 368-94. I NGO B ERENSMEYER , S ONJA S CHILLINGS X theory. 3 The immense impact of cultural studies on literary studies has led to a changing understanding of interpretation itself, which moves away from trying to understand the meaning of a text in a structuralist sense, and instead embeds literature in the contexts of its production, reception, and not least the social and political functions of meaning-making. Even though this contextualized understanding of literature is now routinely applied in the vast majority of analyses of literature and the arts, it remains a contested focus. The rise of cultural studies has led to a situation in which literature is frequently used as documentary evidence of particular aspects of culture and cultural change. But this can easily lead to a neglect of the aesthetic (and other cognitive) dimensions of literary texts. For example, some scholars caution against the dissolution of interpretation, thus approaching the conversation between literary and cultural studies as a fundamental problem of scholarly methodology. When they are concerned with literature, cultural studies scholars tend to emphasize historicized representation, the conversation between literature and other media, and generally to place the fraught relationship between texts and their numerous (social, cultural, political, geographical) contexts at the centre of their discussion. At the same time, literature is often still understood as reflexive, not necessarily of (universalist) values but of the negotiable boundaries of ‘a culture’ in Franz Boas’s sense of shared customs, traditions, institutions, and identity formations. 4 In a different vein, recent perspectives on literature inflected by cognitive studies, and building bridges between literature and science, have emphasised the continuities between literary and other embodied human activities, while tending to downplay the social and political conditions in which these activities are embedded. 5 If literature is not merely, or no longer, understood as a canon of valuable works that are deemed culturally significant and available for interpretation, either within a national context or universally (Matthew Arnold’s “the best that has been thought and said in the world” Many of the possible connections between literature and cultural change have not yet been sufficiently examined. 6 3 See the essays by Jean-Jacques Lecercle and Daniel Hartley in this volume. ) but if literature is recognised as a set of practices involving a cluster of agents or ‘actors’ in interlocking networks, themselves culturally conditioned or determined, literary studies 4 Nicholas Brown, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Real Subsumption under Capital,” (March 13, 2012). Available at nonsite.org http: / / nonsite.org/ editorial/ the-work-of-artin-the-age-of-its-real-subsumption-under-capital 5 See, for instance, Terence Cave, Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 6 Matthew Arnold, “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” (1864), Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 26-51, 37. Introduction: Literature and Cultural Change XI may indeed lose its former (presumptive) autonomy, but it stands to gain in both complexity and scope. 7 As a now classic example, the writing of history itself can be approached as an enterprise best described with the toolbox of literary studies, a notion that is most strongly represented by the keyword of ‘worldmaking.’ 8 Likewise, new approaches to the institutional production 9 and reception 10 This overview has shown that one of the most important notions that brings literature and culture together is a shared interest in a critical interrogation of history - constructions of crisis and transformation, of continuity and rupture, of stasis and development. It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that literature is a factor that contributes to cultural change - either internally, due to the dynamics of ‘a culture’ as a system of signification, or externally, due to the manifold contacts with other cultures. What is less clear and deserves more attention, however, is the particular role of literature in motivating, instigating, channelling or hindering cultural change, and the influence of cultural change on the evolution of literature. In contexts of significant cultural change, classic and notoriously complex questions about the relationship between literature and culture can be addressed very pointedly. For example, to what extent - if at all - is literature a self-determining, autonomous subsystem of culture, and what are the historical factors that, at least in the West, have enabled literature to become a form of communication in which, as Jacques Derrida pointed out, it is possible “to say everything, in every way” and thus to transgress the presumed limits of “a culture”? of literature have done much to present us with a more nuanced picture of the role of literature in our world(s). Today, few scholars in literary studies would contest the notion that literature is a part of culture, or part of a society’s cultural memory, but many are still divided over the precise nature of the connection between literature and culture. 11 7 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). To what extent and by which means and strategies can literature, due to this extraordinary licence and empowerment, act as an agent of cultural change? When connecting literature to culture, what are the 8 See the classic examples of Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978) and Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth- Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) 9 See, for example, Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), and Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011) 10 The most famous recent approach to contextualized reading is presented by Franco Moretti, Distant Reading (London: Verso, 2013). See also Gero Guttzeit’s essay in this volume. 11 Jacques Derrida, “This Strange Institution Called Literature. An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (New York/ London: Routledge, 1992), 33-75, 36; emphasis original. I NGO B ERENSMEYER , S ONJA S CHILLINGS XII theoretical and methodological preconditions of grasping this relationship, and what are the underlying values, investments (in the sense of ‘cultural capital’) and prejudices that govern these conditions? 12 Arguably, it is the (in the widest possible sense) cultural dimensions of literature and the literary dimensions of culture that the articles in this volume set out to investigate. For scholars studying cultural change, the changing relationship between texts and contexts, between social structures, mentalities and the material dimensions of texts, artefacts and other objects offers many points of connection but also raises problems of theory and method - not least in concerns about the reality or constructedness of objects. This includes the notion of texts as objects (object-oriented criticism) and the problematic generalization of subjective readings that only speak for a privileged group of readers, now sometimes abbreviated as ‘weird’ (Western - or white - educated industrial rich democratic). 13 Changing audiences, changing contexts and concepts of reception also change perceptions of what literature was, is, or could be. This is further complicated by changing mediascapes or media ecologies that impact the means and modes of accessing texts (orality and literacy, manuscript and print cultures, computer or web-based interfaces and other digital environments), and raises questions about the connection between literature and human sense-perception, as well as subsequent questions of close vs. distant reading. 14 What the study of literature shares with the study of culture, as a broadly interdisciplinary research programme, is the challenge of not being able to observe its object directly - in this case, a significant change in how the world is, or is perceived. A researcher’s only way to determine the nature and significance of cultural change is via the observable products of human activity: artefacts, texts, rites, symbols, forms of conduct. If scholars wish to study cultural change, they need to do so by investigating the changing These, in turn, affect the way literary history is conceptualized inside or outside of national contexts, and across the various realms of “cultures.” 12 On the notion of cultural capital, see John Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), who draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital as developed in his Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984). For the ‘middlebrow’ debate as an example of changing cultural tastes, see the contribution by Kate Macdonald and Cornelia Wächter in this volume. 13 For this acronym and a critique of the lacking representativeness of ‘standard subjects’ for the entire human species in behavioral science, see Joe Henrich, Steven J. Heine, and Ara Norenzayan, “The Weirdest People in the World? ” (May 7, 2010), RatSWD Working Paper No. 139. Available at SSRN: http: / / ssrn.com/ abstract=1601785 or http: / / dx.doi.org/ 10.2139/ ssrn.1601785. For object-oriented criticism, see Graham Harman, “The Well-Wrought Broken Hammer: Object-Oriented Literary Criticism,” New Literary History 43.2 (2012), 183-203. 14 Franco Moretti, Distant Reading (London: Verso, 2013). Introduction: Literature and Cultural Change XIII relationships among these phenomena. While some scholars have rejected the concept of culture itself because of this indirectness (which is exacerbated by difficulties of translation between different languages and different conceptual and academic traditions 15 ), others - from Malinowski to Luhmann - have attempted to make it theoretically more precise and historically more saturated. Recently, the sociologist Dirk Baecker pleaded for its necessity as a particular mode of symbolic communication that modern societies use to cultivate resistance and negation to posited references. In this sense, ‘culture’ is something that societies have and require as a form of memory. 16 As a part of culture, literature poses similar questions about the different pacing of textual and cultural processes, such as generic change and the rise or decline of genres, styles, modes and forms of writing; questions about novelty and creativity, and about the persistence of the obsolete; and not least questions about the changing role of literary studies in responding to - and sometimes in instigating and stimulating - cultural change. However, due to the aforementioned licence of meta-reflection granted to literature, at least in Western societies, a special cultural role is often assigned to it. Even when literature is acknowledged as one part of culture among many, its historically special - and increasingly complex - position should not be ignored. Societies change as well as cultures, but they are not identical and they evolve at different speeds. It is questions such as these that the contributions to this volume address in a wide variety of topics, ranging from early modern England to twentiethcentury West Africa and contemporary North America. They explore connections between literature and cultural change in many forms and genres, from genealogical writing to environmental discourse and from Renaissance drama to current literary and cultural theory. In the first part of this volume, “Theorizing Literature and Cultural Change,” theoretical reflections are offered to help situate the debate. Herbert Grabes’s essay develops an evolution of the link between literature and cultural change. Winfried Fluck foregrounds the notion of hermeneutics, and critically interrogates the premises - in particular, the role of the subject - by which a text can be approached under changing epistemological conditions. Jean-Jacques Lecercle and Daniel Hartley both rely on Raymond Williams’s 15 For a discussion of these issues, see, for example, David Damrosch, How to Read World Literature (Chinchester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) and Rebecca Walkowitz, Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 16 Dirk Baecker, Beobachter unter sich: Eine Kulturtheorie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2013), 267. See ibid. for further references to sociological debates about the usefulness or otherwise of the concept of culture, but see also Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, ed., Kultursoziologie: Paradigmen - Methoden - Fragestellungen (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010). I NGO B ERENSMEYER , S ONJA S CHILLINGS XIV notion of a “structure of feelings” to approach cultural change, in the context of changing literary form (Lecercle) or changing approaches to historicism (Hartley). The contributions of the second part, “Literature as an Indicator of Cultural Change,” show how literary works retain their cultural significance by absorbing certain changing assumptions about subjectivity and history. Ann Lecercle offers a Lacanian reading of the spatial and cultural position of Elizabethan theatre as a historical turning point towards modernity. Gero Guttzeit takes his cue from the results of a distant reading of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, and discusses the importance of focalization for the development of the genre of crime fiction. Kate Macdonald and Cornelia Wächter draw renewed attention to the early twentieth-century category of middlebrow fiction and show how works in this genre both subvert and contain predominant cultural assumptions about race, class and gender. Alexander Scherr traces the literary consequences of the deciphering of the human genome in Richard Powers’s novel Generosity. When literature is assumed to be an agent of cultural change, it is evident that literary works themselves must first establish a field in which they can meaningfully intervene. This is the focus of the third part, “Literature in Response to Cultural Change.” Christine Schwanecke’s contribution shows how Caroline drama purposefully carves out a space for various forms of subjectivity at the dawn of the English Civil War, responding to and trying to contain social unrest. Ingo Berensmeyer draws attention to the complex interplay of technological and cultural change in postwar Britain, in particular to the different speeds of change in technology, from jets to jukeboxes, on the one hand, and styles of thinking and writing in literature (from Murdoch to Ballard) on the other hand. Sonja Schillings interprets one of Flannery O’Connor’s seminal short stories as a reflection on the institutional convergence of religious and secular international institutions after the Second World War. Maria Löschnigg, in her contribution on contemporary Canadian ecopoetry, shows literature as a medium of political argument and playful protest against problematic developments in the contemporary world. In the final section, works of literature are examined as texts whose formal makeup allows them an intellectual negotiation of central moments of change in culture. Tom Clucas discusses the construction of literary character in nineteenth-century Britain, and reflects on how such systematization helped secure the status of literature within British institutions. In a related vein, Vera Nünning reads the work of Virginia Woolf as a formal response to cultural change. In her discussion of Chinua Achebe’s work, Snežana Vuletić shows literature at work as a mediator of cultural difference that cannot be expressed in the language of national difference. Michael C. Frank’s Introduction: Literature and Cultural Change XV contribution analyzes a 1950s calypso song as a case study of how migrant literature can be considered an agent of cultural change, producing “new visions and versions” of London. Together, these contributions show - among other things - that literature is not merely at the mercy of social, political and cultural change, ruptures or events; it is closely interlaced, interleaved with processes of change that it can not only reflect or imitate mimetically but that it can hinder, motivate, or produce. Literature can be a diagnostic or prognostic tool, a solution of contradictions, or itself an event-like agent of change. One example of such change, in a very concrete way, is D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the trial in 1960 that not only led to the lifting of censorship on the grounds of obscenity but also paved the way for a permissive society in the UK. Other kinds of change may of course be less easily discernible, and many questions remain. What exactly constitutes (a) cultural change, rather than random variation in cultural history? How can we read literary texts or model literary forms so as to understand the forces that have shaped them? How do literary texts themselves envision cultural change - from top-down diffusion to entanglement? How does newness emerge within and against established traditions? 17 And how can we operationalise our models of literature and cultural change for the explanation and interpretation of literary and cultural history, of (in other words) “large-scale dynamics in the literary field”? Only the future - including the future development of digital humanities - will tell. 18 But already today, the essays collected here certainly show that literature is not merely an object but an agent of cultural change. They also show that the relationship between literary and cultural studies has by now become less fraught with tensions and indeed a source of mutual enlightenment and intellectual creativity. Without wishing to gloss over remaining disagreements and without giving up the critical bent of the humanities, it is encouraging to see continued engagement at this kind of bridge-building at a time when the study of literature and culture in universities worldwide is under increasing pressure from and marketisation of higher education, the dominance of STEM-H subjects, and fundamentalism in various guises. 19 17 One of the models repeatedly invoked in these essays is Raymond Williams’s influential triad of dominant, residual and emergent forms in his Marxism and Literature (Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 121-127. See the contributions by Jean- Jacques Lecercle and Daniel Hartley in this volume. 18 For a glimpse of that future, see Mark Algee-Hewitt et al., “Canon/ Archive: Large-Scale Dynamics in the Literary Field,” Pamphlets of the Stanford Literary Lab #11, January 2016, https: / / litlab.stanford.edu/ LiteraryLabPamphlet11.pdf, accessed 16 June 2016. 19 See Peter John and Joëlle Fanghanel, eds., Dimensions of Marketisation in Higher Education (Abingdon/ New York: Routledge, 2016), and Stefan Collini, What Are Universities For? I NGO B ERENSMEYER , S ONJA S CHILLINGS XVI Whatever theoretical and political persuasions they follow, it is now unlikely that literary and cultural studies scholars will cease to explore the connections between ways of writing, ways of knowing, and ways of living together. (London: Penguin, 2012). The acronym STEM-H stands for science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health. Introduction: Literature and Cultural Change XVII Works Cited Algee-Hewitt, Mark et al. “Canon/ Archive: Large-Scale Dynamics in the Literary Field.” Pamphlets of the Stanford Literary Lab #11. January 2016. https: / / litlab. stanford.edu/ LiteraryLabPamphlet11.pdf. Arnold, Matthew. “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” (1864). Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings. Ed. Stefan Collini. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 26-51. Baecker, Dirk. Beobachter unter sich. Eine Kulturtheorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2013. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1984. Brown, Nicholas. “The Work of Art in the Age of its Real Subsumption under Capital.” Nonsite.org. March 2012. http: / / nonsite.org/ editorial/ the-work-of-art-in-theage-of-its-real-subsumption-under-capital Casanova, Pascale. The World Republic of Letters. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2007. Collini, Stefan. What Are Universities For? London: Penguin, 2012. Damrosch, David. How to Read World Literature. Oxford/ Malden, Mass.: Wiley- Blackwell, 2008. Derrida, Jacques. “This Strange Institution Called Literature. An Interview with Jacques Derrida.” Trans Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. Acts of Literature. Ed. Derek Attridge. New York/ London: Routledge, 1992. 33-75. Goodman, Nelson. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978. Grabes, Herbert. “Literary History and Cultural History: Relations and Difference.” Literary History/ Cultural History: Force-Fields and Tensions. (REAL 17) Ed. Herbert Grabes. Tübingen: Narr, 2001. 1-34. Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago/ London: U of Chicago P, 1993. Harman, Graham. “The Well-Wrought Broken Hammer: Object-Oriented Literary Criticism.” New Literary History 43.2 (2012), 183-203. Henrich, Joe, Steven J. Heine, and Ara Norenzayan. “The Weirdest People in the World? ” (May 7, 2010), RatSWD Working Paper No. 139. Available at SSRN: http: / / ssrn.com/ abstract=1601785 or http: / / dx.doi.org/ 10.2139/ ssrn.1601785. John, Peter, and Joëlle Fanghanel, eds. Dimensions of Marketisation in Higher Education. Abingdon/ New York: Routledge, 2016. Lamarque, Peter, and Stein Haugom Olsen. Truth, Fiction, and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. McGurl, Mark. The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2011. Moretti, Franco. Distant Reading. London: Verso, 2013. Nussbaum, Martha. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. Walkowitz, Rebecca. Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. I NGO B ERENSMEYER , S ONJA S CHILLINGS XVIII White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. 1973. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford/ New York: Oxford UP, 1977. Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika, ed. Kultursoziologie: Paradigmen - Methoden - Fragestellungen. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010. C ONTRIBUTORS B ERENSMEYER , I NGO . Institut für Anglistik. Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Otto-Behaghel-Straße 10 B, 35394 Gießen, Germany. C LUCAS , T OM . International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture. Justus- Liebig-Universität Gießen. Alter Steinbacher Weg 38, 35394 Gießen, Germany. F LUCK , W INFRIED . Department of Culture. Freie Universität Berlin. Lansstraße 7-9, 14195 Berlin, Germany. F RANK , M ICHAEL C. Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik. Heinrich-Heine- Universität Düsseldorf. Universitätsstraße 1, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany. G RABES , H ERBERT †. Institut für Anglistik. Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Otto-Behaghel-Straße 10 B, 35394 Gießen, Germany. G UTTZEIT , G ERO . Institut für Anglistik. Justus-Liebig-Universitaet Gießen. Otto-Behaghel-Straße 10 B, 35394 Gießen, Germany. H ARTLEY , D ANIEL . Centre for World Literatures. University of Leeds. Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom. L ECERCLE , A NN . Département d’Études Anglophones. Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. 200 Avenue de la République, 92001 Nanterre Cedex, France. L ECERCLE , J EAN -J ACQUES . Département d’Études Anglophones. Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. 200 Avenue de la République, 92001 Nanterre Cedex, France. L ÖSCHNIGG , M ARIA . Institut für Anglistik. Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. Heinrichstraße 36, 28010 Graz, Austria. M ACDONALD , K ATE . Department of English Literature. University of Reading. Whiteknights, Berkshire RG6 6AH, United Kingdom. N ÜNNING , V ERA . Anglistisches Seminar. Universität Heidelberg. Kettengasse 12, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany. S CHERR , A LEXANDER . Institut für Anglistik. Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Otto-Behaghel-Straße 10 B, 35394 Gießen, Germany. C ONTRIBUTORS XX S CHILLINGS , S ONJA . International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture. Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Alter Steinbacher Weg 38, 35394 Gießen, Germany. S CHWANECKE , C HRISTINE . Anglistisches Seminar. Universität Mannheim. Schloss EW 280, 68131 Mannheim, Germany. V ULETIĆ , S NEŽANA . Institut für Anglistik. Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Otto-Behaghel-Straße 10 B, 35394 Gießen, Germany. W ÄCHTER , C ORNELIA . Englisches Seminar. Ruhr-Universität Bochum. 44780 Bochum, Germany. I. Theorizing Literature and Cultural Change H ERBERT G RABES The Role of Literature in Major Cultural Changes What is the role of literature in major cultural changes? In order to approach an acceptable answer, I will endeavour to combine some theoretical considerations with empirical examples from English cultural history since the sixteenth century, starting with my use of the terms ‘literature’ and ‘cultural change.’ What I’ll be doing is basically to tick off stations of change in thought and literary culture that are familiar to all of us but which merit rehearsal. Closer examination shows that cultural change is constant and continuous - even if there must also be something significant that persists for a longer time in order for us to be able to speak about ‘culture’ at all. What will be understood in this sense as ‘culture’ is, above all, a particular hierarchy of shared values, signifying practices, rituals, and customs. As the process of change is almost imperceptible, I take my examples from major cultural shifts that were radical enough to affect notions of cultural conformity and basic assumptions. This is possible because cultural change, historiographically speaking, is continuous but not uniform; phases of more pronounced change separate periods of relative stability. A quite similar development obtains, of course, in Darwinian evolution, 1 complex social systems, 2 and science and technology. 3 With regard to Europe, the prevailing view among cultural historians is that there have been at least three such periods in more recent history: the Renaissance, the late eighteenth century, and the advent of modernism, with further, unresolved debate on whether postmodernism has been merely a continuation and intensification of modernism or a new period of its own. Particular weightings are additionally possible: in Britain, for example, one might argue that more radical change took place in the later seventeenth Longer periods of fairly static equilibrium are almost always separated by brief spurts of more radical change. 1 Ernst Mayr, “Change of Genetic Environment and Evolution,“ Evolution as a Process, ed. Julian Huxley, A.C. Hardy and E.B. Ford (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954), 157-180. Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, “Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered,“ Paleobiology 3.2 (1977): 115-151. 2 Connie Gersick, “Revolutionary Change Theories: A Multilevel Exploration of the Punctuated Equilibrium Paradigm,” The Academy of Management Review 16.1 (1991): 10- 36. 3 D.A. Levinthal, “The Slow Pace of Rapid Technological Change: Gradualism and Punctuation in Technological Change,“ Industrial and Corporate Change 7.2 (1988): 217-247. H ERBERT G RABES 4 century than elsewhere. And if one looks at the aetiology of postmodernism, the strong originary influence of France on the United States has been followed by a degree of attenuation elsewhere. My understanding of the term ‘literature’ accords with its application in almost all British histories of English literature, which is twofold: on the one hand, the term covers the specific generic domains of poetry, fictional narrative, and drama; on the other, it embraces the much broader domain of culturally important writing, consisting, for example, of philosophical, theological, historical, political, economic, and scientific writings. And although my major concern will be to trace the role of ‘literature’ in the former, narrower sense of language art, the wider area of culturally important writing will at least be touched on as a comparative foil. As is well known, the early modern period of sixteenth-century England was born of several major innovations. The first, Renaissance humanism, was brought by English scholars from Italy to Cambridge, where the centre of humanist studies was soon to have a major influence on education, including that of the young Queen Elizabeth. It was already a change based on the literary record, in this case on ancient Greek texts brought to Italy by those who had fled there after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The second innovation was the immense extension of the known world with the discovery of America and the ensuing reports on ‘the Indies,’ including, for example, Sir Walter Raleigh’s accounts of the paradisiacal Guianas in 1596. The third innovation was the early influence of the new heliocentric world-picture as developed on the Continent, the Copernican version of which was disseminated in England by 1576 in Thomas Digges’s A perfit description of the Celestiall Orbes. The fourth innovation was the introduction of the scientific, or inductive, method as promoted by Francis Bacon in his Advancement of Learning of 1605. By that time, too, the new print technology established by Gutenberg in the late fifteenth century had become immensely important for the dissemination of new ideas. Likewise worthy of mention is the radical improvement in the knowledge of the human body brought by systematic anatomical dissection, an art brought to England in a pirated edition of Vesalius’s De humani corporis libri septem of 1545. However, it was the Reformation that turned out to be the most incisive single factor in early modern cultural change, as is evident from the fact that some eighty percent of all publications in sixteenth-century Britain were at least partly devoted to the matter of religion. The break with Papal Rome and the emergence of the Anglican Church headed by the monarch reinforced national identity, and the notion of England as an elect nation, which was articulated and disseminated in John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments of 1563, was to become the justificatory backbone of territorial expansion from the Age of Drake through to the apotheosis of the British Empire in the nine- The Role of Literature in Major Cultural Changes 5 teenth century. On the dissenting flanks of Anglicanism, there were also others who wrote out of deep religious conviction, either radical Puritan sectarians or recusant and often exiled Catholics who defied censorship by having their pamphlets printed abroad and smuggled into the country. Both currents of faith helped lay the foundation for a modern public sphere. 4 Regarding the role of literature in a narrower sense within this major cultural change, the development of a much greater range of genres, subgenres, and styles already bespeaks multifarious and energized forces of influence. The central position of court culture favoured the extensive practice, first in manuscript and then in print, of often sophisticated love poetry, ranging from the continuation of the Petrarchan tradition to John Donne’s introduction of far-fetched metaphors or from Spenser’s moral conception of love to Donne’s ideal of a union of body and soul and even George Wither’s coolly insouciant “if she be not for me, / What care I, for whom she be.” 5 * The quite real social hardships caused by major economic changes found expression in such social satires as Nashe’s Pierce Penniless (1592), and everyday social life was reflected in the newly proliferating drama, as in Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599) or Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614). Resistance to cultural change is exemplified by Spenser’s epic The Faerie Queene (1590-96) with its great display of traditional moral views, whereas Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus (1604) with its cynical inflections exemplifies openness to cultural change and the implications of new knowledge. It may, however, be taken as a sign of the complexity of the relation between literature and cultural change that in Shakespeare’s plays we find evidence of both functions. While, for instance, the distribution of sympathy in Richard II (1594) reveals a nostalgic bias toward the sanctity of kingship and a world-picture dominated by the Great Chain of Being, the bias of Romeo and Juliet (1598) is clearly in favour of the young couple who resist their parents’ wishes regarding marriage, and the central message of Measure for Measure (1603), that justice is incomplete without the redeeming virtue of mercy, was far ahead of its time, in which one was ready to kill or die for one’s convictions but mercy was largely unknown. And we may assume that the demonstration on the public stage of the dire consequences of what were still widespread views must have had a significant impact and was certainly an agent of change. 4 Cf. Herbert Grabes, Das englische Pamphlet I. Politische und religiöse Polemik am Beginn der Neuzeit (1521- 1640) (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990); Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003). 5 George Wither, “Shall I wasting in Dispaire,” The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse, eds. Herbert Grierson and Geoffrey Bullough (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1934; repr. 1966), 285, ll. 39-40. H ERBERT G RABES 6 The next major cultural change came about with the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution in the later seventeenth century. With the spreading of what T.S. Eliot called the “dissociation of sensibility,“ 6 Ecclesiastical authority could not, however, prevent the beginning of the ‘Age of Reason’ with its investigation of the nature and scope of certain knowledge, as foregrounded by Locke in his radically empiricist Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Bishop Berkeley’s subjective idealism in his Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), and Hume’s psychological empiricism in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1739). Hume’s Enquiry is typical of the new intellectual attitude revealed in the shift, in the midseventeenth century, from the ‘anatomy’ as the most popular book-title to that of the ‘enquiry’ - in the period between 1660 and 1700, there were some 94 published ‘anatomies’ as against 299 ‘enquiries,’ and more than a thousand of the latter were to come in the eighteenth century, among them Samuel Pycroft’s A Brief Enquiry into Free-thinking in Matters of Religion; and Some a moderate distinction between religious and mundane affairs, the national Anglican Church and the State, became possible, so that at last dissenters were tolerated and Catholics were no longer persecuted. The quarrels between Puritans and more traditional Anglicans about the right interpretation of Scripture had reduced the authority of revealed religion to the point where a ‘religion of nature’ took shape, with the conviction that it was better to study the Book of Nature as a Divine Creation. This was also a result of the fact that, after the founding of the Royal Society in 1662 and the publication of Newton’s Philosophia Mathematica in 1687, the world picture began to shift once more under pressure from the ascendant natural sciences, and a compromise had to be struck with the ever-strong demands of religious faith. A solution was presented by Deists like John Toland (in his Christianity Not Mysterious, 1696), William Wollaston (in The Religion of Nature Delineated, 1722), and Anthony Collins (in A Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of Christian Religion, 1724). There were of course, various counter-measures taken by the Anglican bishops, who had already been alarmed by the rise of strictly secular conceptions of society and the state, and had not only brought Parliament to condemn Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan and De Cive in 1666 but also to pass a more general bill against atheism. Their influence remained so strong that John Locke’s famous Letter Concerning Toleration of 1689 still had to be published anonymously. 6 T.S. Eliot, “The Metaphysical Poets,” Selected Essays, 2 nd ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1951; repr. 1966), 281-291, 286. The Role of Literature in Major Cultural Changes 7 Pretended Obstruction to it (1713) and Edmund Burke’s Enquiry into the Origin of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1764). 7 In this context, one could say that Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), the greatest work of literature of this period, was also styled as an enquiry into “the ways of God to men.” 8 Milton sought to justify these ways by promising true believers that they could “possess / A paradise within” 9 However, that - in spite of the more recently uttered skepticism - a “dissociation of sensibility” had indeed occurred at that time can be gathered from the fact that, beside such pious and remedial works, there were quite a few satirical and even cynical ones of excellent quality. One need only mention Samuel Butler’s burlesque of Puritanism, Hudibras (1663), Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Swift’s Tale of a Tub (1704) and Gulliver’s Travels (1726), or Pope’s Dunciad (1728) as pertinent examples of a quite mundane, critical, and often vicious attitude far removed from the high moral tone of Milton, Bunyan, and even Defoe. Within the same broad stream, then, there can be countervailing currents and undertows of change, in proto-Hegelian patterns of thesis and antithesis, such as the release from Puritan constriction represented by Restoration comedy, which, playing the changes on both excoriated and condoned immorality, ranged from the witty if often unfair repartee of Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700) to the frivolous talk and manners of Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675). at a time when hopes of building a heavenly Jerusalem on earth had ebbed away. Such a turn from institutionalized religion to a personal embracing of faith also becomes evident in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), in which the strenuous life journey from birth to death serves as an extended metaphor or allegory for the inner pilgrimage to the heavenly Jerusalem beyond; and it appears likewise, if with a mercantile spin, in its rival for the position of the first British novel, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). If we add Dryden’s heroic tragedies with their spectacular action and heralding of romantic love, as in The Indian Emperor (1665) or The Conquest of Granada (1672), and the rise of the moral and quotidian essay not much later in the hands of Steele, Addison, and The Tatler (1709-11) and The Spectator (1711-12), it becomes evident that literature in the narrower sense was as varied and contrasting as the oppositional mental and social trends typical of an ongoing major cultural change. On the Continent, it was the late eighteenth century that was marked not only by the political upheaval of the French Revolution but also by such a 7 Cf. Herbert Grabes, “Metaphors Shaping Research and Knowledge from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment,” Metaphors Shaping Culture and Theory, eds. Herbert Grabes, Ansgar Nünning and Sibylle Baumbach [REAL 25], (Tübingen: Narr, 2009), 65-80. 8 John Milton, Paradise Lost 1.26, ed. Alastair Fowler (Harlow: Longman, 1998). 9 Milton, Paradise Lost 12.586-87. H ERBERT G RABES 8 significant modernization that historians tend to consider this period as the historic moment of the advent of modernity. In Britain, however, the fear that the French Revolution might be contagious not only led to press censorship and even a temporary suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in the 1790s but also to a massive reaction against change and to a delaying of proposed social reforms. Thomas Paine’s defence of the French Revolution in The Rights of Man (1791) and his attack on Christianity in The Age of Reason (1792) had to be published in Paris; Jeremy Bentham’s Treatise on Civil and Penal Legislation and his Theory of Penalties and Rewards appeared first in a French translation (the former in 1802, the latter in 1818); and in 1803, William Blake was accused of sedition and brought to trial. In fact, even after Waterloo it was dangerous to propose any kind of reform, and one needs only mention the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 to realize how rigorously the government reacted to any real or imagined threat. This does not mean that the demand for major change made by Paine and Bentham but also, for instance, by Mary Wollstonecraft in her Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and William Godwin in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (1793) could be suppressed in the long run. This was especially the case since changes were indirectly supported in the 1820s by such Evangelical churchmen as William Wilberforce, who, after successfully campaigning for the abolition of the slave trade, published an appeal on behalf of the slaves of the West Indies (1823), and by liberal theologians such as Thomas Erskine and Thomas Arnold. Under the influence of John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, significant social reforms were achieved, not least thanks to the Reform Bill of 1832. It can also be said that, in this same political climate in Britain, the major change of sensibility and style in poetry that became known as Romanticism preceded and at least partly initiated more general cultural changes. Taken individually, the specific traits of Romantic poetry (such as the rediscovery of nature, delight in the marvellous, heightened interest in and sympathy with “humble folk,” the dominance of emotion over reason, a predilection for medievalism and primitivism, and even a concentration on inner experiences including the power of the imagination over the experience of outward reality) can all be traced back to the mid-eighteenth century with its exploration of the gothic and the sublime. What one will not find before the Romantic poets, however, is the relative retreat by William Blake from the life-world (save in the social commitment of “The Tyger” and “The Little Black Boy”) in favour of the world of the imagination, beginning with the Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), and reaching its peak in the period from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793) to Vala, or the Four Zoas (1795-1807). What one does not find earlier, either, is that combination of the aforementioned traits as it first appears in Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s Lyrical Bal- The Role of Literature in Major Cultural Changes 9 lads from 1798. Most important was the revolt against both the stance and the stylistic conventions of the Neoclassical school, above all its so-called ‘poetic diction,’ in favour of a wide range of poetic styles, including quite simple and seemingly banal ones. And what turned out to be prophetic in view of further cultural developments was the raising of the individual subject to epic proportions in long autobiographical poems, above all in Wordsworth’s The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind (1805, revised up to 1850), but also in Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-16) and Shelley’s Alastor (1816). Byron demonstrated in Don Juan (1819-24) that this did not necessarily mean heroizing the self but could also be a display of Romantic irony, and when he presented a heroic stance, it could only be found in revolt, in a spirit that remained unvanquished even in defeat, as we encounter it in his Cain of 1822. In literary periodization, then, the term ‘Romantic Revolt’ is aptly applied to writers who endeavoured to establish a culture that ran counter to the dominance of Deistic theology, political traditionalism, increasing utilitarianism, significant progress in the sciences, and industrialization. This counterculture could, of course, only have an indirect pragmatic impact on the wider cultural scene in which it was embedded, an indirect humanization that became tangible in slight improvements regarding child labour or the termination of first the slave trade and then plantation slavery as such. * The next major cultural change in the domain of the arts and in culture at large was, of course, the turn to ‘modernism.’ This was shaped to a large extent by inventions in the realm of technology that radically changed modes of transport and communication and thus ‘modernized’ the world. In the late 1870s, Bell developed the first telephone and in the 1920s, radio became widely disseminated; in the 1880s, Daimler developed the first motor car, and in 1903, the first flight by the Wright brothers with a motor-driven plane was successful. Yet there are good reasons to call the period of modernism one of delusion rather than of hopes and illusions. Eighteenth-century physicotheology as a compromise between faith and science no longer seemed possible after Charles Lyell’s Elements of Geology (1838) and Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859); Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary view of society in his Principles of Sociology (1874), and Nietzsche’s Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) deconstructed the notion of a moral universe; Marx in Das Kapital (1867-94) sought to show that capitalism as it had developed along with industrialization was wrong from the start; Freud, from Die Traumdeutung (1900) onwards, came to show that we are not masters of our own self; Bergson, in his Essai sur les H ERBERT G RABES 10 données immediates de la conscience (1889), demonstrated that our inner experience of time is by no means in accordance with the internationally shared clock-time that dominated the industrial age; Einstein, in his special and general theories of relativity of 1905 and 1915 respectively, alleged that even measured clock-time was relative to velocity; and Vaihinger in his study Die Philosophie des Als Ob of 1911 showed that the principles of all fields of culture are merely more or less useful fictions. What remained was a thorough epistemological skepticism, or the insight that the result of all our efforts to obtain greater knowledge of the ‘real’ in terms of the ‘Ding an sich’ or ‘thing in itself’ will, metaphorically speaking, be more and more photos of a person we will never be able to meet, so that we will never be sure which one is the most similar. All the new insecurities - what W.H. Auden termed “the Age of Anxiety” 10 When we come to the role of literature in early modernist culture in Britain, we find many works in the domain of narrative fiction that reflect the waning or radical loss of traditional certainties and values, such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), E.M. Forster’s Howards End (1910), D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1913), and Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier (1915). They certainly called attention to what was at stake, and this was even truer for the war poems of Wilfred Owen (written 1917-18, published posthumously 1920) and for many of Yeats’s later poems from the collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) onwards. - called for an antidote, which was found at the time in a strong belief in one or the other ideology as a kind of secular religion that offered an overall meaning. As we well know, the three dominant ones were nationalism (which partly included racism), fascism, and communism. In Britain it was still above all nationalism, and the consequences were in comparison less disastrous than what befell Italy, Germany, Spain, and Russia. Most important with respect to cultural change were, of course, works that mediated the new epistemological skepticism through a more or less radical perspectivism, as in Henry James’s The Ambassadors (1903) and, later, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931), or those which reduce the validity of perceived reality to a continuous merger of the present with quite individual moments from the past in a stream of consciousness, as in T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) or Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925). And even more radical, of course, are works such as Eliot’s The Waste Land and Joyce’s Ulysses (both from 1922) which symbolize the breakdown of a unified world-view by means of a montage of heterogeneous styles, discourses, and themes. As a result, modernist literature was no longer beautiful or sublime but became, like twelve-tone music and abstract painting, quite strange both for 10 W.H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety (London: Faber and Faber, 1947). The Role of Literature in Major Cultural Changes 11 the untrained eye and ear, and for those accustomed to an earlier aesthetic. As I have endeavoured to show in my own investigation of the modernist aesthetic, this strangeness can be interpreted as an index of the unstable distinction of subject and ‘world,’ culture and ‘nature.’ 11 What should not be forgotten is the fact that modernist literature or, more precisely, its strangeness gave an immense boost to its partner (or parasitic) institutions, literary criticism and theory. The critic would attempt to reduce its strangeness, and the theorist explain why it had to be there in the first place. It meant the advent of a whole new cultural industry. The philosopher T.E. Hulme, for instance, influenced both Pound and Eliot by his new definition of the image and by the concept of the organic unity of a poem; This means that the major works of Anglo-American literature from 1910 to 1930 were definitely avant-garde and only in retrospect look like expressions of the Zeitgeist. The strange new way of writing was not popular at the time. Notably, too, most of those who established literary modernism in Britain were foreigners: Henry James, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot were Americans, Yeats was Irish, and, on the same level, only Virginia Woolf was an English writer. More esteemed in that period and reflecting mainstream culture was the ‘Georgian’ poetry that appeared in five anthologies between 1912 and 1922 and to which such poets as A.E. Housman, Walter de la Mare, John Masefield, Robert Graves, and Edmund Blunden contributed. It was certainly different from the late-Romantic poetry of the 1890s, but in comparison to the ‘strange’ poems of Pound and Eliot, it was quite traditional. 12 * C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards, with their semantic study The Meaning of Meaning (1923), laid the foundation for New Criticism, and Richards’s disciple William Empson, with his Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), that of the later reader-response theory. According to both cultural and literary critics, there was another major cultural turn in the early 1960s, a turn to what became known as ‘postmodernism,’ a period that lasted at least until the late 1980s but in many respects persists to this day. The 1960s are kept in communal memory as the decade of a cultural revolution, a change that was most radical in the United States but soon spread to Europe. Though in Britain it was less radical, there were significant changes in the domain of social values, evident in a raft of liberal 11 Herbert Grabes, Making Strange: Beauty, Sublimity, and the (Post)Modern ‘Third Aesthetic’ (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 158-163. 12 T.E. Hulme, “A Lecture on Modern Poetry” (1909), Selected Writings, ed. Patrick McGuinness (Manchester: Carcanet, 1998), 59-67. H ERBERT G RABES 12 legislation on sexual equality, divorce, abortion, homosexuality, censorship, and the death penalty. The 1960s were also the time when youth culture became dominant, most prominently observable in the pop-music scene, from the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and The Who, through Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Elton John, and Gary Glitter in the 1970s, to hip hop, rap, Michael Jackson, and Madonna in the 1980s. What greatly helped a change were the spectacular technological advances in the area of communication, from colour TV, audiocassettes, video recorders, digital cameras, and mobile phones to personal computers, the beginnings of the internet, and email. An already mobile society became even more so in the new jet age, and space travel was no longer reserved for science fiction. And in the area of architecture, a major visual shift took place from sober modernist functionalism to a hitherto impugned mixing of styles, a return of ornamentation, and bland irony. Regarding literature in a wider sense, the ideas behind these changes were disseminated in Ihab Hassan’s The Dismemberment of Orpheus (1971), Jean Baudrillard’s The Mirror of Production (1975; in French, 1973), Jean- François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (1984; in French, 1979), and Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism: or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991). That Britain was on the receiving end in this respect had a lot to do with the strong political orientation of the ‘new left’ from Raymond Williams to Terry Eagleton and of cultural materialism as represented by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield. It was much too serious to even come near the radical relativism and playfulness of postmodern sensibility with its preference for ironic, parodic, or travestying déjà-vu effects. This may also be the reason why British contributions to postmodern literature were initially few, generally came late, and were rather tame. Among the exceptions are, of course, B.S. Johnson’s novel The Unfortunates (1969) with its 27 chapters presented loosely in a box, or Christine Brooke-Rose’s novel Thru (1975) with its experimental arrangement of words on a page. John Fowles’s bestseller The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), with its pastiche make-up and alternative three endings, can count as somewhat postmodern, as can, in the 1980s, novels with a hybrid mixture of styles and genres such as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), historiographic metafiction like Graham Swift’s Waterland (1983), Nigel Williams’s Witchcraft (1987), Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger (1987), or Antonia Byatt’s Possession (1990), and the faking of authenticity in Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton (1987). All in all, it can be said, however, that in Britain the traditional mode of realistic narrative with its imitative world-making remained quite alive. Something similar can be said for the work of the most celebrated poets of the period, Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott. For all its stylistic excellence The Role of Literature in Major Cultural Changes 13 and human depth, their poetry is ‘traditional’ and far from the experimentation of postmodern American poets like John Ashbery or Charles Bernstein. * As is to be expected, the role of literature in a narrower sense within the major cultural changes under observation has not been uniform. There were avant-garde works promoting change, works adhering to the mainstream, and works that countered change by affirming traditional values. The advantage of fictional stories, poems, and plays is that they do not consist of general statements expecting assent but present particular situations, characters, actions, events, thoughts, and feelings and are therefore less likely to raise inner defences or provoke public censorship. And their fictional status also helps, of course, in this respect: any possible deviation from cultural norms seems less objectionable outside of what is regarded as the ‘real’ world. Literary works can thus function as ‘hidden persuaders’ motivating or supporting change, but they can also operate against change in this way. Bearing this in mind, what has proved at least as important regarding cultural change has been literature in the wider sense of the literature of ideas, knowledge, and belief. From Foxe’s Acts and Monuments and Bacon’s Advancement of Learning to Foucault’s The Order of Things (1971, in French: 1966), and The Archeology of Knowledge (1972, in French: 1969) or Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (1984), particular books have had an immense influence on cultural change, the development of ‘new vocabularies’ (Richard Rorty), values, signifying practices, and whole ‘discursive formations’ (Foucault). Heeding Vaihinger’s warning that all our ‘true’ axioms regarding the real are merely useful fictions, the difference between such writings and fictional writings appears, anyway, to be one of kind rather than of category. And in view of both the continuous and incidental changes in both domains I would like to end with the comforting assurance that our cultural archive in terms of our libraries (fast disappearing physically but hopefully reconstituting digitally) allows us to create and experience the new against the horizon of the past and our communal memory. For, to recall an astute observation by Odo Marquard, “Zukunft braucht Herkunft,” 13 or ‘where we are going has to do with where we’ve come from’ - in order to shape the future, we need to be aware of our heritage. 13 Odo Marquard, Zukunft braucht Herkunft (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2003). H ERBERT G RABES 14 Works Cited Auden, W.H. The Age of Anxiety. London: Faber and Faber, 1947. Eliot, T.S. “The Metaphysical Poets.” Selected Essays, 2 nd ed. 1951. London: Faber and Faber, 1966. 281-291. Gersick, Connie. “Revolutionary Change Theories: A Multilevel Exploration of the Punctuated Equilibrium Paradigm.” The Academy of Management Review 16: 1 (1991): 10-36. Gould, Stephen Jay and Niles Eldredge. “Punctuated Equilibria: the Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered.” Paleobiology 3: 2 (1977): 115-151. Grabes, Herbert. Das englische Pamphlet I: Politische und religiöse Polemik am Beginn der Neuzeit (1521-1640). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1990. ---. “Metaphors Shaping Research and Knowledge from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment.” Metaphors Shaping Culture and Theory. Eds. Herbert Grabes, Ansgar Nünning and Sibylle Baumbach. [REAL 25] Tübingen: Narr, 2009. 65-80. ---. Making Strange: Beauty, Sublimity and the (Post)Modern ‘Third Aesthetic.’ Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2008. Hulme, T.E. “A Lecture on Modern Poetry” (1909). Selected Writings. Ed. Patrick McGuinness. Manchester: Carcanet, 1998. 59-67. Levinthal, D.A. “The Slow Pace of Rapid Technological Change: Gradualism and Punctuation in Technological Change.” Industrial and Corporate Change 7.2 (1988): 217-247. Marquard, Odo. Zukunft braucht Herkunft. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2003. Mayr, Ernst. “Change of Genetic Environment and Evolution.” Evolution as a Process. Eds. Julian Huxley, A.C. Hardy, and E.B. Ford. London: Allen and Unwin, 1954. 157-180. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Alastair Fowler. Harlow: Longman, 1998. Raymond, Joad. Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Wither, George. “Shall I wasting in Dispaire.” The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse. Ed. Herbert Grierson and Geoffrey Bullough. 1934. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966. 285. W INFRIED F LUCK Hermeneutics of Change I. Why should we pursue the study of literature on a professional basis and in an institutional setting? To draw attention to the aesthetic experience literary texts can provide has furnished one answer, to draw attention to important social functions literature can have - including its contribution to change - has furnished another. Can literature contribute to cultural change? The question remains one of the most challenging problems in literary and cultural studies, and it is fitting that Herbert Grabes - to whom I want to dedicate this essay - played a crucial role in returning REAL to this topic. Throughout his long and distinguished career in the field of English and American literature, he reminded us time and again to bring our debates back to the questions that mattered. I have greatly profited from his original and philosophically sophisticated contributions to literary theory and literary studies. Is literature decisively shaped, if not determined, by social conditions or ideology, or should it be seen as a “largely autonomous subsystem of culture” (conference invitation) with the power of having an impact on other subsystems? The question never seems to go away and has had a comeback in the recent transnational turn in American studies. On the one hand, literary ‘transnationalists’ argue that going beyond the borders of the nation-state can lead to flexible and, possibly, multiple identities in the reading public and thus push society towards an acceptance of more diversity. On the other hand, critics argue that such movements only mimic the transnationalization of production and the transnational flow of capital in a neoliberal stage of globalization. What one side celebrates as a liberation from the exclusionary practices of the nation-state, is for others only a naïve reflection of neoliberal demands for a mobility and flexibility that globalization imposes on subjects. For such critics, the fact that many of these workers are migrants only provides additional evidence that today’s workers have to be mobile and are easily disposable, whereas for convinced transnationalists migrants are the true culture heroes, the personification of hybrid identities. These different views of the present state of Western societies must also have consequences for literary studies and lead interpreters into opposite directions. For proponents of the transnational turn in literary studies, literature dealing with migration and transnational mobility can make an important contribution to W INFRIED F LUCK 16 cultural change. For critics of globalization, it is precisely this change that poses a problem which transnational literature obscures in its uncritical celebration of hybridity. One and the same phenomenon - globalization - is conceptualized differently, and so is literature’s relation to it, depending on one’s underlying assumptions about what the true meaning of globalization is. One may call this problem the hermeneutics of change. Before beginning to discuss what the impact of literature on social, political, or cultural change has been or should be in the future, or, conversely, how social and cultural developments have determined literature, we need to remind ourselves that, although we are talking about phenomena that may exist outside of interpretation, they only gain meaning and significance within certain explanatory frames, that is, when they are constructed in interpretation. 1 Where they are part of an argument in literary studies, reflections on a priori assumptions usually go in one of two directions: either we encounter reflections on the underlying view of society or on the concept of literature that informs a particular method of interpretation. In this essay, I want to wander off the beaten either-or path and focus on a third set of assumptions that logically links literature and cultural change. I am referring to (often tacit) assumptions about the state of the subject. Literary texts want to have an effect on readers, but in order to arrive at a theory of effect that will shape the writer’s aesthetic strategies, s/ he has to have an idea about what constitutes the reader. Cultural change will only be produced by literature when readers are affected and become actors; questions about the subject’s potential for agency thus often stand at the center of literary studies that are inspired by critical theory. But even formalists assume that certain aesthetic qualities will have a transformative effect, for otherwise it would not make any sense to argue about aesthetic theories and participate in heated debates about the canon. In other words: different views of society will lead to differ- These interpretations, in turn, will be based on a set of underlying assumptions about society, culture, and literature that provides them with a particular focus. If I look at society on the basis of Marxist assumptions about what determines society and culture in a particular historical stage - for example, a shift to the transnationalization of production - then my narrative about change and its relation to literature will be quite different from an interpretation based on systems theory that may see globalization as just another chapter in a story of systemic differentiation. To discuss the relation between literature and cultural change must thus also include a consideration of the underlying assumptions on which the argument is based. 1 Phenomenally, they have, of course, an independent existence, but as soon as we want to make sense of them, they will be seen through an explanatory frame that we bring to the object. Hermeneutics of Change 17 ent narratives about literature’s potential for change, but these narratives will also vary depending on their underlying assumptions about the state of the subject and his or her chances for agency. Or, to put it differently: theories of the subject are foundational, not only in philosophy but also in literary studies. This is the question I want to pursue in the following essay. In its first part, I want to argue that narratives about literature and cultural change are based on a priori assumptions about the state of the subject - what it is, what it needs, what it is prevented from having, and how that situation can be changed. This prior assumption will determine what role literature can play in subject formation, how it can contribute to cultural change, and what aesthetic strategies may be needed to realize this goal. Hermeneutically speaking, theories of the subject are therefore the logical nexus that connects society and literature, the politics of literature and aesthetic theories. Theories of the subject will therefore be my starting point and, since my space is limited, I want to focus on four examples that I consider highly representative of the approaches that have dominated literary and cultural theory in the last decades. In the second part of this essay, I will discuss responses to those theories of the subject, in a third part, I want to offer a reformulation of these theories that is also intended to open up a new perspective on the relation between literature and cultural change. To justify my focus on theories of the subject, let us recall that the humanities were conceived and institutionalized in response to certain historical developments that were said to have a negative effect on the subject and its potential for self-awareness and self-determination. Literature and culture in the emphatic sense of the best that has been thought and said gained such a high status in the nineteenth century because they were considered the best antidote to these developments. One may thus claim that literary studies, as well as other fields in the humanities, have been created with the intention to help the subject overcome the constraints to which it has been subjected in history. This may be said to be their purpose and project: they want to help the individual to realize its potential as a subject. II. Once one focuses on the question of underlying premises, it is striking to realize to what extent modern literary and cultural studies have been shaped by one theory of the subject in particular that has dominated literary and cultural theory in the twentieth century almost completely. I am referring to W INFRIED F LUCK 18 narratives of self-alienation. 2 These narratives see the subject in a state in which it is kept from fully knowing itself and hence determining its own fate, frequently with the result of a damaged sense of self or an inner division. 3 At first blush, it may come as a surprise that all of the very different approaches I mentioned should have a narrative of self-alienation as their founding premise. But the common point of departure can also be helpful in pinpointing the differences. For Frankfurt School critical theory of the first generation, the self-alienation of the subject is the result of a long-drawn historical process in which reason has been reduced to instrumental rationality that has gained an ever increasing hold over all areas of life - reaching, in the view of Horkheimer and Adorno, almost totalitarian dimensions in the American society they encountered in the 1940s. This development must affect literature and its potential for change. In those philosophies of history in which the idea of a growing instrumental rationality has provided the central narrative, (high) culture has usually been considered one of the few areas left in which instrumental rationality had not yet taken hold. The exposure to culture, understood as the highest manifestation of the human mind, could thus be seen as a crucial antidote, if not the only remaining hope - at least where culture was not yet instrumentalized itself and submitted to the logic of the market. The sense of shock pervading Horkheimer and Adorno’s However, it is fitting to speak of these theories in the plural, because selfalienation, just like other theoretical concepts we use in the field, is not a stable signifier but can be used in different contexts for different arguments and different purposes. Nevertheless, although defined differently in each case, narratives of self-alienation provide the founding premise not only of Frankfurt School critical theory and related Marxist approaches, but also of such apparently very different approaches as British cultural studies, as represented by Raymond Williams, Wolfgang Iser’s reception aesthetics, and poststructuralism. These will be the four theoretical positions which I will use here to illustrate the links between narratives about the subject and narratives about cultural change. 2 For a more extended analysis, see my essay on “Philosophical Premises in Literary and Cultural Theory: Narratives of Self-Alienation,” New Literary History 47.1 (2016): 109- 134. 3 In most philosophical versions, alienation means to be cut off from man’s original or essential nature. In Marxist versions, alienation is attributed to the division of labor and to private ownership of the means of production “in which the worker loses both the product of his labour and his sense of his own productive activity” (Raymond Williams, Keywords. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford UP, 1976), 31). In consequence, the relation of the worker to his world is defined by the depersonalized logic of commodity relations and leads to a state of reification as a specific form of alienation. In postmodern and poststructuralist versions, in which the main project is to challenge the ideas of reason and the subject as foundational, alienation usually refers to the impossibility of the subject to know itself. Hermeneutics of Change 19 chapter on the culture industry in their Dialectic of Enlightenment is caused by the fear that culture, seen as one of the last bastions of resistance, is now also invaded by instrumental rationality. In the form of American mass culture, culture has become merely another industry based on standardized production processes in which culture is instrumentalized for profit purposes. For Raymond Williams, on the other hand, it is not instrumental rationality but industrialization that provides the key for understanding the selfalienation produced by modern society. Industrialization has led to a class society and thus to a seemingly insurmountable separation between the classes that threatens democracy and its promise of equality. In contrast to Frankfurt School critical theory, however, the social misrecognition (and, hence, self-alienation) resulting from class society is not attributed to an irreversible historical process and thus it is, in principle, still possible to change it. Once culture and society are redefined as a whole way of life, as British cultural studies have done programmatically, and interpretations focus on structures of feeling like solidarity as key value of a culture (and not on standardized mass culture), the working-class subject may still be successfully reconstituted as non-alienated. Somewhat surprisingly, Wolfgang Iser’s reception aesthetics also has its starting point in the premise of human self-alienation, in this case derived, however, not from Max Weber’s theory of instrumental rationality or a Marxist analysis of the dehumanizing consequences of industrialization, but from Helmut Plessner’s anthropological claim that human beings are constituted by a lack. 4 4 To describe the activities of the reader in the act of reading is the central aim of Iser’s major studies The Implied Reader (1974); The Act of Reading. A Theory of Aesthetic Response (1978); Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (1989); and The Fictive and the Imaginary. Charting Literary Anthropology (1993). We therefore need fictions to make up for what we are lacking (and can never fully recover). In this context, self-alienation, defined as an anthropological condition, can paradoxically become a source of creativity because our efforts to overcome our lack of self-knowledge can never be entirely successful and will thus stimulate ever new attempts. In poststructuralism, finally, following Lacan, identity is formed by misrecognition, so that the subject is arrested in a permanent state of self-alienation. Not dissimilar to Iser’s reception aesthetics, the starting point is a lack, an incompleteness, but in contrast to Iser, this lack does not become a source of creativity through which the subject tries to fill the gap. Rather, it leads to a state of illusionary self-perception that prevents the subject from ever knowing itself. Consequently, in poststructuralism, self-alienation has reached the point where the subject is alienated from itself not merely by forces like industrialization or instrumental rationality but, much more fundamentally, as the paradoxical result of identity formation. Without identity, the subject W INFRIED F LUCK 20 cannot know who it is, but the search for self-knowledge will inevitably lead to misrecognition and, hence, to renewed self-alienation. There is an inextricable link in literary and cultural theory between theories of the subject, theories of the function of fiction, and narratives about cultural change. Thus, the different narratives of self-alienation I have sketched out also lead to different narratives about what relation literature can have to social and cultural change. If we start from the assumption that self-alienation is caused by the relentless progression of instrumental rationality, then literature can have a potential for change only where it keeps the possibility of a not yet instrumentalized counter-realm alive; however, literature can evoke a utopia of non-alienated existence only where it is organized by certain aesthetic principles that have a common denominator in their rejection of instrumentalization. One of the logical consequences of critical theory’s narrative about self-alienation is a model of cultural change that may still be familiar to all those who witnessed political debates in the 1960s and 70s. If instrumental rationality is affecting ever more areas of life, then the only hope for change lies in radical resistance - initially in Horkheimer/ Adorno conceived as a kind of heroic last stand, but then increasingly also understood as a model of action. In this process, the idea of resistance was gradually extended beyond high culture to also include pop culture, so that first youth cultures and then ethnic subcultures were presented as possible sites of resistance, and rap music would eventually replace Beckett and Kafka. At the same time, however, the resistance model was undermined, most effectively in the writing of Foucault and its most skilful adapter in literary and cultural studies, the new historicism, where resistance was redefined as only another, especially cunning script of the system. Still, one may claim that the final blow to the resistance model is being struck by the current art market where paintings by Picasso and others - that is art with aesthetic strategies designed to resist commodification - have reached staggering levels of market value. Paradoxically, this art has gained its obscenely high value because of its status as art of defamiliarization, that is, as an object whose value derives originally from its promise to radically resist commodification. In the final analysis, resistance has thus only increased the commodity value of the aesthetic object. How different in comparison is the approach by Raymond Williams and British cultural studies, although they too see themselves in a Marxist tradition. 5 5 In the following discussion, I will focus on the classical texts by Williams: Culture and Society 1780-1950 (1958) and The Long Revolution (1961). And yet they draw very different conclusions from the founding premise of self-alienation and go in an altogether different direction in responding to it. The difference already begins with their historical analysis. In placing Hermeneutics of Change 21 industrialization at the center and not instrumental rationality, the source of self-alienation changes: it is no longer the result of a relentless logic of instrumentalization but of a division of labor ushered in by industrialization. Just as the work of the craftsman is split up into a set of mechanical operations, industrialization undermines social coherence by a newly emerging class system. However, in contrast to instrumental rationality the effects of the social division created by a class society may be overcome by a democracy that truly deserves its name - overcome not in the sense of redistribution but by leveling social hierarchies and creating equal recognition and full acceptance for the working class. Thus, British cultural studies emerged as an interpretive approach and institutional project to empower, originally the working class but then increasingly also the lower classes more broadly defined. In order to be able to participate in democracy, they have to be encouraged and empowered to lose a sense of inferiority. This is where culture and its redefinition comes in for Williams. Its purpose is to take away the stigma of inferiority and reveal the creative potential of mundane and often seemingly banal cultural activities. “Culture is ordinary” is the programmatic title of one of Williams’s essays, repeated in various ways in British cultural studies. That is why the key to understanding Williams is not the last chapter of Culture and Society but the first chapter of The Long Revolution where he develops, in pragmatist fashion, a theory of the inherent creativity of everyday action, what Hans Joas would later call “Die Kreativität des Handelns,” that is the inherent creativity of action, even action of a seemingly banal, everyday nature. As a logical consequence of his basically pragmatist theory of the subject, Williams’s model of change is not one of resistance but of an ongoing process of communication. Class society divides us, therefore we have to learn to take note of each other again, and this should include even the most ordinary aspects of culture. This is the route British cultural studies have taken in following Williams, and again, the logic of the development has led to an increasing emptying out of the concept of the aesthetic. Williams himself already regarded aesthetic theory as a result of the division of labor and thus as a tool of social separation. If every act is potentially creative and democracy is the realm where we should acknowledge different forms of creativity on an equal basis, then the major virtue needed is the willingness to understand and recognize the creative dimension of even the most mundane cultural practice or cultural object. The model for change here is to improve our awareness and our understanding of the culture of others, for only in this way will we be able to conceptualize society as a common democratic project. This, in effect, is the only norm; other than that, there is no normative aesthetic dimension that could be set in any meaningful relation to cultural change. On the contrary, we may speak of a delimitation of the aesthetic, and W INFRIED F LUCK 22 it is notable that recent developments in art have gone in the same direction, as can be seen in the fact that most of the current avant-garde art is concept or installation art, that is, art featuring ordinary, mundane objects that can only be transformed into aesthetic objects by a narrative in which they are acknowledged as art. This dehierarchization has a democratizing effect, not only in the sense of leveling status orders, but even more so in its potential to take the aesthetic object out of a cycle of commodification and redefine it anew as a cultural object with an unforeseen value of its own. Whereas critical theory and British cultural studies attribute selfalienation to historical forces, reception aesthetics and, in a way, also poststructuralism trace it back to a basic human condition, in Iser’s case, an anthropological lack. In the heydays of the debates about reception aesthetics, especially at American universities, Iser was often accused of being apolitical. But inevitably his theory must also entail a theory of change (and hence be political) because, in the final analysis, it was also created in response to a narrative about the state of the subject and what we can do about it. However, if self-alienation is considered a basic human condition, the answer would seem to be: not much. If I see self-alienation as being produced by historical conditions, then there is at least the theoretical prospect that this condition may be changed and that literature may contribute to that change either by resistance or by cultural democratization. But if self-alienation is part of the human make-up, then it seems that we are stuck in always the same condition and can only endlessly re-enact the same experience. However, what looks like a major shortcoming can also be seen as a potential gain, for it provides the subject with a continuing motivation to go back to literature and to draw on its potential to activate our imagination. What can change still mean in this context? Partly in response to the heated political climate at German universities in the 1960s, Iser shied away from public political statements, but there can be no doubt that he saw the imaginary creativity literature provokes as an important ingredient of a living democracy in which subjects participate actively through their struggles for self-awareness. As long as they do so, society is in good shape. Where the struggle stops, on the other hand, because the subject is trapped in firm ideological convictions, the productive potential of self-alienation is lost. Ironically, the tables are turned at this point: whereas in critical theory, selfalienation can only be overcome by fundamental systemic changes, and in British cultural studies only by a long revolution in which class divisions are gradually leveled, in reception aesthetics the fact that self-alienation can never be overcome entirely is precisely the reason why it can be counted upon to lead to productive and creative results. This sounds like another version of pragmatism, but there is one major difference. To be sure, readers are always creative, simply because they have Hermeneutics of Change 23 to bring the words on the page to life in the reading experience by means of their imagination. But not every form of imaginary activity is equally productive for Iser. Literature is most productive where it helps to gain some degree of self-reflexivity, and in order to achieve this, certain aesthetic strategies such as blanks or suspended connectivities are considered especially helpful. Literature’s potential to respond to self-alienation productively is thus closely linked to a particular aesthetic, that of a modernist aesthetics of negativity. For a long time, Iser therefore had problems with postmodernism. Eventually, however, he could not be satisfied to tie his theory so closely to a modernist aesthetics and began to move away from it by drawing on vocabularies of self-organizing systems like the ‘play of the text,’ the ‘feedback loop,’ or, as a key word and value in his final years, the concept of ‘emergence’. With this terminology, the productive potential of an anthropological lack is moved away from specific aesthetic strategies and attributed more generally to the subsystem literature or fiction. But, ironically, what looks like a liberation can also become a trap, because Iser ends up where he did not want to go, in a process of continuous re-enactment. Due to the unpredictability of emergence, we never quite know what will happen next, but since it lies in the nature of emergence to never come to a halt, one effect will quickly be replaced by another in a potentially endless series of quick substitutions. To be sure, this may prevent us from becoming trapped in self-alienation, but it also has the logical consequence that the change which is constantly produced in this way remains without any direction. Change is linked here to a state of potentiality that can never be realized, because that would merely reproduce self-alienation. Something similar may be said about poststructuralism, where change and repetition are also linked. In a way, things look even bleaker, however, because the subject is not even aware of the fundamental misrecognition that constitutes its identity. Thus, it can only be reenacted again and again and in ever new ways. And yet, we are by now familiar with the claim that reiteration creates difference and that difference can be the entry gate for resignification and hence for change. Precisely because self-alienation is a permanent state of being, it must lead to reenactment, and this reenactment, if only for the fact that no iteration can result in exactly the same thing, can be linked to change, although only in the form of slight modifications at best. As in the case of Iser, the fact that self-alienation is a basic human condition leads to the need for a constant reenactment. But there is a major difference: in reception aesthetics, development and change become possible because literature can draw on the imaginary, whereas in poststructuralism the imaginary is the major source of misrecognition. This difference is, in the final analysis, the difference between phenomenology and poststructuralism. W INFRIED F LUCK 24 If we ask what possibilities a poststructuralist theory of the subject opens up for the explanation of cultural change, Judith Butler’s essay “Giving an Account of Oneself” can provide an instructive answer. To start with, Butler provides a helpful clarification of the normative basis of poststructuralism’s critique of misrecognition: the subject is alienated from itself because its singularity can never be fully expressed. But if my founding premise is that of a singularity that can never be fully expressed (and is therefore always misrecognized), it becomes even more important to keep that singularity alive by accounting for it through narratives (for example in the form of life-stories). These accounts will be incomplete and, in the final analysis, they will be failed accounts in terms of self-knowledge. But if a subject would give up accounting for itself, then it would be doomed to only exist in the form of cultural narratives that are imposed on its identity by others. Hence the emergence of a deeply paradoxical constellation. On the one hand, accounting for oneself will lead to misrecognition and contribute to its constant reinforcement. On the other hand, this situation of being trapped in an imposed identity can only get worse if I do not give any accounts of myself. In contrast to reception aesthetics, aesthetics is not of special importance in this context, although some poststructuralists would argue that certain formal features or aesthetic qualities are more effective in deconstructing an imposition of identity than others. However, the main reference points are no longer fictional texts or aesthetic objects but narratives, and these narratives can be of all kinds and genres; at the end of the day, they will all enact the same dilemma. The main sources of insight are thus not the narratives themselves but readings that reveal to what extent misrecognition is at work and draw attention to the rhetorical means and narrative devices through which this misrecognition is established. However, these readings cannot but create another misrecognition and this process cannot but continue ad infinitum. In fact, there is only one way out, and that would be to give up the founding premise of self-alienation altogether. And indeed, if we turn to another influential body of work in critical theory, this is precisely what has happened and has opened up a wide gap between Frankfurt School critical theory on the one hand and literary and cultural studies on the other. III. Scholars of the second and third generation of Frankfurt School critical theory, such as Jürgen Habermas and in the following generation Axel Honneth, have taken their point of departure from a programmatic rejection of theories of self-alienation and have replaced them by an altogether different theory of subject formation. This, one may claim, is a key development in critical theory and beyond. For example, the second volume of Habermas’s major study Hermeneutics of Change 25 Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (The Theory of Communicative Action) begins with an explicit rejection of the premise of self-alienation, here evoked in its Lukácsian version of reification (Verdinglichung): A look at the reception of Weber’s theory of rationalization shows that the social consequences of rationalization are always conceptualized in terms of reification; the many paradoxes resulting from such a conceptualization indicate that the issue cannot be discussed satisfactorily in the context of a philosophy of consciousness [Bewusstseinsphilosophie]. (9, my translation, WF) Following this line of argument, Honneth has provided an in-depth discussion of the concept of reification in his Tanner Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley. Again, the goal of his discussion is “to reformulate a significant issue in Western Marxism” (91) that, in the wake of Lukács’s seminal study History and Class Consciousness, “moved an entire generation of philosophers and sociologists to analyse the forms of life under the then prevailing circumstances as being the result of social reification” (92). In both of these cases, Habermas as well as Honneth, a programmatic rejection of theories of self-alienation is designed to pave the way for an alternative theory of subject-formation: the shift is one from self-alienation to intersubjectivity, from a theoretical framework in which the subject is cut off from self-knowledge, either by forces of modernity or by an anthropological lack, to a theory of subject-formation in which the subject is constituted through intersubjective relations. The theoretical gain is obvious. In a state of self-alienation we cannot fully know each other. From the perspective of theories of intersubjectivity, we cannot possibly not know each other, because we only learn who we are in the interaction with others. However, if intersubjectivity is to fill the gap that concepts of self-alienation can never close, this can only be done on the basis of a normative claim, for obviously, not every form of social interaction has positive effects. On the contrary, there are all kinds of pathological relations, and they can only be kept in check by successfully achieved forms of intersubjectivity, such as, most importantly and most emphatically, the relation between infant and parent. Change is thus dependent on the creation of conditions for successful intersubjectivity, also called recognition, and for this form of intersubjectivity literature does not seem to qualify because it can only simulate personal relations. In fact, this is the reason why Frankfurt School critical theory in the second and third generation has practically lost all interest in literature. 6 From the perspective pursued here, this is an epistemologically naive position to take, however, based on an untenable opposition between reality 6 Up to Honneth’s more recent book Das Recht der Freiheit, his literary references remained largely limited to Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man. In Das Recht der Freiheit, scattered literary references, often in footnotes, have increased, but they only serve a particular function, namely the illustration of social pathologies. W INFRIED F LUCK 26 and the realm of the imaginary, that is, between a world of actual social encounters, for example between parent and child, and our imagination through which we try to make sense of such encounters. Obviously, the two phenomena cannot be easily separated: two participants in the same encounter will often give us two different versions of the event, because they have experienced and interpreted it differently. Critical theorists like Habermas and Honneth cannot acknowledge the role the imagination plays in making the encounter meaningful (and thus, perhaps, formative), because it is their goal to make intersubjectivity the normative basis for judging the state of society, and this is only possible in their view, if intersubjectivity is defined in strictly social terms. From this point of view, the measure of success is whether intersubjective relations will have the potential to lead to social recognition. Critical theorists may thus ask the government to take responsibility for the creation of social conditions that make recognition possible, such as, for example, preventing unemployment because work is an important element of social recognition. But one cannot ask the government for fictional forms of recognition. Thus, the intersubjective dimension of subject formation is of interest only where it can provide criteria for social critique and calls for social reform. But the price is an impoverished version of intersubjectivity. The point becomes clearer when one goes back to the theoretical source of critical theory’s concept of intersubjectivity, the description of subject formation in the work of George Herbert Mead. The rediscovery of Mead proved tremendously important for a particular branch of social theory in the 1970s and 80s, because it promised to point a way out of the equally unsatisfactory choices between Marxist economic determinism and idealist scenarios of the subject’s autonomy (and hence achieved self-consciousness). On the one hand, Mead rejects concepts of an autonomous subject by pointing out that identity (and self-awareness) can only be gained in social interaction; without opposite others we could not possibly know who we are. In Mead’s theory, identity can only emerge in social interaction: “The self is not something that exists first and then enters into relationship with others...” (Mead 182). The self is only realized in its relationship to others. Consequently, the subject is reconceptualized as a self and renamed accordingly. On the other hand, self-constitution in the interaction with others does not mean that the subject is defined by others. Because of the interactive nature of the process of self-formation, the self always retains some degree of agency: in order to be able to act, the self has to make sense of the other, and it can only do so by actively interpreting the other’s responses. A narrow behaviorist conceptualization of social interaction in terms of stimulus and response is thereby replaced by an intersubjective model of self-formation: “It is the social process of influencing others in a social act and then taking Hermeneutics of Change 27 the attitude of the others aroused by the stimulus, and then reacting in turn to this response, which constitutes a self” (Mead 171). However, the model of social interaction described here is a model of face-to-face encounters, and one cannot restrict analyses of modern societies to face-to-face encounters. By adding the concept of a generalized other, Mead concedes that the perspective through which we look at ourselves is not always and not necessarily that of a real person with whom we interact. It can also be a perspective provided by cultural norms or attitudes. Since we cannot possibly meet all of the other others that form society, we have to mentally construct their perspective. We have to come up with a mental construct of the generalized other and, inevitably, this construct will also be shaped by the imaginary. One may even go one step further and argue that the difference between face-to-face encounters with ‘real’ persons and abstract others is not really clear-cut: although we may see a person directly in front of us and may be able to observe his or her responses, there will nevertheless also be a certain degree of imaginary construction at work through which we try to make sense of the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of this other person. We ‘take the attitude of the other’ in an imaginary anticipation of his or her response, and the image to which we respond already presents an interpretation and not simply an encounter with a ‘real’ person that is selfevident. But if the response to others is always, and by definition, the result of an interpretive construct, then the imaginary will be involved each time, no matter whether we are talking about face-to-face encounters or imaginary interactions with a generalized other. Although the child may experience ‘real’ warmth in the contact with parents, it nevertheless also constructs them as objects of its own emotional and imaginary desires. In that sense, Lacan has a point when he claims that the child’s identity formation is grounded in an act of imaginary misrecognition - of self and other, one may add -, although I do not see a need to interpret this misrecognition only psychoanalytically as an effect of the mirror-stage. But no matter whether one links misrecognition to the mirror-stage or to social interaction more generally, in each case the imaginary construct of the other will be guided and shaped by the self’s own needs and desires, and the response of the other will be interpreted on the basis of this need. In other words: if we take the role into account that the imaginary plays in the process, recognition will always also be a form of self-recognition, and, in view of the role the imaginary plays in both social interaction and in reading, there is, at a closer look, no clear dividing line between self-recognition gained through social interaction in everyday life or through reading literature. Of course recognition by others will, as a rule, be rated more highly, but self-recognition through literature may be more easily and reliably attained. W INFRIED F LUCK 28 However, we do not usually think of these two options in either-or terms. Both can provide something that the other cannot to the same degree, and they should thus be seen as complementary possibilities in the search for recognition. As a rule, self-formation will not only be based on social interaction. Culture, including literature, also plays an increasingly important role as an agent of socialization. IV. Theories of self-alienation, secondand third-generation Frankfurt School critical theory argues, ignore the fact that human existence is shaped by intersubjective relations in which recognition becomes the pre-condition for a ‘healthy’ self-formation. It is, in other words, recognition that may overcome self-alienation, but only if it is intersubjective recognition, that is, based on social interaction characterized by genuine reciprocity. From that point of view, literature cannot be of interest; the unidirectional reading process can provide self-recognition at best. But if one does not want to accept this strict opposition - as I have done here by referring to the role the imaginary plays in both social interaction and in reading -, then it is necessary to clarify what self-recognition means in the context of this discussion. In what sense may literature be said to provide self-recognition? To start with, it is necessary to clarify what I mean by the term. In the context of my argument it does not mean some kind of high self-evaluation but, much more matter-of-factly, any self-reference that finds resonance in the self. Selfrecognition, then, should not be confused with narcissistic self-affirmation; rather, it is the construction of any self-image that can contribute to a sense of self. This is not supposed to mean, however, that the search for recognition through reading always results in self-acceptance. In many instances, the search for recognition, social or ‘fictional,’ will encounter irritating challenges, unexpected frustrations and angry disappointments. Self-recognition, in other words, is used here in the sense of any form of self-reference. It is not a psychological term but refers to an elementary form of self-constitution; it simply means to be able to construct a sense of self. But how can this sense of self be gained in the act of reading literary texts? I have addressed the question in other contexts and can only provide a summary of the argument here. 7 7 See, for example, my essays on “The Second Narrative” (Fluck 2013a) and “Reading for Recognition” (Fluck 2013b). My point of departure lies in an example Wolfgang Iser has provided in an essay on literary representation, where he speaks about the act of reading Hamlet. Since we have never met Hamlet and do in fact know that he never existed, we have to come up with our own Hermeneutics of Change 29 mental images of him. 8 In the act of reading, the literary text thus comes to represent two things at once: the world of the text and imaginary elements added to it by the reader in the reading process. Our characteristic mode of reading will therefore be a constant movement back and forth between the world of the text and our own world, since we continuously will have to reconcile our own construct of the figure of Hamlet with its representation in the text - and vice versa. This ongoing interaction puts us in a position ‘in-between’ two worlds. And it is exactly this double positioning of the reader that allows us to do two things at the same time: we can, in the words of Iser, be “both ourselves and someone else at the same time” (244). The literary text allows us to enter a character’s perspective and perhaps even his or her body; on the other hand, we cannot and do not want to completely give up our own identity. In reading, we have the possibility of creating other, more expressive versions of ourselves. This mental construct will proceed along textual lines but, in the act of doing so, we will also have to draw on our own associations, feelings and bodily sensations in order to bring the abstract letters on the page to life and provide them with meaning. If a character is said to be melancholic, this characterization will not make any sense to us unless we can draw on our own knowledge about, or perhaps even on our own experience of, melancholia. This is achieved, however, in a much more complex way than suggested by the term ‘identification’. 9 8 See Wolfgang Iser: “In this respect the required activity of the recipient resembles that of an actor, who in order to perform his role must use his thoughts, his feelings, and even his body as an analogue for representing something he is not. In order to produce the determinate form of an unreal character, the actor must allow his own reality to fade out. At the same time, however, he does not know precisely who, say, Hamlet is, for one cannot properly identify a character who has never existed. Thus role-playing endows a figment with a sense of reality in spite of its impenetrability which defies total determination. [...] Staging oneself as someone else is a source of aesthetic pleasure; it is also the means whereby representation is transferred from text to reader.” (“Representation: A Performative Act,” Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989), 244.) One may assume for the sake of argument that it may be possible to ‘identify’ with a character, but one cannot identify with an entire text. It is the text, however, that provides the reading experience, not just single characters in it. In actualizing the text in the act of reading, all 9 On the confusions surrounding the term ‘identification’ in the interpretation of literary texts, cf. Rita Felski (2008: 34): “Identification can denote a formal alignment with a character, as encouraged by techniques of focalization, point of view, or narrative structure, while also referencing an experiential allegiance with a character, as manifested in a felt sense of affinity or attachment. Critiques of identification tend to conflate these issues, assuming that readers formerly aligned with a fictional persona cannot help but swallow the ideologies represented by that persona wholesale.“ Rita Felski, Uses of Literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008). W INFRIED F LUCK 30 aspects of the text have to be brought to life by means of a transfer from our own life-world, including the text’s language, its plot, mood, author-figure and other structural features. The ‘more expressive version of ourselves’ is thus not a simple case of self-aggrandizement through wish-fulfillment but an extension of our own interiority over a whole (made-up) world. Such a model conceptualizes reading as a process of making selections through which readers create meaning and significance by transfers between the world of the text and their own world. Since we cannot possibly relate to all aspects of the text in equal measure, we will focus on aspects to which we can relate in one way or another. The explanation why there will always be new readings of any given literary text, not only in different historical periods but also among readers or viewers of the same period, society, or class, lies in the fact that readings (including professional interpretations) work by means of structural or affective analogies. This is, in fact, one of the reasons why in reading literature we can relate to figures like outlaws or misfits, or even criminals and murderers from whom we would shy away in reality - that is, characters that we may consider pathological in real life. We do not identify with such characters but establish analogies to those aspects of their persona that we want to incorporate. 10 We take the defiance or heroism of the gangster and ignore the criminal context. 11 Depictions of pathological behavior in fictional texts should thus not be taken literally, and it is part of the paradoxical effects literature can have that phenomena that we may reject in real life can become elements of selfdefinition and thus self-recognition in the act of reading. 12 10 Attachments to particular characters or single aspects of their persona can thus easily cross gender lines. The same applies, of course, to ethnic and racial identities as well as sexual orientations. Self-recognition, then, can be gained through forms of self-reference that can be drawn from interaction either with social others or, by means of a transfer, from the process of reading. The matter is further complicated - but also clarified - by the fact that this self-reference does not have to affect the reader as a whole per- 11 Using the term analogy to grasp the relations that can be set up between reader and text means to go beyond mimetic assumptions of direct likeness or resemblance, but even beyond metaphorical affinity. Thus, readers’ responses can be unpredictable: “Antigone has intrigued straight men and lesbians, Norwegians and South Africans; you do not need to be an Irishman to admire James Joyce” (Felski 2008: 43). Felski continues: “We all seek in various ways to have our particularity recognized, to find echoes of ourselves in the world around us. The patent asymmetry and unevenness of structures of recognition ensure that books will often function as lifelines for those deprived of other forms of public acknowledgment” (43). 12 This paradoxical effect of aesthetic experience is most obvious in the case of the sublime: to be on a sinking ship or to look at the painting of a sinking ship are two very different experiences and can illustrate how aesthetic experience can transform a real-life threat into a gratifying aesthetic experience. Hermeneutics of Change 31 son (as is implied in the German term Selbst-Achtung). The transfers that may be used for self-references can be segmented, partial, and piecemeal in their dimensions. If we activate a sense of defiance through a transfer linked to an outlaw figure, this will not have the result that we define ourselves from now on as an outlaw or a defiant person. It simply means that we stress, if only temporarily, a particular dimension of the self and toy with the possibility of thereby expanding our sense of self. The transfers that are at work in our reception of literary texts could then be seen as an interactive activity that offers particular possibilities in the search for recognition (Fluck 2013b). In defining the reading of literature as a form of interaction, two aspects have to be kept in mind. One is to acknowledge the inherently interactive nature of the reading process that is part of any attempt to make sense of a literary text. The result is a complex interaction of perspectives in which we construct another world by drawing on our own world, and then look at our own world through the perspective of our imaginary construct. Seen this way, the reading subject is thus intersubjectively constituted in the act of reading: we can be both ourselves and somebody else at the same time. Secondly, what is important to stress in this context is that this interactive process will not leave the two perspectives that interact unaffected. Our construct of the text will not be identical with the literary text itself; it is always already an interpretation and extension of it. At the same time, looking at our self through the perspective of our reading experience will affect and possibly change our own self-reference. The reading process thus brings a dimension to our self that we have been lacking, and this self-extension can be seen as a search for recognition on new grounds. V. One purpose of this essay has been to argue that recognition is a concept that links both of the theories of the subject we have discussed, the theory of selfalienation and theories of intersubjectivity. In the case of the latter, the significance of recognition is explicitly thematized; in the case of the former, it is implied. In intersubjective theories of the subject, the search for recognition is seen as a quasi-anthropological need: without interaction with an other, we could not possibly know who we are, and the discussion that has emerged from this basic assumption is one about the best possible sources for recognition. In the theories of self-alienation discussed here, the search for recognition is not explicitly thematized, but it can nevertheless also be seen as a driving force. Self-alienation means to go through an experience of lacking something, of being cut off from part of oneself, and hence a need emerges to overcome this condition. For Raymond Williams, this is achieved through cultural practices like class solidarity that counter the misrecognition created W INFRIED F LUCK 32 through class divisions. As a source of recognition, class solidarity is timehonoured and indispensable; this is the reason why Williams set his hopes on its persistence (and outlined a cultural studies approach in support of it). For Iser, the feeling of being incomplete is the driving force for creativity and, hence, for ever new attempts at gaining self-awareness; this is the reason why Iser set all of his hopes on forms of literature that constantly refuel this creativity. For Butler, the misrecognition inherent in being labeled gay is the driving force for pursuing processes of resignification that can transform misrecognition into recognition. Although such recognition can only renew selfalienation in her view, it is nevertheless indispensable for accounts of oneself in order to assert one’s singularity. Finally, the only logical way out of selfalienation in Frankfurt School critical theory is to overcome the masochistic psychic structures that are the effect of an all-pervasive instrumental rationality, and this cannot be achieved by negation alone. It must be complemented by psychoanalytic attempts to gain some degree of self-awareness. This is the reason why, in contrast to Foucault, Adorno never gave up psychoanalytical concepts as an integral part of critical theory. 13 But what about those theorists like Foucault who offer even more radical versions of the subject’s self-alienation (so that there is no self left and the subject’s subjection seems complete)? With their claims, these theorists present a major difference to classical versions. Self-alienation is no longer produced by overpowering social or economic forces that cut off the subject from its true nature; it is now the result of identity formation itself. The subject has no choice: if it wants to gain an identity, it has to agree to terms that are not its own. 14 Identity can do its work of positioning the subject in misrecognition because it provides the subject with a (false) sense of coherence. In a discussion of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, Butler has summarized the argument succinctly: “If discourse produces identity through applying and enforcing a regulatory principle which thoroughly invades, totalizes and renders coherent the individual, then it seems that every ‘identity,’ insofar as it is totalizing, acts as precisely such a ‘soul that imprisons the body’.” 15 13 For an excellent comparison, revealing surprising similarities between Adorno and Foucault, but also major differences, see Honneth 1988. But if self-alienation is produced in the act of identity-formation, are we then con- 14 See the exemplary summary of the argument by Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997), 28: “The desire to persist in one’s own being requires submitting to a world of others that is fundamentally not one’s own […]. Only by persisting in alterity does one persist in one’s own being. Vulnerable to terms that one never made, one persists always, to some degree, through categories, names, terms, and classifications that mark a primary and inaugurative alienation in sociality.” 15 Judith Butler, “Subjection, Resistance, Resignification: Between Freud and Foucault,” The Identity in Question, ed. John Rajchman, (London: Routledge, 1995), 231. Hermeneutics of Change 33 demned to permanent self-alienation? And if not, how can we still envision any kind of resistance to, or emancipation from, this fate? In her essay “Subjection, Resistance, Resignification,” intended as a critical rethinking of subjection and resistance, Butler makes the important point that interpellation may be the goal but that it is not always the result because interpellation may also be misinterpreted by the subject. Moreover, a single act of hailing cannot fix identity; for this, iteration is needed and this opens up a possibility of gradual resignification. 16 But why does the subject feel a need to engage in resignification? The most convincing answer is provided when Butler speaks of an “alienated narcissism” that “will become the condition by which resignification of that interpellation becomes possible.” 17 VI. Because the subject has no other choice than identifying even with an injurious term in order to gain some kind of social identity, it will be driven toward resignification by ultimately narcissist reasons. In other words: the same condition of self-alienation that makes the subject an easy prey for processes like interpellation or subjection is also the driving force in the search for resignification. Or, to put it differently, the search for recognition is not only the entry gate for subjection or interpellation, but also the driving force of resistance. The lack at the center of the subject does not only enable identity impositions by others, it is also the source of a permanent dissatisfaction with these impositions - which, in turn, provides the impetus for a renewed search for recognition. How is all of this related to the question of cultural change? If we are positing a theory of the subject in which a never-ending search for recognition is the 16 This may provide a possible answer to the question Herbert Grabes asked in his essay “The Aesthetic Dimension: Bliss and/ or Scandal,” REAL 12 (1996): 17-29, 21: “how is it possible that art and literature may indeed exert some changing influence within a culture when artists and writers produce it from ‘inside’? ” 17 Cf. the full argument (Butler 1995: 245-46): “Called by an injurious name, I come into social being, but because a certain attachment to my existence is to be assumed, a certain narcissism takes hold of any term that confers existence, I am led to embrace the terms that injure me, precisely because they constitute me socially. One might understand the self-colonizing trajectory of certain forms of identity politics as symptomatic of this paradoxical embrace of the injurious term. As a further paradox, then, it is only by occupying - being occupied by - that injurious term that I become enabled to resist and oppose that term, and the power that constitutes me is recast as the power I oppose. In this way, a certain place for psychoanalysis is secured, in the sense that any mobilization against subjection will take subjection itself as its resource, and that an attachment to an injurious interpellation by way of a necessarily alienated narcissism will become the condition by which a resignification of that interpellation becomes possible.” W INFRIED F LUCK 34 driving force and basic condition of being in the world, then this must also have consequences for the question whether and in what way literature can have an impact on cultural change. Because of self-alienation, we said, the search for recognition is never-ending; often, one should add, it is also unrepentantly self-centered - not because the modern world is populated with egotists but because it lies in the nature of a struggle for recognition to aim at a positive self-reference. In literature, this struggle often begins with experiences of misrecognition, of a sense of inferiority, weakness, or injustice; the narratives that develop from these states of injury depict struggles that can either be successful - often, in fact, triumphantly successful - or end in defeat, which, in a paradox typical of aesthetic experience, can nevertheless provide strong experiences of self-recognition. 18 One of the main challenges for social theories, for example theories of justice, consists in the task of integrating different claims into generally acceptable norms of equality, fairness, and justice. The search for recognition in literature, however, may often be highly effective in dramatizing severe cases of social injustice, but their depiction represents the views of an individual or group that want to call attention to their own, often highly subjective experiences of misrecognition. But in each case the claims for recognition can be - and often will be - radically subjective, self-centered, and partisan. 19 18 An exemplary genre is the melodrama in which it is victimhood that leads to recognition as a very special being. In contrast to philosophical or social theories, literature can articulate individual claims for recognition that need not necessarily be reconciled with other claims and need not be normatively justified. Hence, one of the major differences between literary texts and normative accounts is that literary texts can base the legitimacy of their claims on the power of aesthetic experience and its seemingly self-evident authority. If a novel is skillfully crafted, we may even find ourselves on the side of a killer, as for example in Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy, because Dreiser claims that what goes on in Clyde Griffiths gives us insights into the human condition that cannot be taken into account in court. This unashamed and unrepentant partisanship is actually one of the strengths of literature, because literary texts can articulate aspects of individual experience that are erased by broad social classifications, so that new dimensions of subjectivity can be revealed. 19 In his essay “Culture or Literature,” Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 5.2 (2007): 160, Herbert Grabes claims that in reading literature there is “never the impression of being compelled to agree or disagree that is bound up with the claim to general validity inherent in conceptual discourse. There is good reason why, within the institution of literature, we tend to grant greater freedom ‘to say everything,’ for whatever may be said does not necessarily pertain to us or even make claims to validity in face of our convictions.” Hermeneutics of Change 35 Thus, while normative accounts of justice try to integrate different claims in order to arrive at a convincing normative principle, the subjective accounts of literature go exactly in the other direction by producing an ever expanding plurality of claims. We encounter normative accounts on the one hand, open and often unashamedly subjective calls for recognition on the other. It would be a mistake, however, to posit one side against the other. Both operate on different levels and are, in the final analysis, complementary. As a form that encourages individual expression, often of a transgressive nature, literature is a social institution with a special potential and privilege to articulate individual claims for recognition. As an acknowledged part of the public sphere, it has played a crucial role in introducing such claims into a culture. Philosophical and social theories, on the other hand, are involved in an ongoing debate about the legitimacy and normative implications of such claims. In a time of pluralization, fictional texts constantly introduce new claims; in doing so, they put pressure on philosophical and social theories to reconsider and, where necessary, to extend their normative accounts. This, in a nutshell, is literature’s most important contribution to cultural change. VII. In Frankfurt School critical theory, the function of literature lies in the negation of instrumentalization. In British cultural studies, it should battle the social consequences of the division of labor. In the reception aesthetics of Wolfgang Iser, the function of literature lies in the constant activation of a creative imaginary. In Judith Butler’s poststructuralist account, the function of literature can only lie in the defense of singularity against the imposition of cultural identity. In my own account - motivated by, among other things, the failure of theories of intersubjectivity to give a satisfactory account of the ways in which literature can be seen in interactive terms - all of these approaches have one basic assumption in common. In their very different ways, they all describe a human condition in which individual claims for recognition are the driving force. In Frankfurt School critical theory, instrumental rationality alienates the subject from itself, and its negation has the purpose of finding a way to still being recognized as a subject that is not yet fully subjected to instrumentalization. At first sight, Williams seems to go into exactly the other direction by emphasizing the common identity of the working class and establishing solidarity as a social norm. But the whole point of solidarity is to recognize all members of a group as subjects who deserve respect and support, no matter what their personal flaws may be. As in the family, working-class solidarity is constructed as an (in principle) unconditional form of recognition. In Iser’s reception aesthetics, which is closest to my own argument, the experience of an anthropological lack drives the sub- W INFRIED F LUCK 36 ject to overcome this lack; for this purpose the potential of literature to create a doppelganger-subject holds the promise of self-expansion and selfrecognition by means of a transfer. Finally, the approach that rejects the concept of recognition most forcefully, Butler’s poststructuralist account, is providing almost the best example of how central and constitutive the search for recognition is: she rejects cultural recognition because it keeps us from a full and unconditional recognition of a singularity that defies recognition. One problem remains, however. Calling the search for recognition the driving engine of cultural change might be seen to push our argument in the direction of a narrative of individualization, and although this narrative may still have some credit left in the social sciences, it is by now completely discredited in literary and cultural studies. In Honneth’s intersubjective theory of recognition, the aim is to fully recognize the individual; in poststructuralism such a recognition is the entry gate for interpellation and subjection, because it is only possible at the price of an imposition of identity. Recognition positions us in culturally prefigured plots and norms, and these then become the forms in which we see ourselves in an act of self-recognition (that is really a form of misrecognition). One many argue, however, that these cultural plots have to be adjusted and re-written to fit a person’s selfnarrative, so that his or her own narrative identity can be provided with a certain, at least minimal, degree of continuity and coherence. This appropriation is more than a mere reiteration of always the same subject position. Inevitably, it leads to a re-writing, and this re-writing also opens up the possibility of a reconfiguration in which norms can become subject to resignification. That which constantly puts constraints on our singularity, the stories that connect us, can thus also become a source of stimulation for the assertion of singularity. Ironically, then, the drive for resistance or resignification emerges from the very phenomenon that poststructuralists use as their normative base for criticizing the subjecting power of recognition: the singularity of the subject. Because this singularity can never be fully acknowledged by any kind of recognition, it also produces the motivation for pushing the subject toward ever new attempts in the struggle for recognition. In this sense, poststructuralist claims radicalize a search for recognition while, at the same time, also making difference ‘recognizable’. But nobody - including the organizers of this conference - ever claimed that cultural change is always and by definition positive! Hermeneutics of Change 37 Works Cited Butler, Judith. “Subjection, Resistance, Resignification: Between Freud and Foucault.” The Identity in Question, ed. John Rajchman. London: Routledge, 1995. 229-249. ----. The Psychic Life of Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. ----. “Giving an Account of Oneself,” Diacritics 31.4 (2001): 22-40. Felski, Rita. Uses of Literature. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Fluck, Winfried. “The Search for Distance: Negation and Negativity in Wolfgang Iser’s Literary Theory,” New Literary History 31.1 (2000): 175-210. ----. “The Imaginary and the Second Narrative. Reading as Transfer.” The Imaginary and Its Worlds: American Studies after the Transnational Turn, eds. Laura Bieger, Ramon Saldivar, and Johannes Voelz. Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College Press, 2013a. 237-64. ----. “Reading for Recognition.” New Literary History 44.1 (2013b): 45-67. ----. “Philosophical Premises in Literary and Cultural Theory: Narratives of Self- Alienation.” New Literary History 47.1 (2016): 109-134. Grabes, Herbert. “The Aesthetic Dimension: Bliss and/ or Scandal.“ REAL 12 (1996), 17-29. ----. “Culture or Literature.“ Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 5.2 (2007): 153- 164. Habermas, Jürgen. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Vol. 2. Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 1988. Honneth, Axel. “Foucault and Adorno. Zwei Formen einer Kritik der Moderne.“ ‘Postmoderne‘ oder Der Kampf um die Zukunft. Ed. Peter Kemper (Frankfurt/ Main: Fischer, 1988), 127-44. ----. Reification: A Recognition-Theoretical View. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Delivered at California, Berkeley, March 14-16, 2005. ----. Das Recht der Freiheit. Grundrisse einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit. Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 2011. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. 1944. New York: Continuum, 2002. Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. ----. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978. ----. “Representation: A Performative Act.” Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989, 236-48. ----. The Fictive and the Imaginary. Charting Literary Anthropology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. Joas, Hans. Die Kreativität des Handelns. Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 1992. Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Works of George Herbert Mead, Vol.1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934. Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society 1780-1950. New York: Harper & Row, 1958. ----. The Long Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961. ----. Keywords. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. ----. Marxism and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. JEAN-JACQUES LECERCLE Structures of Feeling, Literature and Cultural Change In the field of English studies, considering the relationships between literature and cultural change will inevitably involve re-visiting the work of Raymond Williams. It is my contention that Williams’s main contribution to our conceptual toolbox, the concept of structure of feeling, is essential for any account of these relationships. The best definition of the concept is to be found in the chapter of Marxism and Literature that is devoted to it: We are talking about characteristic elements of impulse, restraint, and tone; especially effective elements of consciousness and relationships: not feeling against thought, but thought as felt and feeling as thought: practical consciousness of a present kind, in a living and interrelating continuity. We are then defining these elements as a ‘structure’: as a set, with specific internal relations, at once interlocking and in tension. Yet we are also defining a social experience which is still in process, often indeed not yet recognized as social but taken to be private, idiosyncratic, and even isolating, but which in analysis [...] has its emergent, connecting and dominant characteristics, indeed its specific hierarchies. 1 The passage is typical of Williams’s often irritating style, with its convolutions and tropes (note the trope of antimetabole: a structure of feeling deals with feeling as thought and thought as felt). Yet the importance of the concept is clear, as it seeks to provide a solution, in both senses of the term (the solution of a problem and a chemical solution, or dissolution) to the twin contrasts of the rational vs. the emotional and the collective vs. the individual. For a structure of feeling focuses on the affects that come with thought (thought as felt) and yet, being a structure, it is articulated, always already an object of thought (feeling as thought). And a structure of feeling, being what forms and informs lived experience, is materialised in individual consciousness and yet, being a structure, it is always already social, a ‘social experience,’ with its articulation and hierarchies, at the very moment when it is ‘taken to be private.’ This provides a solution to the old Marxist difficulty in making sense of the individual and the idiosyncratic (i.e. conscious and lived experience), as the concept combines what could be a development of Marx’s sixth thesis on Feuerbach (“In its reality, [the essence of man] is the ensemble 1 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 132. JEAN-JACQUES LECERCLE 40 of social relations”) 2 But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the concept is its temporal slant, already noticeable in the passage I have quoted: “practical consciousness of a present kind,“ “a social experience which is still in process,“ “which has its emergent [...] characteristics.” This is where the concept is going to be useful if we are trying to approach cultural change. with the personal and subjective interpretation of such relations in the individual consciousness (and since we are still within the ambit of Marxism, in this potential contradiction, the social aspect is dominant, as consciousness, being practical consciousness, is always already social). As is well known, the concept accompanied Williams all through the evolution of his thought. It already appears in his second book, The Long Revolution, where it is defined as “the culture of a period,“ and more specifically of a generation. 3 On the face of it, this temporal distribution of dominant, residual and emergent is a commentary of the classic Marxist analysis of social formations as combining elements of various modes of production, which, qua modes of production, are ordered in a temporal sequence. Thus, contemporary Britain will be under the domination of the capitalist mode of production, but it will still contain survivals of the feudal mode of production, and anticipations of what might be called the communist mode. And this is not only true at the level of social stratification, production and exchange, but also at the level of representations, of elements of consciousness, of knowledge and belief - this is what Williams, who famously sought to dissolve the canonical distinction of economic base and ideological superstructure, is primarily concerned with. What dominates is the current dominant ideology; the residual dwells in various traditions; and the emergent in the utopian impulse, but not exclusively, as cultural emergence is a continuous process in a society in a constant state of change: “By ‘emergent’ I mean that new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationship are continually being created.” At this stage, the concept is still too broad and too vague (there is only one structure of feeling per generation, and the definition of this “generation” is rather vague). But in Marxism and Literature, the definition is stricter, especially in its temporal aspects, as the chapter devoted to the concept is preceded by a chapter entitled “Dominant, residual and emergent.” 4 2 Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, in Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1965), 646. Structures of feeling, therefore, are a mixture of the sedimented, the conjunctural and the emergent: the whole problematic of cultural change is implicit in this unholy mixture. 3 R. Williams, The Long Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), 64-5. 4 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 123. Structures of Feeling, Literature and Cultural Change 41 However, in structures of feeling, even as the social dominates the individual, the emergent dominates the sedimented. The object of the concept, therefore, is, explicitly so, to conceptualize cultural change, that is a change in “institutions, formations, and beliefs.” 5 Such change has three characteristics. First, as we saw, it is social before it is personal, a form of social experience: it goes beyond the small individual changes in beliefs and representations, it involves the whole of a culture, by way of its structures of feeling. The other two characteristics concern the temporality of the change. For cultural change is what Williams calls a “change of presence” 6 - an obvious feature while the change is being lived, but a feature that is retained even after, as the still somehow present trace of an experience that has been lived, a chemical precipitation of past experience. It would seem, therefore, that cultural change looks backward, in other words that it is sedimented, loaded with tradition and survivals. But because it is a process, a movement, it has of necessity an emergent aspect, which is the dominant aspect, and therefore looks forward to the future, even if it does not do so explicitly, in articulated representations and beliefs: “Although they are emergent or pre-emergent [such changes] do not have to await definition, classification, or rationalization before they exert palpable pressures and set effective limits on experience and on action.” 7 What we have here is an image of the operation of cultural change, with its triple temporality, in which the emergent aspect is dominant, and the present, or the conjunctural, is the receptacle of the contradiction between the sedimented and the emergent. But what is not yet clear is the cause or motor of cultural change, or rather its immediate and precise cause, as the general causation - we are still in the ambit of classical Marxism - will be found in the determination in the last instance of the superstructure by the base. And like most Western Marxists, Althusser for instance, although in his own inimitable way, Williams is trying to give a more precise meaning to that canonical phrase, “determination in the last instance”. And Williams immediately adds that “such changes are changes in structures of feeling” - the object of the concept is indeed to make the underlying logic of cultural change accessible. This is where the detour through literature will be of prime importance, as the contribution of literature to changes in structures of feeling may provide an answer to the question of causation. To put it in a nutshell, the centrality of literature to cultural change provides a mediation between the general determination of the superstructure by the base and the social experience, which, being lived and felt, will percolate down to the individual 5 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 131. 6 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 132. 7 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 132. JEAN-JACQUES LECERCLE 42 agent, as the structure of feeling, a constraint on experience and action, but an enabling constraint, will be both a reflection of the general change and an agent in it (in other words, there is a relative autonomy of cultural change, as there is a relative autonomy of the ideological superstructure in relation to the social and economic base). But it still remains to be seen why literature has a specific potential to fulfil this mediating role in cultural change. For Williams, works of literature are central to structures of feeling. His great book, The Country and the City, 8 This is due to a simple but overwhelming fact - that works of literature are works of language. The central image, as well as the main motor, of cultural change (in its relative autonomy) is change in language. This is where Williams’ main intellectual opponent is structuralism, which was dominant, at least in linguistics, when he was writing, and which, with considerable hindsight, he consistently opposed from a historicist point of view. Structural linguistics, as we know, is good on the description of the system of Saussurean langue, of which it gives a synchronic account, and rather weak on linguistic change, as, under the name of diachrony, it can only think the change produced within the system, but not the linguistic change due to external factors, such as society and history. Williams, quite rightly to my mind, maintains, against the principle of immanence of mainstream structural linguistics, that language is of the world and in the world, and cannot be understood in isolation from it. So for Williams, the study of language must take the form of a historical semantics, as developed in the “vocabulary of culture and society” that Keywords is: “The emphasis on history as a way of understanding contemporary problems of meaning and structures of meaning, is a basic choice from a position of historical materialism rather than from the now more powerful positions of objective idealism or non-historical (synchronic) structuralism.” which in a way is a history of English literature centering on these two motifs, is deeply informed by the concept of the structure of feeling: the history of literature is a history of structures of feeling. Literary works are central expressions of such structures, they inscribe them - and as such enable the lived experience to survive beyond its original conjuncture - and they actively contribute to them, in so far as they are not merely reflections of cultural change (static elements of the structure of feeling) but actors in it (as emergent expressions of the changes in lived experience). 9 This emphasis on history, combined with an emphasis on language as activity, or practice, is what, according to Williams, should inform the Marxist position on language. 10 8 R. Williams, The Country and the City (London: Paladin, 1973). In what is the sketch of a programme for a historical materialist approach to language, we accordingly 9 R. Williams, Keywords (London: Fontana, 1976), 20-21. 10 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 21. Structures of Feeling, Literature and Cultural Change 43 note the phrase “structures of meaning”: what the system of language grammaticalizes (in other words sediments) as structures of meaning, literature captures as structures of feeling. Cultural change as change in structures of feeling, therefore, is best captured in changes in language, which inscribe them: The process [of cultural change] can be directly observed in the history of a language. In spite of substantial and at some levels decisive continuities of grammar and vocabulary, no generation speaks quite the same language as its predecessors. The difference can be defined in terms of additions, deletions, and modifications, but these do not exhaust it. What really changes is something quite general, over a wide range, and the description that often fits the change best is the literary term ‘style’. 11 The witness of linguistic change, and the instrument of capture of new structures of feeling, is literary style. Literature, therefore, plays a crucial part in the expression of structures of feeling and of cultural change. We may wonder why that is. Again, the reason is simple: because literature is the art of language (which means that it is the most complex and rewarding set of language games). And it is a constitutive characteristic of human language that it can state what is not the case, in other words fiction. And it does this, in hypothetical sentences, because it can state what is no longer, or not yet, the case. In other words, human language, and human language alone, can express the three times of experience, past, present and future. And literature is the set of language games that not only turns this into fiction (“Once upon a time...” is the motto of fiction), but is also capable (this is the essence of style) to capture the three times of the language in which it is written: the sedimented tradition of past generations (i.e. the structures of feeling the writer inherits), the current experience of language as it is lived and felt by the present generation, and the emergent features that announce the coming changes in language because literary texts are intuitively aware (“in an embryonic phase before [they] can become fully articulate,“ as Williams phrases it) 12 It will be objected that “style” is not necessarily, or not only a literary term: the English use of the term “stylistics” corresponds to the study of various registers and collective styles as well as the individual style of the great writer. But, apart from the fact that the subject of stylistics, from Leo Spitzer onwards, has developed through the study of literary texts, literary style has one particular characteristic: it captures the moment when the “social experiences in solution,” of the shifts in general cumtural experience and feeling. 13 11 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 131. as Williams calls his emergent structures of feeling, passes from relative unconsciousness to a form of as yet unarticu- 12 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 131. 13 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 133. JEAN-JACQUES LECERCLE 44 lated but already felt consciousness. This is why literary style is the best witness of cultural change: because it captures the moment of emergence of a new structure of feeling: we understand why Deleuze, in order to define style, consistently used Proust’s famous statement that the writer writes his own language as if it were foreign. 14 Let me sum up my argument in a number of theses. Thesis 1: structures of feeling mediate between a number of classic dichotomies: (i) between the emotional and the rational (between feeling and thought); (ii) between the individual and the social (between lived experience and articulated structure); (iii) between the base and the superstructure (cultural change is determined in the last instance by changes in the base, but as superstructural change, it enjoys relative autonomy - there is a history of structures of feeling). Thesis 2. Structures of feeling are dynamic processes, and their specific mode of temporality is central to them. A structure of feeling involves sedimented, conjunctural and emergent elements in a continuous process of change. Thesis 3. Therefore, structures of feeling are the best embodiment and expression of cultural change. Thesis 4. The triple temporality of structures of feeling is based on the triple temporality of language, as human language is able to state what is currently the case, what is no longer the case and what is not yet the case. Thesis 5. Literature is the set of language games that best express and exploit the triple temporality of language by constructing fiction out of it (by stating what is not the case) and by capturing the three times of language as bearer of lived experience (the traditional, or sedimented, elements of language; the current state of the language; and the emergent elements that announce the changes in language, as one generation succeeds another). Thesis 6. This capture (both expression and exploitation) is achieved by literary style, which is the moment when the not yet articulated structure of feeling becomes aware of itself, as the new generation learns to inhabit its own language. Since this is somewhat abstract, let us turn to a case study. As we saw, a structure of feeling, according to Williams, is the conception of the world of a generation. And no generation ever suffered a more sudden and brutal change in its conception of the world than the generation that fought the First World War. The word ‘brutal’ is used advisedly: it alludes to George Mosse’s analysis of the brutalisation of European societies by the war, which resulted 14 G. Deleuze, L’abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze (Paris: Editions de Montparnasse, 1997), “S, c’est style.” Structures of Feeling, Literature and Cultural Change 45 in the rise of fascist and national socialist movements. 15 And this brutal form of cultural change took the form in a shift of structures of feeling as defined by Williams. The definitive book on the subject is Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory. 16 The first moment of the analysis describes the collision between the brutality of the events of the war and the language available to express them: What it describes is a shift in structure of feeling which has two striking characteristics: it is a change in language, and it involves a change in literary style. For the Great War was, as the title of one of his chapters suggests, a “literary war” (the chapter is, of course, entitled “Oh what a literary war! ”). The collision was one between the events and the language used for over a century to celebrate the idea of progress. Logically, there is no reason why the English language could not perfectly well render the actuality of trench warfare: it is rich in terms like blood, terror, agony, madness, shit, cruelty, murder, sell-out, pain and hoax, as well as phrases like legs blown off, intestines gushing out over his hands, screaming all night, bleeding to death from the rectum, and the like. Logically, one supposes, there’s no reason why a language devised by man should be inadequate to describe any of man’s works. The difficulty was in admitting that the war had been made by men and was being continued ad infinitum by them. The problem was less one of “language” than of gentility and optimism: it was less a problem of “linguistics” than of rhetoric. 17 The rest of the chapter gives countless examples of such linguistic inadequacy - of the inability to describe the new experience except in the clichés of sedimented language. And the explanation Fussell suggests is not only that the new experience was unsayable in the old language, but that nobody (meaning the recipients of the soldiers’ letters) was “very interested in the bad news they had to report.” 18 Literature is directly involved in performing this shift. Fussell notes that the language available - the language in which and through which the shift in structure of feeling was effected - was a literary language because of the social function that literature fulfilled in the historical conjuncture: So there was emotional as well as linguistic resistance to the expression of the radically new - in other words a shift in structure of feeling was necessary to give word to the new lived experience: the emotional acceptance of the new experience was first available to those who directly underwent it and then transmitted to the whole of the Englishspeaking community through the change in attitude to language, which shifted the limits of the sayable. 15 George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). 16 Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). 17 Fussell, 169-70. 18 Fussell, 170. JEAN-JACQUES LECERCLE 46 By 1914, it was possible for soldiers to be not merely literate but vigorously literary, for the Great War occurred at a special historical moment when two “liberal” forces were powerfully coinciding in England. On the one hand the belief in the educating powers of classical and English literature was still extremely strong. On the other, the appeal of popular education and “self-improvement” was at its peak, and such education was still largely conceived in humanistic terms.[...] The intersection of these two forces, the one “aristocratic,” the other “democratic,” established an atmosphere of public respect for literature unique in modern times. 19 So the structure of feeling of that generation, a situation “unique in modern times,” was formed and informed by literature. And this is where the shift, induced by the inadequacy of the available language and the clash between the old language and the new historical experience, occurred: in literature, and, in the case of England, primarily in poetry. I am suggesting that the importance of the war poets - an importance now universally acknowledged - is due to the fact that their work registers this shift in structure of feeling. To put it briefly these poets register a middle stage between on the one hand the Georgian bucolic of the “And is there honey still for tea? ” type 20 and the imperialist heroic of the “Play up! play up! and play the game! ” type 21 The following is probably Rupert Brooke’s best known poem, The Soldier: and, on the other hand, the new poetry of The Waste Land or the imagists. If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust that England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. 22 This is still essentially the diction of Georgian poetry, an elegy which takes the form of a pastoral. It will be remembered that Brooke died at the very beginning of the war and did not experience trench warfare: although the 19 Fussell, 157. 20 Rupert Brooke writing on the old vicarage at Grantchester, The Poetical Works (London: Faber, 1946), 72. 21 H. Newbolt, Vitai Lampada, in Poetry of the First World War, ed. Maurice Hussey (London: Longmans, 1967), 15. 22 Brooke, 23. Structures of Feeling, Literature and Cultural Change 47 language is simple (a simplicity that explains the success of the sonnet), it is still the old language of poetry, the language that the new experience shattered. And this is, in an equally successful and famous poem, where the new language appears: What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -- The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes. The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. 23 What is striking in this poem is that the change in language, expressing the authenticity of the novel experience, is only partial: it is only felt in the first stanza of the sonnet, especially in the violence of the last words of the first line, “die as cattle,“ which certainly does not belong to the ancient diction (it is one of those phrases existing in the English language which Fussell lists, which were not available for the literary expression of the experience). Here we can see the new language emerging from the old, and with it the new structure of feeling. But this expression of anger (the anger is not restricted to the guns) becomes more subdued in the second stanza, where the sustained metaphor of the graveless corpse deprived of ceremonial burial becomes more traditionally elegiac. The genre and form take over to produce one of the great poems of the English language, but one that remains within the ambit of the poetic tradition. The new experience, the new structure of feeling, are present in the poem, and are immediately retranslated in the terms and the emotions of the old language and the old structure of feeling. This is not the case for all of Owen’s war poems: one will remember the first lines of Dulce Et Decorum Est: “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge [.]” 24 23 Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Collected Poems (London: Chatto & Windus, 1963), 44. Here the language of everyday life, which is also the language of the new experience, pervades the poem, suggesting in the deliberately crudest terms the traipsing 24 Owen, 55. JEAN-JACQUES LECERCLE 48 line of soldiers who are not yet blinded by gas, as in Sir John Sargent’s famous picture, Gassed. 25 But rather than this well-known poem, I shall quote, as an example of the new language and the new structure of feeling that it expresses, the first two stanzas of Isaac Rosenberg’s poem, Dead Man’s Dump: The plunging limbers over the shattered track Racketed with their rusty freight, Stuck out like many crowns of thorns, And the rusty stakes like sceptres old To stay the flood of brutish men Upon our brothers dear. The wheels lurched over sprawled dead But pained them not, though their bones crunched. Their shut mouths made no moan. They lie there huddled, friend and foeman, Man born of man and born of woman, And shells go crying over them From night till night and now. 26 This is how Rosenberg describes the occasion of the poem: “I’ve written some lines suggested by going out wiring, or rather carrying out wire up to the line on limbers and running over dead bodies lying about.” 27 So the speaker is on an artillery limber and those “rusty stakes” (l. 4) are barbed wire - and the limber is actually driven over dead bodies, the bones of which crunch as it passes. And the chute of the poem reiterates the theme, as the limber narrowly misses “one not long dead”: So we crashed round the bend, We heard his weak scream, We heard his very last sound, And our wheels grazed his dead face. 28 In this text, we catch the essence of the new structure of feeling, a form of authenticity, of truth to a radically changed historical experience, giving the lie to both the irenic Georgian pastoral and to the emphatic rhetoric of colonial heroism (hence Owen’s “old lie,“ dulce et decorum est pro patria mori): not only is the poem true to an actual scene, brutally and vividly evoked, but it is an emotional response, sublimated into a work of art, to an experience that is unbearable, impossible, the sheer horror of an encounter with what Jacques Lacan calls the Real. And we understand the necessity of the new, more realistic, more brutal everyday language, to express the new structure of feeling. 25 See Sue Malvern, Modern Art, Britain and the Great War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 97. 26 I. Rosenberg, Selected Poems and Letters (London: Enitharmon Press, 2001), 101. 27 Rosenberg, 164. 28 Rosenberg, 103. Structures of Feeling, Literature and Cultural Change 49 Rosenberg called his poems “actual transcripts from the battlefield,” 29 the transcription of a lived experience that precludes a too conventional language and a too traditional literary form. As we read the poem, we become aware of the breaking down of the poetic form, as the old language is inadequate to express a radically new situation. And this goes far beyond the deliberate use of a cruder vocabulary: the poem as a whole belongs to no recognizable genre (it is not a sonnet, unlike the first two poems I quoted), there is no regularity of metre (the first line is an iambic pentameter, the second a tetrameter, the third is made up of a spondee and three iambs, etc.), and at certain points in the poem, even the syntax breaks down. In the philosophical language of Alain Badiou, one might say that the function of the new structure of feeling and its new language is to enable the poet to express an “event.” 30 I think, in concluding, that the example of the appearance of the new structure of feeling expressed by the war poets enables us to understand the contribution of literature to cultural change. Literature is a prime agent of cultural change because it is the set of language games that best expresses what Jacques Rancière calls le partage du sensible, the distribution of the sensible, the a priori framework of sensibility in a given historical conjuncture, which determines places in the social whole but also frames what is sayable in the conjuncture. 31 Hence the political function of literature: it is not only the reflection, but also the agent of cultural change. 29 Rosenberg, 166. 30 Alain Badiou, L’Etre et l’événement (Paris: Seuil, 1988). 31 Jacques Rancière, Le partage du sensible (Paris: La fabrique, 2000). JEAN-JACQUES LECERCLE 50 Works Cited Badiou, Alain. L’Etre et l’événement. Paris: Seuil, 1988. Brooke, Rupert. The Poetical Works. London: Faber and Faber, 1946. Deleuze, Gilles. L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze. Paris: Editions du Montparnasse, 1997. Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. Hussey, Maurice, ed. Poetry of the First World War. London: Longmans, 1967. Malvern, Sue. Modern Art, Britain and the Great War. New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 2004. Marx, Karl & Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1965. Mosse, George. Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Owen, Wilfred. Collected Poems. London: Chatto & Windus, 1963. Rancière, Jacques. Le partage du sensible. Paris: La fabrique, 2000. Rosenberg, Isaac. Selected Poems and Letters. London: Enitharmon Press, 2001. Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965. ---. The Country and the City. London: Paladin, 1973. ---. Keywords. London: Fontana. 1976. ---. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. D ANIEL H ARTLEY A Defence of Transhistoricism: Literary History between Raymond Williams and Alain Badiou 1. Introduction: ‘Democratic Culturalism’ In thinking the connection between literature and cultural change, one does not get far before confronting the problem of historicism. Change implies discontinuity, which itself usually occurs in the wake of an event; and it is arguably the dialectic between the event and continuity which has traditionally constituted the material of history itself. Historicism, in a general sense, might then be said to be a mode of interpreting events by ‘returning them’ to the specific historical contexts, or ideological constellations, in which they occurred and in which they had their meaning. In other words, I assume that one obvious way of approaching the question of ‘literature and cultural change’ is via Fredric Jameson’s well-known imperative: “Always historicize! ” Yet Jameson’s maxim - and, by extension, the prevailing academic modes of historicizing literature - has in recent years become incorporated into a dominant intellectual ideology which Alain Badiou has called “democratic materialism,” 1 and which Bruno Bosteels refers to as “democratic culturalism.” 2 “Democratic culturalism” arguably consists of the following four elements: That is, historicism - or, more specifically, historical contextualization - is no longer, if it ever was, intrinsically politically or intellectually progressive, but has become institutionalized into a new, self-conscious doxa. 3 1. An insistence on the necessity of historicization - or what Bosteels has called “the absolutization of the particular, trapped behind bars in the iron cage of its proper time and place.” 4 1 Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds, trans. Alberto Toscano (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 1. 2 Bruno Bosteels, Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis, and Religion in Times of Terror (London: Verso, 2012), 246. 3 The first two are drawn from Bruno Bosteels’ definition in Marx and Freud, 250. The third is an extrapolation from the work of Alain Badiou, whilst the fourth is my own addition. 4 Bosteels 250. D ANIEL H ARTLEY 52 2. A denial of the existence of truth - or, as Bosteels has it, a situation in which “only languages and cultures are then left, all equally worthy of respect, even though some of them, namely the present ones, seem to be more enlightened about the principle of respect itself than others.” 5 3. A replacement of collective political projects of emancipation with an individualist ethics of difference - that is, with an uncritical and - ironically - ahistorical celebration of the “Other.” It is an ethics that, as Alain Badiou has observed, is ultimately nihilist in nature since “its underlying conviction is that the only thing that can really happen to someone is death.” 6 4. A culturalization of politics - if collective political projects are now deemed to be evil and totalitarian attempts to realize abstract visions of a common Good, then ‘culture’ becomes a way of talking about collective social phenomena whilst sidestepping those now passé antagonisms - such as class struggle or imperialism - which structure the political, social and economic fields. We thus find ourselves in a dilemma. Our task is to think the connection between literature and cultural change, yet the mode in which we spontaneously approach this question, that of historicism, and one of the two terms itself, that of culture, are potentially theoretically compromised as a result of their function within the ruling academic ideology of “democratic culturalism.” This general dilemma is then intrinsically connected to a more specific concern: what, in the contemporary context, is the status of the legacy of Raymond Williams? Whilst Alain Badiou and Bruno Bosteels are surely right to reject the ideology of “democratic culturalism,” there is a danger that, in enticing others to do likewise, certain long-standing misconceptions about Raymond Williams’s work will mean that he is wrongly cast aside as a precursor or perhaps even originator of “democratic culturalism” itself. This would be regrettable, since it would overlook the extent to which Williams’s work avoids many of the pitfalls of “democratic culturalism,” albeit bearing certain superficial similarities to it. 7 5 Bosteels 250. Yet Badiou and Bosteels are right that the present historical and theoretical conjuncture must in certain key respects be broken with, and that Badiou’s work - which calls for nothing less than an empirical history of eternity - provides one such break. Ultimately, then, this article has three aims: to define “democratic culturalism,” to defend Williams from guilt by association, and to argue that both Williams and Badiou offer radical breaks with the current intellectual conjuncture. My major claim is that Williams and Badiou, in their very different yet occasionally - and sur- 6 Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward (London: Verso, 2001), 35. 7 As we shall see, Williams avoids the specific types of historicism and ‘culturalism’ which are currently hegemonic. A Defence of Transhistoricism 53 prisingly - overlapping ways, offer two equally contemporary paths for the construction of literary histories. 2. Historicism in Raymond Williams The mode of historicism intrinsic to “democratic culturalism” can be seen to combine, to a greater or lesser degree, three elements: positivist historicism, residual ‘new historicism,’ and an absolutization of the particular. Anna Kornbluh and others have recently defined positivist historicism as “a mode of inquiry that aims to do little more than exhaustively describe, preserve, and display the past.” 8 It is effectively a type of antiquarianism whose “primary affective mode is the amused chuckle”; 9 the condition of possibility of such ‘amusement’ is a passive stance towards the present, which it presumes to be non-problematic and, at its limit, non-historical. 10 New historicism, by contrast, is structured by two antinomic impulses: on the one hand, to stress the intrinsic unity of a given historical moment by emphasising the internal circulation between continuous and discontinuous literary and non-literary discourses; 11 and, on the other, to emphasise the constitutive moment of subversion or oscillation inherent to this unity. This sophisticated version of historicism now survives only in the residual form of a vague stress on the importance of ‘context,’ whose internal unity might be said to outweigh its capacity for exceptional subversion. Finally, the prevailing mode of historicism also presupposes what Bosteels has called the “absolutization of the particular.” 12 The meaning of ‘culture’ at work in “democratic culturalism” is then either the anthropological one of a ‘way of life,’ which lacks conceptual rigor This is the belief that every text or event must be returned to its unique historical context, which itself is understood as having little or no connection to any other - including, perhaps especially, the present. The philosophical upshot of such an approach is a general historical relativism, yet one which always surreptitiously implies the superiority of the present. 8 V21 Collective, “Manifesto of the V21 Collective,” http: / / v21collective.org/ manifestoof-the-v21-collective-ten-theses/ , 2015. [Last accessed 30 th September, 2015]. 9 V21 Collective. 10 In other words, positivist historicism falls short of Erich Auerbach’s criteria for ‘serious’ representation and Georg Lukács’ criteria for realism: for both critics, the present must be understood as historical - that is, as the contradictory and problematic result of determinate and antagonistic social forces. See Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), and Georg Lukács, Studies in European Realism, trans. Edith Bone (London: Merlin Press, 1950). 11 Stephen Greenblatt, “Towards a Poetics of Culture,” The New Historicism, ed. H. Aram Veeser (New York: Routledge, 1989), 8. 12 Bosteels, 250. D ANIEL H ARTLEY 54 and fails to account for the mutual articulation of the various elements of the social formation (i.e, the social, the political and the cultural), or that of a Wittgensteinian language-game: a semiotic system which strictly delimits the meaning of singular texts or events. There is thus a clear parallel between a type of historicism which understands past and contemporary presents as disconnected synchronic systems of ‘internal circulation’ and a post- ’linguistic turn’ approach to culture which reduces the latter to a stable, regulated signifying system. Having delineated the basic theoretical presuppositions of “democratic culturalism,” we are now in a position to show how Williams’s work differs from it. To understand his theory of literature and cultural change, however, we must first briefly reconstruct his ‘social ontology.’ This can be summarised in two banal maxims: 13 1. The world is more complex than you think it is. (The maxim of complexity) 2. You are in it. (The maxim of immanence) What Williams refers to as “lived culture” or “the socio-cultural process” consists of a potentially infinite number of social and artistic practices, relationships, values and documents. 14 The potential infinity of such practices and values naturally exceeds the material artefacts in which they are recorded. As one historical period gives way to another, all that will survive of the previous period is its “recorded culture.” 15 Yet this very survival depends on the construction of what Williams calls “selective traditions”: “an intentionally selective version of a shaping past and pre-shaped present”; 16 this process of selection produces “a version of the past which is intended to connect with and ratify the present.” 17 13 I have expanded at length upon these maxims in Daniel Hartley, “On Raymond Williams: Complexity, Immanence, and the Long Revolution,” Mediations (2016). I draw on parts of that article throughout this section and the next. Both of these articles, in turn, draw on my The Politics of Style: Towards a Marxist Poetics (Leiden: Brill, 2017). Thus, Williams’s ‘social ontology’ always presupposes two interconnecting levels: a present consisting of potentially infinite social relationships and activities, and a selective tradition, immanent to and active within it, which attempts to bind it to a selected past. Our relationship with the past thus occurs at two removes: the recorded culture of any period is only a very small part of its total human activity, but this is always further limited by the selective tradition. 14 Respectively: Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London: Penguin, 1965), 66, and Culture and Materialism: Selected Essays (London: Verso, 2010), 246. 15 Williams, The Long Revolution, 66. 16 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 115. 17 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 116. A Defence of Transhistoricism 55 This explains the political importance of the maxim of complexity, clearly encapsulated in one of the most emphatic passages of Williams’s oeuvre: “no mode of production and therefore no dominant social order and therefore no dominant culture ever in reality includes or exhausts all human practice, human energy, and human intention.” 18 Whilst Williams’s theory has been termed “democratic” and “culturalist,” such passages make clear that he nonetheless democratizes culture in a very specific manner: “Williams ‘democratized’ his conception of culture […] not by rejecting ‘high culture’ for ‘low culture’ or for an anthropological conception of ‘way of life culture’ but by admitting all objectivated culture as ‘documentary culture’ to the first stage of the reconstruction of a structure of feeling.” 19 Williams’s emphasis on complexity and resistance to total incorporation is also part of an attempt to produce a theory adequate to the discontinuities and potentialities of the present with a view to intervening into it towards a complex future. This futurity, as we shall see, is yet another feature that distinguishes Williams’s historicism from that of “democratic culturalism.” In developing and refining his major conceptual innovation, the ‘structure of feeling,’ Williams would further elaborate his theory of those elements of social complexity that are usually overlooked by what he calls “epochal” analysis. Williams democratizes culture by seeking to restore the full archive of recorded culture from which dominant traditions have been radically selected. This has nothing in common with the pseudo-populism of “democratic culturalism.” 20 The latter is a mode of analysis which treats cultural processes as systems, thereby implying that dominant social orders do in fact exhaust all human practice and intention. In contrast to such approaches, Williams emphasises the discontinuous nature of the present. For him, there exist three ‘modes of presence’ - three modes in which the present presents itself. 21 There are residual social inheritances which “formed in the past,” but which are “still active in the cultural process,” as is the case with the monarchy in Britain; 22 18 Williams, Marxism and Literature 125; emphasis original. the dominant which is a totalizing but non-total incorporation of the 19 Paul Jones, Raymond Williams’s Sociology of Culture: A Critical Reconstruction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 21-22; emphasis original. 20 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 121. On Williams’s development of the concept ‘structure of feeling,’ see Daniel Hartley, “Style as Structure of Feeling: Emergent Forms of Life in the Theory of Raymond Williams and George Saunders’s Tenth of December,” Emergent Forms of Life in Anglophone Literature: Conceptual Frameworks and Critical Analyses, ed. Michael Basseler, Daniel Hartley, and Ansgar Nünning (Trier: WVT, 2015), 164-167, and - in more detail - Hartley, The Politics of Style, ch. 5. 21 The following definitions of the three modes are adapted from Hartley, “Style as Structure of Feeling,“ 166-167. 22 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 122. D ANIEL H ARTLEY 56 social as such; and the emergent which is the making-becoming of an alternative future. By the time of Marxism and Literature (1977), Williams had come to equate his best-known concept of the “structure of feeling” with this level of emergence. He defines structure of feeling as “social experiences in solution, as distinct from other social semantic formations which have been precipitated and are more evidently and more immediately available.” 23 The principal differences between Williams’s ‘social ontology’ and that of ‘democratic culturalism’ are thus clear. For Williams, every present is inherently discontinuous and no present - including our own - can ever be comprehended by an ‘epochal’ system of thought which assumes an internally complete, fully achieved articulation without remainder. This latter should not, however, be interpreted as the radical ‘remainder’ beloved of a certain strand of deconstructionism - the supplementary excess which is but the flipside of an overly ‘epochal’ positivist historicism. Rather, as we shall see, the simultaneous stress on discontinuity and anti-’epochal’ thought has more to do with the attempt to understand all historical presents as dynamic moments of struggle and social contradiction. It is also an attempt to enable the active and empowering inheritance of past historical struggles; the critical negativity inherent to a given past - produced by the uneven articulations of residual, dominant and emergent - is precisely the modality of its inheritance in the similarly uneven present. Williams thus clearly rejects all three elements of democratic culturalist historicism: positivist historicism, residual new historicism and the absolutization of the particular. Thus Williams is concerned precisely with those elements of social life which are still in process, still emergent but which nonetheless possess a minimal, identifiable structure, and are hence not pure anarchic flux. These are the eloquent silences of any historical present, hovering on the verge of articulation. 3. Literature and Culture in Raymond Williams The relevance of Williams’s ‘social ontology’ in theorizing the relation between literature and cultural change can be grasped by elaborating the following implication: the dominant remains dominant only insofar as it captures and incorporates emergence. 24 23 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 133-134. In order to ensure the continued predominance of its own social forms, the social hegemon must capture and incorporate all emergent values, practices and forms. In the literary realm, this means that, for the most part, emergent structures of feeling are captured 24 This and the following paragraph are adapted from passages in Hartley, “Style as Structure of Feeling,” 167-169. A Defence of Transhistoricism 57 and incorporated by pre-existing styles and forms, which, themselves, embody or imply certain distributions of social relations favourable to the ruling social power. Truly emergent creation - i.e., that which breaks with the prevailing constellation of socially dominant literary and cultural forms - is very rare. It usually occurs during periods of widespread social upheaval or revolution. Romanticism, for example, is unthinkable without the French Revolution, just as Modernism would have been impossible without the Russian Revolution. Emergent creation is not, however, a mere ‘reflection’ of these social changes: it can be either prefigurative of, contemporary with, or an imminent successor to them. Alternatively, it can directly and immanently embody them; it is endowed with its own social efficacy, however limited that may be. There are then two main models of literary change in Williams. The first is what I call the torsion of the old. New literary styles and forms do not emerge fully formed. They often begin as tensions, ruptures and awkwardnesses in pre-existing styles, those points where emergent forms become visible not yet in their own right but in the pressure they exert on old styles. 25 One thinks here of Fredric Jameson’s analysis of Zola, whose excessive descriptions threaten to explode realism’s delicate balance between récit and affect into full-blown modernism. 26 Likewise, Jed Esty has shown that the classical European Bildungsroman, which traditionally aligned nationhood and adulthood, gradually begins to break down in the early twentieth century. 27 The second model of literary change in Williams is what I call the immanent emergence of the new. This clearly returns us to the second of the two maxims mentioned above: the maxim of immanence (‘You are in the world’). The respective protagonists of the Bildungsromane of Conrad, Joyce, and Woolf (among others) often simply do not grow up; rather, the novels rely on plots of colonial migration and displacement in order to defer closure. They contort the old, inherited form. 28 25 I have written about the problem of ‘uneven’ styles in ‘world-literature’ in Daniel Hartley, “Combined and Uneven Styles in the Modern World-System: Stylistic Ideology in José de Alencar, Machado de Assis and Thomas Hardy,” European Journal of English Studies (2016). Williams stresses that cultural forms are immanent and constitutive elements of social relations. They are not mere ‘reflections’ or - in Fredric Jameson’s Lévi-Strauss-inspired phrase - ‘symbolic resolutions’ of specific historical antagonisms, but are in fact informing elements of them. There is not a context ‘out there’ and a literary form ‘in here’; rather, there is a single socio-material process of which literary forms are formative elements. In Culture, for exam- 26 Fredric Jameson, The Antinomies of Realism (London: Verso, 2013), 45-77. 27 Jed Esty, Unseasonable Youth: Modernism, Colonialism and the Fiction of Development (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012). 28 For a detailed elaboration of this maxim, see Hartley, Politics of Style, ch. 5. D ANIEL H ARTLEY 58 ple, Williams argues that the emergence of the soliloquy was “the discovery, in dramatic form, of new and altered social relationships.” 29 Certainly, the rise of Protestantism and a nascent capitalism were producing new conceptions of the autonomous individual, but it was the dramatic mode specifically which lent itself to their initial articulation in the form of the soliloquy in a way in which other modes could not: “the formal innovation is a true and integral element of the changes themselves: an articulation, by technical discovery, of changes in consciousness which are themselves forms of consciousness of change.” 30 This consciousness was “beyond immediately available and confirmed social relations but within newly available dramatic relations.” 31 Together, then, the formal innovations internal to the dramatic mode, along with the conditions of dramatic practice in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, 32 Having now set out the central components of Williams’s social ontology and his theory of literature and cultural change, and having demonstrated how his work can be distinguished from ‘democratic culturalism,’ I shall conclude this section by reiterating the two principal differences. If, as we have seen, the historicism of “democratic culturalism” is relativist, positivist, and residually ‘new historicist,’ then it is, by definition, incapable of establishing meaningful connections between past and present. Williams’s entire oeuvre, however, is premised upon the opposite position. The sheer strangeness of Williams’s conception of historical temporality is that it combines a championing of novelty typical of modernity with an emphasis on the force of biological, generational and (relatively) unconscious attachments typical of tradition. were immanent and active elements of social change. 33 Williams’s is precisely an immanent, self-conscious traditionality. It is a traditionalism against (selective) tradition, designed to break open the fixity of the present at two levels: the level of politics and the level of literary practice itself. For example, Williams criticized the purely ideological notion of a unified ‘modernism’ for its undeclared selectivity and its overreliance on modernists’ own accounts of their activities. 34 29 Raymond Williams, Culture (London: Fontana, 1981), 142; emphasis original. To counteract this, he reinstated lines of intergenerational inheritance between ‘modernists’ and their 30 Ibid. 31 Williams, Culture, 146. 32 These included “a new kind of audience, within new kinds of theatre, no longer formally defined by terms, places and occasions of an extra-dramatic authority, but socially mixed and socially mobile within an expanding urban society, served by its own characteristic forms of commercial-enterprise theatres and specializing professional dramatists.” Williams, Culture, 146-147. 33 I take this definition of Williams’s notion of historical temporality from Hartley, Politics of Style, where I explicate it at length. 34 Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists (London: Verso, 2007), 31-35. A Defence of Transhistoricism 59 supposedly non-modernist predecessors; but, crucially, he did this to try and break out of what he called “the non-historical fixity” of our own present: “we must search out and counterpose an alternative tradition taken from the neglected works left in the wide margin of the century, a tradition which may address itself not to this by now exploitable because quite inhuman rewriting of the past but, for all our sakes, to a modern future in which community may be imagined again.” 35 Williams is attempting to open up both literary and political possibilities beyond the so-called ‘exhaustion’ of the postmodern present. 36 This, finally, is the key difference separating Williams’s work from “democratic culturalism”; it is what Fredric Jameson, in another context, has called “a hermeneutic relationship to the past which is able to grasp its own present as history only on condition it manages to keep the idea of the future, and of radical and Utopian transformation, alive.” 37 4. An Empirical History of Eternity? On the Philosophy of Alain Badiou This is the radical differentia specifica that distinguishes Williams’s politically committed historicism from the ideology of “democratic culturalism.” As should now be obvious, Williams’s mode of historicism is transhistoricist in the precise sense that it constructs lines of self-conscious inheritance across historical periods with a view to intervening into the historical present towards a Utopian future. This mode of transhistoricism, however, is only one of several; given the critical nature of the contemporary moment, we may require as many transhistoricisms as we can muster. For let us not forget that the current historical conjuncture is one in which a zombie neoliberal capitalism continues to live on in the impasse of a never-ending present. It is a context in which even Stephen Dedalus’ attempts to awaken from the nightmare of history can appear overoptimistic. Indeed, it is a context in which contextualization itself has come to feel - at the level of affect, if nothing else - like an extension of the prison-house of the present. It is for this reason that, to complement Williams’s mode of transhistoricism, I shall now turn to the philosophy of Alain Badiou, which has irrupted into the present to such electrifying effect. If for Williams ‘history’ is a continuous line of negotiated inheritance, for Badiou history as a single, unified process does not exist: 38 35 Williams, The Politics of Modernism, 35. in his view, there is only a 36 John Barth, “The Literature of Exhaustion,” The Friday Book: Essays and Other Nonfiction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 62-76. 37 Fredric Jameson, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso, 2008), 480. 38 Cf. Alain Badiou, Theory of the Subject, trans. Bruno Bosteels (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), 92. D ANIEL H ARTLEY 60 discontinuous history of the eternal, since only the eternal proceeds from the event. 39 There is no space here to reconstruct Badiou’s entire philosophical system. Instead, I shall merely point to four aspects of it that may help us to conceptualise change beyond historicism. In each case I shall try to make clear how it breaks with the prevailing academic doxa. 40 Firstly, for Badiou, true novelty, which can only occur under one of the four conditions of philosophy - politics, art, love and science - can never be reduced to the given coordinates of a historical context. Novelty can only occur as a result of a subjective fidelity to a contingent and undecidable event, one which, whilst linked to a localized region of a situation (hence not transcendent to it), is never reducible to that situation. This constitutes a clear break with democratic culturalism’s fetishization of contextualization, in which every occurrence must be reduced to some previous element or combination of elements of a situation. Secondly, for Badiou, truth exists; it exists as the exception of a situation. It is the name of the set of inquiries and consequences produced by subjects faithful to an event. Truths are not a matter of erudition, but of militancy: they are the consequences developed by faithful subjects who form an organised body to resist the return of the old, to actively constitute a new present, and to show the world in light of the impossibility whose possibility they are. Thus, whilst Badiou agrees with “democratic culturalism” (or, in his terminology, “democratic materialism”) that “[t]here are only bodies and languages,” he nonetheless adds: “except that there are truths.” 41 39 Adapted from Quentin Meillassoux, “History and Event in Alain Badiou,” Parrhesia 12 (2011): 1-11, 1. This constitutes a clear break with the denial of the existence of truth and the eclipse of universal politics inherent to democratic culturalism. Thirdly, in Badiou’s philosophy there is no single, unified ‘History’; there are only discontinuous historical sequences. An unprovoked event occurs, a faithful subject names the event and develops its consequences in the future anterior - presuming in advance the universal applicability of its truth - but is opposed by countersubjects who react against it, or who attempt to obscure it by denying the event’s ever having taken place. Historical change, whether in politics, literature, love or science, is then nothing but a series of overlapping, discontinuous sequences in which faithful subjects produce new presents and force reactionary and obscure counter-subjects to become the contemporaries of the new, all the while these latter deny the novelty of the event. Such a conception thus breaks with democratic culturalism’s hyper-synchronic concep- 40 The following summary of key aspects of Badiou’s philosophy is a condensation of arguments put forth in Alain Badiou’s Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (London: Continuum, 2005), Theory of the Subject, Ethics, and Logics of Worlds. 41 Badiou, Logics of Worlds, 4. A Defence of Transhistoricism 61 tion of a given historical moment. Finally, for Badiou, truths are eternal. This is because, according to Badiou’s ontology, the consequences they produce are potentially infinite. 42 The set of post-evental consequences developed in one historical context can be resurrected in totally different historical contexts. Any truth is capable of resurrection. 43 Yet what does any of this mean for the study of literature? Badiou’s own literary analyses are notoriously ambiguous. As Jean-Jacques Lecercle has shown in his brilliant book on the reading practices of Badiou and Deleuze, the startling novelty of what he calls Badiou’s “strong readings” is nonetheless tempered by several factors. This is, then, a clear rupture with historical and cultural relativism. 44 These include: Badiou’s problematic philosophy of language, which goes hand in hand with what Lecercle calls a “tin-opener theory of interpretation”; 45 an underestimation of the constitutive power of verbal texture and style; 46 and a concomitant overestimation of syntax and the univocity of meaning. Nonetheless, at a more general level, Badiou’s philosophy could prove highly suggestive for reconceptualizing literary history. In what follows, I shall attempt briefly to elaborate the principal coordinates of just such a Badiouian literary history. In doing so, I shall try to remain faithful to the general spirit of Badiou’s philosophy, if not to the letter. This faithful infidelity is, in any case, necessitated by the lack of a sustained, coherent theory of literature within Badiou’s philosophical system. As a general rule, where the rigour of Badiou’s literary readings of literature (those attuned to the literariness of literary texts) tends towards a relative philosophical poverty, 47 his more philosophically systematic readings of literary texts tend towards a relative paucity of literary-critical endeavour. 48 42 Cf. Meillassoux 3. Rather than somehow ‘proving’ the essential poverty of theory, however, this 43 One of Badiou’s examples is the truth of universal human emancipation incorporated in the figure of Spartacus. This figure was resurrected in (among others) the victorious slave revolt led by Toussaint-Louverture in Santo Domingo, the Spartakists of Berlin in 1919, and the Howard Fast novel of 1951, which can be read as a response to the attempted ‘reactionary’ reappropriation of the Spartacus figure by Arthur Koestler in The Gladiators (1939). Cf. Badiou, Logics of Worlds, 63-65. 44 Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Badiou and Deleuze Read Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010). 45 Lecercle 101. 46 Though I think this criticism should be tempered somewhat in light of the recent appearance of Alain Badiou, The Age of Poets, trans. Bruno Bosteels (London: Verso, 2014), which contains highly attentive close readings of the prose styles of Natacha Michel, Severo Sarduy and Pierre Guyotat. Several of the articles in The Age of Poets have yet to be published even in French. 47 E.g., his reading of Pierre Guyotat, in Age of Poets, 194-205. 48 E.g., his use of Wallace Stevens’ poetry in “Drawing,” Age of Poets 75-82. D ANIEL H ARTLEY 62 fact should simply be taken as a sign that the systematic philosophization of literature within the parameters of Badiou’s theory has yet to be undertaken. The first major element of any Badiouian theory of literature must surely be the following: there is no literary history except the history of literary events and their faithful elaborations. Such a theory would not focus on reconstituting the expansive popular archive of works and experiments, as in Williams, nor would it opt for the sophisticated digital processing of this archive, as in Franco Moretti’s Distant Reading (2013); instead, it would focus solely on points of evental intensity: those pockets of compressed historicity which historize that which we know as ‘literary history.’ This critical reconstruction of literary-historical ‘configurations’ would thus differ from the selective counter-traditions favoured by Williams. 49 It would seek out literary events, which may be a single work or a series of works, usually by one author. 50 A suggestive link could be made here with Walter Benjamin’s assertion that “all great works of literature found a genre or dissolve one - […] they are, in other words, special cases.” 51 [m]any writers have felt that Poe founded the crime story as we know it; but in fact there were some elements already, if uncertainly, in place, and his influence did not operate properly until a good deal later, when it was mediated by Gaboriau and exploited by Doyle. It is more accurate to say that Poe saw the possibilities that others were only half grasping, and, as he did with the horror story and the melodramatic poem, constructed a form strong enough to predict the possibilities of the genre that was not yet in being. Benjamin happens to be writing about Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, which is an archetypal example of a literary event, though one might just as easily refer to, say, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart or the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Of the latter, for example, Stephen Knight has written that 52 The very wording of this passage should alert us to the presence of the constitutive ambiguity of the event. There was uncertainty in the situation; Poe saw possibilities and incorporated them into a new form which predicted the potential of a genre not yet in being. This last phrase is crucial, for it is of the nature of an event that it is not, that it cannot be reduced to a multiple already present in a situation; its existence is strictly undecidable from the standpoint of the situation itself and can only be affirmed and named through the hazardous wager of a subjective intervention. The faithful sub- 49 ‘Configurations’ are the literary counterpart of historical ‘sequences.’ Cf. Badiou, Logics of Worlds 73. 50 I say “one author” in analogy with what Badiou calls the “Schönberg-event” in music, Logics of Worlds 80. 51 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 201. 52 Stephen Knight, Crime Fiction 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004), 25-6. A Defence of Transhistoricism 63 ject proceeds - ‘legislating without law’ - 53 The second element of a Badiouian theory of literature would then relate directly to form. As we have seen, Badiou’s own analyses of literary texts tend to underestimate the level of texture and style, but his philosophy nonetheless contains hints as to how this limitation might be overcome. Since the ‘body’ of a literary event is a series of works of literature, and since each emergence of radical novelty involves a potentially violent forcing of the old, a Badiouian literary criticism would seek out those formal discontinuities within post-evental literary works which are the signs of the emergence of the new (not unlike what I called the ‘torsion of the old’ when describing Williams’s model of literary change). A subject, Badiou writes, is “a sequence involving continuities and discontinuities, openings and points.” as if the event has taken place. The faithful inheritors of the ‘Poe-event’ were then able to continue the literary sequence he had initiated, adapting and developing the ‘configuration’ of ‘crime fiction.’ Other inheritors, beyond the field of crime fiction (implying that a literary event may give rise to multiple sequences), became evental instigators in their own right (Baudelaire, Mallarmé, T.S. Eliot). The key point, however, is that the ‘Poe-event’ and the ‘Proust-event’ are at once of their time and ahead of it, the culmination of a past to which they cannot be reduced (since, within it, they are literally unforeseeable), and the opening of a future whose very possibility they have produced. 54 An “opening” is a modality of the subject that “continually opens up a new possible closest to the possibilities of the old world” while a “point” is that modality in which “the complexity of identities and differences brutally comes down, for the subject, to the exigency of a choice between two possibilities and two alone.” 55 Where the former involves a subtle production of the new, in constant careful negotiation with many elements of the old, the latter involves a more vehement and categorical break with what went before. These two modalities then produce effects internal to the ‘body’ of the subject (i.e., the configuration of literary or artistic works), which is inherently conjunctive: “continuities and discontinuities, openings and points.” 56 Thus, in terms of the configuration of ‘serial music,’ Berg and Webern represent the ‘opening’ and ‘point’ components of the body respectively, with Berg subtly negotiating with and continuing to incorporate many elements of classical tonal music, whilst Webern systematically breaks point by point with all aspects of the old. Many literary equivalents of this phenomenon could be found. An interesting Badiouian reading could be made, for example, of the literary sequences in which T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were 53 Badiou, Being and Event 198. 54 Badiou, Logics of Worlds 83. 55 Badiou, Logics of Worlds 82. 56 Badiou, Logics of Worlds 83; my emphasis. D ANIEL H ARTLEY 64 engaged, or, as ambiguous inheritors of this legacy (via Charles Olson), Ed Dorn and J.H. Prynne. Both Eliot and Dorn, for very different reasons, belong to the modality of ‘opening’ in that each of them produces novelty but does so in multiple continuities with what went before. Pound and Prynne, however, again for very different reasons, belong to the modality of the ‘point,’ each with an absolute poetics that refuses all compromise (and this despite - or perhaps because of - their shared obsession with the history of specific poetic forms). A further example would be that of the gradual movement from opening to point within a single oeuvre: from, say, Dubliners, to Ulysses, to Finnegans Wake. The third element of a Badiouian literary theory would be the presupposition that literature thinks. This has several meanings. Within the strict philosophical economy of Badiou’s system, what literature thinks is that which, since Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy’s foundational work, has become known as the “literary absolute”: 57 “what literature thinks is both a real marked in language with the seal of the One, and the conditions governing the way that real is marked.” 58 Successful literature produces an encounter with eternity through a language that is both truly unique and conscious (in modernist guise) of its singular representational logic. The real “emerges in the cracks in the story [la fable]” at those points where it coincides with a confession that has been forced from language itself, where language has been made to say “what it has always been reluctant or unable to say.” 59 This somewhat arcane ‘strong reading’ of literary works could then be supplemented by Jean- Jacques Lecercle’s observation that, since literature is one of the ‘conditions’ of philosophy, certain evental literatures may enable us to extend or adapt our theory of the event itself. 60 That is, rather than taking literature as explanandum, we can think with literature - as explanans - in order to think change differently. It is precisely such an operation in which Badiou himself engages in his readings of Mallarmé and Beckett, 61 57 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, trans. Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1988). using their works as so many literary theorizations of the components of the event. To these could be added, among many others, Proust’s richly suggestive theory of the event in À la recherche, premised upon an interconnected series of long-awaited but ultimately failed encounters which are then retroactively sublated in the ‘dark room’ of Marcel’s mind (or bedroom, or both). Finally, literature can be un- 58 Badiou, Age of Poets, 136. 59 Badiou, Age of Poets, 133, 137. 60 Cf. Lecercle. 61 Cf. Badiou, Being and Event 191-198, and Alain Badiou, On Beckett, trans. Nina Power and Alberto Toscano (Manchester: Clinamen Press Limited, 2003). A Defence of Transhistoricism 65 derstood to ‘think’ to the extent that it inscribes events from other fields. 62 Badiou himself recognizes as much when he writes that “when one orients oneself in prose, one orients the possible thought of politics, of love, and of their aleatory crossing […] Thus oriented through prose, a political sequence is eternal.” 63 5. Conclusion Thus do the novels of Natacha Michel attest to the political sequence of 1967-1976 and its aftermath in the 1980s and 1990s. In all these ways, then, a Badiouian theory of literature would expand the possibilities of criticism beyond a ‘democratic culturalism’ for which there are only bodies and languages. Whilst democratic culturalism’s insistence on historicization may have been politically and theoretically progressive in a previous historical conjuncture, it has since become potentially conservative. The present historical moment is one of impasse, and I have argued that, at the level of theory, there are two possible exits, each of which entails a particular mode of transhistoricism: the first is Williams’s immanent self-conscious traditionality and the second is Badiou’s discontinuous historicization of the eternity of truths. At a time when Jameson’s motto - “Always historicize! ” - has become yet another academic doxa, perhaps we should combine them to collectively inherit the traces of eternity. 62 This idea is partly inspired by Lecercle’s development of Badiou’s theory of the event in his reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Lecercle 166ff. 63 Badiou, Age of Poets, 176. He continues: “The topic is an ancient one, people will say. What would the Peloponnesian war be for us without the ellipses of Thucydides? Or the Napoleonic war in Russia without the inexhaustible opacity of Tolstoy? The Spanish civil war without the figurative anxiety of Malraux? ” D ANIEL H ARTLEY 66 Works Cited Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Trans. Peter Hallward. London: Verso, 2001. ---. On Beckett. Trans. Nina Power and Alberto Toscano. Manchester: Clinamen Press Limited, 2003. ---. Being and Event. Trans. Oliver Feltham. London: Continuum, 2005. ---. Theory of the Subject. Trans. Bruno Bosteels. London: Bloomsbury, 2009. ---. Logics of Worlds. Trans. Alberto Toscano. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. ---. The Age of Poets. Trans. Bruno Bosteels. London: Verso, 2014. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Bosteels, Bruno. Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis, and Religion in Times of Terror. London: Verso, 2012. Esty, Jed. Unseasonable Youth: Modernism, Colonialism and the Fiction of Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Greenblatt, Stephen. “Towards a Poetics of Culture.” The New Historicism. Ed. H. Aram Veeser. New York: Routledge, 1989. 1-14. Hartley, Daniel. “Style as Structure of Feeling: Emergent Forms of Life in the Theory of Raymond Williams and George Saunders’s Tenth of December.” Emergent Forms of Life in Anglophone Literature: Conceptual Frameworks and Critical Analyses. Eds. Michael Basseler, Daniel Hartley and Ansgar Nünning. Trier: WVT Trier, 2015. 163- 182. ---. “On Raymond Williams: Complexity, Immanence, and the Long Revolution.” Mediations (2016). ---. “Combined and Uneven Styles in the Modern World-System: Stylistic Ideology in José de Alencar, Machado de Assis and Thomas Hardy.” European Journal of English Studies (2016). ---. The Politics of Style: Towards a Marxist Poetics. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Jameson, Fredric. The Ideologies of Theory. London: Verso, 2008. ---. The Antinomies of Realism. London: Verso, 2013. Jones, Paul. Raymond Williams’s Sociology of Culture: A Critical Reconstruction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe and Jean-Luc Nancy. The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism. Trans. Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1988. Lecercle, Jean-Jacques. Badiou and Deleuze Read Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Lukács, Georg. Studies in European Realism. Trans. Edith Bone. London: Merlin Press, 1950. Meillassoux, Quentin. “History and Event in Alain Badiou.” Parrhesia, 12 (2011). 1-11. V21 Collective. “Manifesto of the V21 Collective.” http: / / v21collective.org/ manifestoof-the-v21-collective-ten-theses/ . 2015. [Last accessed 30 th September, 2015]. A Defence of Transhistoricism 67 ---. Culture and Materialism: Selected Essays. London: Verso, 2010. Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. London: Penguin Books, 1965 [1961]. ---. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. ---. The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists. London: Verso, 2007. 31-35. II. Literature as an Indicator of Cultural Change A NN L ECERCLE The Sixteenth Century, “Turning Point of European Eroticism” (Lacan), and Elizabethan Theatre 1. Nothing, no-t(h)ing and noting At the turn of the 16 th / 17 th centuries, around 1599 - a turning point in Shakespeare’s career in more ways than one -, the bard wrote a play that is both a pivot and a paradigm: namely, Much Ado about Nothing. This title “sounds apt enough for some ephemeral diversion but hardly for a play whose comic and tragicomic power makes so momentous an impact,“ 1 and (I would add) is of such crucial conceptual import. There is a reason for this: as was pointed out, not by any postmodern critic but by Richard Grant White in his 1857 edition of Much Ado, 2 in early modern English the signifier nothing would have been pronounced in a way making it virtually indistinguishable from noting - a paronomasia that is not incidental but structural. Much Ado’s plot consists in a multiplicity of notings, and a resultant multi-layeredness of nothing as notion - notings that take the form of watching, observing, spying, in a word the Beobachtung [observation] that Dirk Baecker, following Niklas Luhmann, places at the centre of his theory of culture. 3 In one of the earlier Seminars to find their way into print - before, that is to say, the overwhelming challenge of the Real Noting as observation, both covert and overt, and its aural correlate, overhearing, along with the consequent reportings and concludings, constitute the fibres of Shakespeare’s textual fabric. 4 ultimately plunged him into ever more protracted silence -, Jacques Lacan, in one of the characteristic throw-away remarks which constellate the ellipses of his discourse, claimed that the sixteenth century was nothing less than “la plaque tournante de l’érotisme européen” (the turning point of European eroticism). 5 1 A.R. Humphreys, “Introduction,“ Much Ado about Nothing, by William Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1981), 4. Lacan eschews such niceties as dates, but my concern is only with the Elizabethan part of 2 Richard Grant White, ed., The Works of William Shakespeare [...], vol. 3 (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1857), 226-27. 3 Dirk Baecker, Beobachter unter sich: Eine Kulturtheorie (Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 2013). 4 On which, in its relation with culture, the indispensable study is Catherine Belsey’s Culture and the Real: Theorizing Cultural Criticism (London/ New York: Routledge, 2005). 5 Cit. in Joel Fineman, The Subjectivity Effect in Western Literary Tradition (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1991), viii. A NN L ECERCLE 72 that century and its Jacobean overlap into the early 17 th . What he does do, however, is pinpoint the suggestive status of, among others, one literary form in particular corresponding to this moment in that it blazons forth what he calls “la structure de fiction de la vérité” (the fictional structure of truth). 6 Before proceeding further, a clarification is in order. Though Elizabethan theatre belonged qualitatively to the margins of the polis, quantitavely it was a very different proposition. Holding between two and three thousand people at a sitting, to native Londoners and foreign visitors alike the theatres were an outstanding feature of the landscape, no city having seen anything like them since Athens. The travel writer Fynes Moryson wrote: “The City of London [...] hath four or five companies of players with their peculiar theatres capable of many thousands, wherein they all play every day in the week except Sunday [...] there are in my opinion more plays in London than in all the world I have seen” (emphasis added). And if it does so, it is because the form in question (which I shall come to in due course) is an exemplary articulation of one of the major faultines in the tectonic shifting between the Symbolic and the Imaginary at this period - at the interface of which is the fantasy, the specifically human converter of drive into desire, and as such the prism that processes the erotic - which is why the graph that prefaces Lacan’s seminar on Hamlet has the algorithm of the fantasy dangling from the end of the question mark which the graph portrays under the overarching title: Chè vuoi? (What do you want? ). 7 The corollary is even more surprising: it has been reliably estimated that up to 25,000 people per week flocked to the London playhouses, 8 2. ‘Cultural translation’ and the making of Elizabethan theatre and since the capital’s population, around 1600, numbered some 250,000 souls, this means that each week one tenth of the entire populace went to the theatre. It is a truth universally acknowledged, notably in the wake of Vernant and Vidal-Naquet, 9 6 Jaques Lacan, Le Seminaire XI, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 1973), 80. that the tragic turn of classical Greek literature was occasioned by an epochal paradigm shift when the language of myth ceased to engage with the political realities of a city-state where democracy was promoting collective values to the detriment of individual ones, in a cultural uni- 7 Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary: Being a Survey of the Conditions of Europe at the End of the Sixteenth Century, ed. Charles Hughes (London: Sherratt and Hughes, 1903), 476. 8 Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 4-6. 9 The volume by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet entitled Mythe et tragédie en grèce ancienne (Paris: Maspéro, 1972) draws on the work of the specialist of Greek law, Louis Gernet, notably the unpublished seminars he held at the Ecole pratique des hautes études in Paris. The Sixteenth Century and Elizabethan Theatre 73 verse henceforth predicated on the centrality of the figure of the hoplite and no longer the hero, who, for his part, “from being a model had become a problem [...] not only for himself but for the community” 10 In Greece the appearance on the cultural scene of tragedy followed hard upon the institution of law courts; and if the tragedies are fraught with the technical vocabulary of law, it is for the very good reason that “[t]he tragic poets make use of this legal vocabulary, deliberately exploiting its ambiguities, its fluctuations, and its incompleteness,“ the “imprecision in the terms used [and their] shifts of meaning” - something writ large in warrior figures like Ajax and Philoctetes, or in another mode, in Antigone. 11 Vernant’s and Vidal-Naquet’s perspective can also be applied to 16 th century England: “We do not claim [they write] to explain tragedy by reducing it to a number of social conditions,“ but to apprehend it as a unique cultural phenomenon: “a single invention to which there are three historical aspects: [...] as a social phenomenon; [... as] an aesthetic creation [...] and as a radical psychological change [mutation psychologique]).” which register the friction between two cultures, one residual, the other emergent: namely, the ethics and epics of a fast fading past, versus the law, justice and new literary genre of the democratic present - concretized and emblemized in purpose-built edifices, respectively: tribunals and theatres. 12 Greek tragedy spanned a century and was accommodated at the heart of the polis; the theatre in its Elizabethan configuration had roughly the same span but not the same place. For the point is, and it is the conceptual matrix from which all that follows flows, that not only were (and are) the “wooden O’s” unique in European culture but that their location was, with regard to both ancient Greece and medieval England, a radical inversion or Verkehrung ins Gegenteil - the result of what Stephen Mullaney has called the “act of cultural translation” The psychological change is where, in this paper, Lacan comes in. 13 This formula, extraordinarily, turns out to be no mere metaphor, being a “translation” in both the literal, etymological sense of “carrying something which made Elizabethan theatre what it was. 10 I am referring here to Vernant’s magisterial essay entitled “Ambiguïté et renversement: Sur la structure énigmatique d’Oedipe Roi,” one of the early monuments of the critical renewal in France from the 1970s - an essay, incidentally, preceded, not to say prefaced, by another, entitled “Oedipe sans complexe” in which Vernant gives vigorous expression to his hostility to Freud’s reading; which leaves one wondering what he would have made of Lacan, unmentioned although contemporary, because “Oedipe sans complexe,” disappointingly to my mind, rests on a malentendu. 11 Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1988), 25. 12 Ibid. 9, translation modified. 13 Stephen Mullaney, The Place of the Stage (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988), 23. A NN L ECERCLE 74 across,“ and in the figurative sense of “transposing” what is thus conveyed. And in the case of the most famous theatre in the world, the Globe, what was “translated” in the first instance were its very timbers - carried across the Thames by night, in hugger-mugger. 14 Elizabethan drama, to a degree, but above all in a mode not entirely accounted for by scholars, is less influenced than informed by a material venue largely outside the city’s jurisdiction, and a cultural arena on the other side, that have been authoritatively qualified as both “thoroughly distinctive and thoroughly transient.” 15 One of the component tracts of the terrain on which the Globe’s timbers landed has durably endowed the English language with its name - the signifier par excellence of deterritorialization in its most radical form, that defined by Aristotle in his Politics as the place either of the angel or of the beast, isotheos or pharmakos, in that it was known to medieval Londoners as “Nonemanneslond,” to Renaissance ones as “no man’s land”: by 1600 last resting place of anonymous aliens buried, like Ophelia, without mourning rites, 16 but still endowed with the residual aura of its original 14 th -century meaning, when a Spanish wine merchant was beheaded in 1326 “extra civitatem apud Nonesmanneslonde” (outside the city in no man's land). 17 14 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage 1574-1642 (1992; Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), 45. This is deterritorialization with a vengeance, such as Deleuze, in this context, never dreamt of - at least if one is to judge by what he has to say on Shakespeare in Un manifeste en moins. Where Deleuze is right, though, is in saying that Shakespearean theatre does indeed need - not to be “de-territorialized,” which it always already was, and in the most material manner - but re-deterritorialized, stripped, that is to say, of the consensual cosiness, the Gemütlichkeit, conferred over time by the centrality it has come to acquire in the dominant culture of the English-speaking world and beyond. The cultural translation that re-configured the drama is reterritorialization to a degree and to an extent without many parallels; for, in its own day and age, the Elizabethan theatre was far from being considered a pillar of society but rather seen as closer to something like the plague - which was why it was viewed with suspicion, considered as it was by the civitas, though less so by the court, as one of the potential sources of civil pollution, like the leprosy it had superseded. It is in this no man’s land that Lacan’s topography of the fantasy found a close correlate: in the early modern cultural topography on which Elizabethan theatre was predicated. 15 Gurr, Shakespearean Stage, 14. 16 See John Stow’s A Survay of London, 1598 (2: 81), quoted in Mullaney 39. 17 William Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reign of Edward I and Edward II (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012), 321; Oxford English Dictionary, v. “no man‘s land.“ See Vernant and Vidal-Naquet, “Ambiguity” 135, 139 on the duality between the superhuman king (isotheos) and the subhuman scapegoat (pharmakos). The Sixteenth Century and Elizabethan Theatre 75 3. The paradoxical fecundity of motley The point here is that, on the other side, on Bankside, if the Law is not absent, it is (for various reasons beyond my remit in this essay) significantly less comprehensive and coherent than across the water: aporetic, if not in abeyance. Nor is it a simple question of opposition but, rather, of variance, of an irregular network of jurisdictional coverage: sanctuary for criminals, desacralized monastery land, former ghettos of leperhouses, not forgetting land belonging to the diocese of Winchester, which, in Shakespeare and elsewhere, is the see - or rather the scene - of the recent bane of syphilis. In turn, this portrait gallery of social interlopers gives rise to a gallimaufry of tongues. If the signifier for Shakespeare was a “cheverel glove,” 19 capable of infinite plastic reversibility, it was not only because it residually retained the magic of yore, 20 For in this twilight zone Shakespeare’s translated theatre was materially flanked by Eros, in the brothels of London, on one hand; by Thanatos, in the other face of theatre, the pit, on the other: the pit where blood was shed, bulls,’ cocks,’ bears’ blood; on alternate afternoons, indeed one theatre, the Hope, was designed to serve both drives: sadism and eroticism. This accommodation of the reversibility of the drive - on which the transformational syntax of the fantasy is predicated - is emblazoned in the populace’s very name for the theatres: they called them simply “the pits.” Dirk Baecker cites a recent book entitled Kühe verstehen. Eine neue Partnerschaft beginnt (Understanding cows: A new partnership begins). nor because Protestant iconoclasm had largely robbed the English of the jouissance of the eye, but in the first instance because of the very state - an emergent state - of the vernacular as national language which endowed it with the flottement, inachèvement and imprécision Vernant catalogued for the Greeks (Marlowe’s name, famously, exists in no fewer than 24 forms). 21 What this means is that, as a result of this “cultural translation,” the Elizabethan theatre in its heyday is predicated on a privileged topography of the eminently unstable relationship obtaining between two orders of representation: the intermittence of the Symbolic, on the one hand, and its flip side, the corresponding interstitiality of the Imaginary, on the other - a relation immediately instantiated in the theatre in what is the internal correlate to Cows may be the object of a new partnership, but in early modern England ‘understanding bears’ was a very old ‘partnership’ enjoying particular popularity in Elizabeth’s time. 18 See Mullaney’s introductory chapter, on which I draw, for further details. 19 Twelfth Night 3.1.11; ed. Keir Elam (London: Cengage Learning, 2008). 20 See notably Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). 21 Martin Ott, Kühe verstehen. Eine neue Partnerschaft beginnt (Lenzburg: Faro in Fona Verlag, 2011). 18 A NN L ECERCLE 76 the (uniquely English) wooden O, the fact that, only in Elizabethan England were women played by men and boys - apparently without any objective reason (scholars have yet to find one). In Elizabethan England, the tectonic shifting between the Symbolic and the Imaginary was not only ongoing and multifarious, it has roots in the recent past, and is, in a sense, the apex of a pyramid - the founding paradigm of which, of course, was the disputed nature of the Eucharist: did it transsubstantiate or did it con-substantiate 22 - or did it do nothing of the kind? Was it symbolic (i.e. a metaphor) in a representational regime presided over by a God of Wrath, or was it imaginary (i.e. flesh and blood) in one presided over by a misericordious Mother, with a whole host of variants in between - or was it a typically Anglican 23 All this had a uniquely destabilizing fallout in England, which veered violently, in the space of little more than a generation, from Roman Catholicism to the Henrician Church of England to Calvinism, to Mary’s bloody brand of Roman Catholicism, then back to “what would later be called, but what was not yet known as, Anglicanism” bit of both? 24 - so that much of the population got lost along the way as the clergy descended into an abyss of ignorance, while Catholics, a fortiori Catholic priests, perforce took to play-acting, one role for the closet, one for the world. 25 A wry version of this logic is refracted from the body politic on to the body natural in the secular sphere with the (in England always problematic) push towards absolutism, the warrior barons being insidiously turned into court dandies, so-called “carpet knights,” their retainers transformed into lackeys, all of them haunted by the spectre of emasculation, a staple of contemporary comedy. Under Elizabeth, this imaginarization of the Phallus was only heightened by the monarch’s being a woman, and after 1570 an excommunicated one at that, whom you could kill at will and be blessed for it - which transformed the nation, notably those au fait with acting like Marlowe and Munday, into one of mutually watching watchers: into Beobachter unter sich (The Watchers is the title of a recent history of these years). 26 22 This was the belief - that what was ingested was both the body of Christ and bread and wine, the former only existing momentarily during communion - held by a portion of the Anglican population. 23 See note 24. 24 This is how Patrick Collinson, in his invaluable survey of “William Shakespeare’s Religious Inheritance and Environment,“ in Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994,) 219-52, 229, introduces the term “Anglicanism” (which, of course, only enters the language from the mid-17 th century); thereafter he uses it as one does now, and this is the solution adopted in the present text. 25 For a recent review of the Catholic component of Anglicanism see Stefania Tutino, Law and Conscience: Catholicism in Early Modern England, 1570-1625, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), ch.1. 26 Stephen Alford, The Watchers (London: Allen Lane, 2012). The Sixteenth Century and Elizabethan Theatre 77 Elizabethan theatre, then, derives its volcanic energy from the shifting of paradigmatic templates under the Tudors who, just like Burghley, Elizabeth’s ‘King,’ themselves hailed from the wilds of Wales. The nexus of cultural givens outlined above subtends one (then much affected) genre: the play-withinthe-play, the form, for Lacan, that is the privileged literary structure of the fiction of truth - where watchers (the audience) watch other watchers (the onstage audience) watching actors enact the transformation, in Much Ado, to name but one, of the central character of the plot, named Deformed, into the eponymous Nothing. For Lacan, such a Schauspiel is at one and the same time a play and par excellence what Freud calls “an other play”: a reduced model of the workings of unconscious desire in the fantasy. To conclude, this whole tableau of a play of not[h]ing a nothing is encapsulated in a right reading - which is a wry reading - of the famous Prologue to Henry V, the play, contemporay with Much Ado, which marks the major transition of the corpus, turning its back on English history towards the threshold of the great tragedies, in Hamlet. The Prologue is a speech en abyme where the discourse of war is doubled throughout by that of desire: in the pit that is an O which has virtually nothing (a flower-pot is a forest), the Prologue invites the spectator, not to crunch numbers as nowadays, but to “swell” them (“a crooked figure may / Attest in little place a million,”) 27 where ‘test’ is testis in both the symbolic sense of ‘witness’ and the imaginary sense of ‘testicle’; in this way the pit is at one and the same time reconfigured as what King Lear will soon call the “sulphurous pit” 28 “Not many objects in the foreground of literature have been so dependent on their immediate background to give them form and identity,“ writes Andrew Gurr. - of Woman. 29 Finally, there is probably no better instantiation in the history of western literature of Baecker’s contention that “the distinguishing mark of a person of culture is not that she or he is at one with her-/ himself but that person’s selfreflexive, rebellious restlessness” And if that was so, that background was the result of the raft of cultural changes which, for the English 16 th century, meant that, emblematically, in the theatre women - half the cast - were men, and in church Catholics - half the population - were Protestants, while above both reigned a Virgin Queen who, though dripping with jewels and haloed with ruff, was yet no Madonna. 30 27 Henry V, Prologue, l. 4, 15-16; ed. J.H. Walter (1954) (London/ New York: Methuen, 1985). than the cultural translation to the other shore of Elizabethan theatre. 28 King Lear 4.6.124; ed. R.A. Foakes (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1997). 29 Gurr, Shakespearean Stage 14. 30 “Kennzeichen des kultivierten Menschen ist nicht dessen Einklang mit sich selbst, sondern dessen reflexive, um nicht zu sagen rebellische Unruhe.” Baecker, Beobachter 12; my translation, AL. A NN L ECERCLE 78 Works Cited Alford, Stephen: The Watchers. A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I. London: Allen Lane, 2012. Baecker, Dirk. Beobachter unter sich. Eine Kulturtheorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2013. Belsey, Catherine. Culture and the Real: Theorizing Cultural Criticism. London/ New York: Routledge, 2005. Collinson, Patrick. “William Shakespeare’s Religious Inheritance and Environment.” Elizabethan Essays. London: Hambledon Press, 1994. 219-52. Fineman, Joel. The Subjectivity Effect in Western Literary Tradition. Essays Toward the Release of Shakespeare’s Will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. Foucault, Michel. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. Gurr, Andrew. Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London. 1987. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. ---. The Shakespearean Stage 1574-1642. 1992. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Humphreys, A.R. “Introduction.” Much Ado about Nothing. Arden Shakespeare. London: Methuen, 1981. 1-84. Lacan, Jacques. Le Seminaire XI. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil, 1973. Moryson, Fynes. Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary: Being a Survay of the Conditions of Europe at the End of the Sixteenth Century. Ed. Charles Hughes. London: Sherratt and Hughes, 1903. Ott, Martin. Kühe verstehen. Eine neue Partnerschaft beginnt. Lenzburg: Faro in Fona Verlag, 2011. Mullaney, Stephen. The Place of the Stage. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988. Shakespeare, William. Henry V. Ed. J.H. Walter. Arden Shakespeare. 1954. London/ New York: Methuen, 1985. ---. King Lear. Ed. R.A. Foakes. Arden Shakespeare. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1997. ---. Much Ado about Nothing. Ed. Claire McEachern. Arden Shakespeare. London: Cengage Learning, 2006. ---. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. Ed. Keir Elam. Arden Shakespeare. London: Cengage Learning, 2008. Stubbs, William, ed. Chronicles of the Reign of Edward I and Edward II. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012. Tutino, Stefania. Law and Conscience: Catholicism in Early Modern England, 1570-1625 (Aldershot/ Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007). Vernant, Jean-Pierre, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Mythe et tragédie en grèce ancienne. Paris: Maspéro, 1972. ---. Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece. Trans. Janet Lloyd. New York: Zone Books, 1988. White, Richard Grant, ed. The Works of William Shakespeare [...]. Vol. 3. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1857. G ERO G UTTZEIT 1 “The One Fixed Point in a Changing Age”: Watson, the Narrating Instance, and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives 1. Cultural Change, Literary Change, and Detective Fiction Cultural change is notoriously difficult to grasp, bring about, or predict. As a concept, it is highly volatile, mirroring the difficulty of defining the terms ‘culture’ and ‘change’ in isolation. If the question is how literature and cultural change interrelate, one approach is to look at them by viewing literature as a similarly dynamic process as culture overall, and to investigate the interrelations between cultural change and literary change - rather than viewing literature as a fixed object. As a central aspect of literary change, generic change can be analysed particularly well via instances of what John Cawelti has called “formula stories”: “certain types of stories which have highly predictable structures that guarantee the fulfilment of conventional expectations: the detective story, the western, the romance, the spy story, and many other such types.” 2 1 I wish to thank the participants of the Literature and Cultural Change conference at Rauischholzhausen, in particular Daniel Hartley and Jean-Jacques Lecercle, for their comments. I would also like to thank the editors, Ingo Berensmeyer and Sonja Schillings, for their help. As Cawelti, one of the pioneers of popular culture studies, argues: “[t]o come to some insight into their cultural significance we must arrive at some understanding of them as a form of artistic behavior.” Formula stories are a particularly relevant artistic behaviour because of “the cultural patterns [they reveal] and [are] shaped by, and […] the impact formula stories have on culture” (2). What Cawelti called the “mystery” formula (42-44) corresponds to the form of the classic detective story that emerged as one of the most popular genres of fiction over the course of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Due to its formulaic nature, detective fiction is not only highly interesting with regard to generic change in its own right, but also an indication of, or, one might say, a clue to cultural change. In such a vast field, my interest here lies specifically in the significance of the sidekick narrator of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes narratives, namely John 2 John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976), 1. G ERO GUTTZEIT 80 H. Watson, M.D., whose importance for the genre is almost proverbial and yet who has so far been granted relatively little extended scholarly scrutiny. 3 The question of how literary and cultural change relate to one another raises the issue of how best to approach literary texts in the first place. If we take the example of Sherlock Holmes criticism, there are clearly two basic possibilities to approach this ‘canon,’ one focusing on the form of the detective story, and the other on the content of the stories and novels. Looking back on the results of the first major phase of academic Holmes criticism in the 1980s and early 1990s, 4 First, many critics have been particularly interested in the stories as detective fiction: they have pursued inquiries into the detective story’s stress on and exposure of plot, into the detective’s and the reader’s modes of interpretation and how these relate to each other, into the structure, logic, and nature of detection itself. Critics asking some very different questions, meanwhile, have examined the same stories more for their cultural and historical implications and resonances, attending especially to their subtexts of sexual, class, and political relationships. John A. Hodgson notes precisely such two “general emphases” at work: 5 While Hodgson’s 1994 list needs updating in some regards (for instance, with regard to research on Holmes and race), such a dualistic overview has the merit of structuring the field. What should be stressed at this point is that cultural change is not merely a question of the changing contents of literary texts, no matter how complex these are. It is also a question of the changing forms of literary texts, as scholars such as Cawelti or Franco Moretti have argued. While the application of central identity categories such as race, class, and gender can furnish clear examples of the change in cultural values and thus of cultural transformation overall, forms and genres such as the novel or the detective story in their necessarily subtle interconnections of 3 Notable exceptions are Peter V. Conroy, “The Importance of Being Watson,” Texas Quarterly 21.1 (1978): 84-103, and James Krasner, “Watson Falls Asleep: Narrative Frustration and Sherlock Holmes,” English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 40.4 (1997): 424- 36. It should be mentioned that Watson has enjoyed decidedly more attention within the quasi-scholarly world of Sherlockiana or Holmesiana, played by Sherlock Holmes aficionados as the “Great Game.” Its central assumption, relevant in the later course of my argument, is that Arthur Conan Doyle was merely the literary agent of biographer John Watson who chronicled the historically real exploits of Sherlock Holmes. As Camilla Ulleland Hoel rightly stresses, some of the materials can be put to good use in serious arguments that do not assume Holmes and Watson to be historical personae. See Camilla Ulleland Hoel, Sherlock Holmes, Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets (2015). 4 “The volume of academic attention to the Holmes stories has suffered under their status as popular or genre fiction, and it is only in the last thirty years that this has changed” (ibid.). 5 John A. Hodgson, “Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes: Biographical and Critical Contexts,” Sherlock Holmes: The Major Stories with Contemporary Critical Essays, ed. John A. Hodgson (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 12. Watson and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives 81 form and content are also indicative of changes in culture. Ideally, then, the question of literature and cultural change would be answered by attending to the relations between the forms of content and the contents of form. My concern in the present article is detective fiction in what one might call the ‘consolidation phase’ of the classic detective story in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, i.e. the age of Sherlock Holmes. One of the decisive contributions to this debate, and quite possibly the most explicit treatment of generic change within detective fiction in recent decades, is Franco Moretti’s article “The Slaughterhouse of Literature,” originally published in 2000 and republished as part of his collection Distant Reading in 2013. 6 In “Slaughterhouse,” Moretti focuses on what he calls “rivals,” that is “contemporaries who write more or less like canonical authors [...] but not quite,” and who interest him as “representative of the forgotten 99 percent of literary authors.” 7 Moretti asks (211): “[W]hy is Conan Doyle selected [by readers] in the first place? Why him, and not others? ” He hypothesizes that the answer lies in the formal device of the clue; based on a corpus of approximately 150 mystery stories from the 1890s, Moretti concludes that Conan Doyle was the author who made the most - though not in all cases consistent - use of clues. Moretti defines clues according to four criteria of increasing complexity as present, necessary, visible, and decodable (213); Doyle turns out to be the author who used the greatest number and the most sophisticated examples of them. Partially extending and partially contradicting Moretti’s arguments “that what makes readers ‘like’ this or that book is - form” and that with regard to detective fiction it is specifically the clue that leads to the canonization of the Sherlock Holmes narratives (211), I shall argue that the narrating instance in Conan Doyle’s stories is similarly central. Making use of close rather than distant reading methods, I examine the narrating instance John Watson in a variety of Sherlock Holmes stories, comparing him to certain transatlantic competitors. 8 6 Franco Moretti, “The Slaughterhouse of Literature,” MLQ 61.1 (2000): 207-227; Franco Moretti, Distant Reading (London: Verso, 2013). 7 Moretti, “Slaughterhouse,” 208. 8 The literary history of detective fiction is currently being rewritten with regard to its transatlantic aspects. As Leroy Panek points out, “the modern detective story mainly evolved from the transatlantic literary exchanges that took place from the 1840s onward between the United States and Great Britain. Thus, just as he would influence Conan Doyle, in the 1880s, Poe influenced Wilkie Collins in the 1850s, and then Collins, published in both of Harper’s magazines, went on to inspire American writers to take up the sensation novel in the 1870s and 1880s. More importantly [sic], perhaps, was the flourishing literary market in America that motivated publishers in the United States to buy or borrow detective stories printed in British magazines.” See LeRoy Panek, Before Sherlock Holmes: How Magazines and Newspapers Invented the Detective Story (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 2. G ERO GUTTZEIT 82 The narrating instance is central to the Holmes story formula since it fulfils three central functions: Watson is a representative of the writer, a foil to Sherlock Holmes, and a double of the reader. The first part of this article consists of a reading of Conan Doyle’s first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet (1887), contrasting it with novels by the Dutch one-time detective novelist Maarten Maartens and the American “mother of detective fiction,“ Anna Katharine Green. In the second part, developing my argument ex negativo, I treat those Sherlock Holmes stories that do not feature Watson as narrator in order to show the integral importance of Watson’s narrating to the Sherlock Holmes story formula. The final section lays out some of the links between Watson and larger processes of cultural change. What will emerge in the course of the overall argument is that Watson’s writerly, contrastive, and readerly functions effect a prolongation of the dénouement. At the same time, they indicate, mirror and represent cultural changes, particularly with regard to the representation of science. 2. Narratives of Detection, the Sciences, and Allodiegesis Detective fiction has a long and eventful history that is closely interlinked with its sister genre of crime fiction, in which the genesis of a crime, rather than its investigation, is central. After Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” of 1841 as well as Émile Gaboriau’s and Wilkie Collins’s novels, to name but a few, the 1880s and 1890s mark the beginning of the reign of Sherlock Holmes, with the so-called Golden Age of classic detective fiction around the 1920s representing the overall heyday of the genre. The societal and cultural origins of the genre lie in the investigative and legal treatment of crime as well as factual and fictional accounts of crime. 9 Decisive factors are the transitions from torture to criminal investigation, and from confession and testimony to circumstantial evidence, as shown, for instance, in the establishment of a police force in Britain. These processes and the origin of the genre have been linked to the rise of the sciences in the long nineteenth century, either conceived of primarily as historical sciences, 10 natural sciences, 11 or forensic sciences. 12 9 On factual and fictional accounts of crime, see e.g. Heather Worthington, “From The Newgate Calendar to Sherlock Holmes,” A Companion to Crime Fiction, ed. Charles J. Rzepka and Lee Horsley (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). The overall development was famously sketched by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: by the time of Sherlock Holmes, 10 Charles J. Rzepka, Detective Fiction (Cambridge: Polity, 2005). 11 James F. O’Brien, The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2013). 12 Ronald R. Thomas, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999). Watson and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives 83 [w]e are far removed indeed from those accounts of the life and misdeeds of the criminal in which he admitted his crimes, and which recounted in detail the tortures of his execution: we have moved from the exposition of the facts or the confession to the slow process of discovery; from the execution to the investigation; from the physical confrontation to the intellectual struggle between criminal and investigator. 13 For this new ‘subgenre’ of crime writing, Charles Rzepka has suggested the terms “narratives of detection” or “stories of detection.” 14 Rzepka’s distinction links to earlier conceptualisations of the specific difference of narratives of detection. The locus classicus is Tzvetan Todorov’s argument that the detective novel consists of two separate stories, the story of the crime and the story of the investigation. For Todorov, these are representative of the Russian formalists’ basic differentiation of fabula and syuzhet. Not only does Todorov thus make a case for the importance of the detective story as a general model for narratology, but he also argues that, in the case of detective fiction, these two stories “have no point in common.” He states that: “The first story, that of the crime, ends before the second begins. But what happens in the second? Not much. The characters of this second story, the story of the investigation, do not act, they learn.” These terms rely on a distinction between detective fiction as featuring a detective character, containing a mystery element, and focusing on the process of discovery on the one hand, and narratives of detection as narratives which not only exhibit all of these features but, in addition, “directly engage[] the reader’s attention and powers of inference” (12). Sensational novels, for instance, might feature a detective and a mystery, but this doesn’t mean that, in order to involve the reader, they necessarily focus on the process of detection or discovery. 15 It is at this point that Moretti integrates his study of the clue into the theory of the genre of detective fiction. Moretti disagrees with Todorov, arguing that it is precisely the clue that connects the story of the crime to the story of the investigation. For Moretti, it is Doyle’s skill in producing these clues which makes his narratives of detection so successful in comparison with his rivals. However, the strength of Moretti’s quantitative approach to the emergence of the genre is simultaneously its weakness: the focus on the clue shows Conan Doyle to have an edge over his rivals, but it also leaves out other contributing factors. Advancing a more nuanced claim, I argue that besides the clue there are other aspects that explain Conan Doyle’s success 13 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, (New York: Vintage, 2012), 67. 14 Rzepka, Detective Fiction 7, 12. 15 Tzvetan Todorov, “Typology of Detective Fiction,” The Poetics of Prose, trans. Richard Howard, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), 45. G ERO GUTTZEIT 84 over his rivals, the most crucial being the narrative mediation by the character of John Watson. Clues are apparently central to the narrative of detection, yet they alone do not constitute its form. Following Rzepka, clues could be said to be the most important temporal devices for the literature of detection, i.e. such devices as function in the manner of Genettian prolepsis and analepsis. But temporal devices are, of course, not the only ones. Applying Genettian terminology to detective fiction, Rzepka argues: The most important [non-temporal device] for the literature of detection is ‘modality’ or ‘mood,’ which controls the reader’s access to information. This is achieved by the narrative’s ‘adopting or seeming to adopt what we ordinarily call the [...] “vision” or “point of view”‘ of ‘one or another participant in the story’ (Genette, 162). The standard detective sidekick, such as Holmes’s Watson or Hercule Poirot’s Captain Hastings, usually performs this modal function in a seemingly natural way calibrated to match his or her presumably ordinary intelligence. 16 Just as the clue plays the role of a connector between the story of the crime and the story of the investigation, so the “standard detective sidekick” also connects these two stories, not in temporal fashion, however, but as a narrating instance. In order to describe the basic relation between the narrator and the storyworld, I adopt a modified version of Genette’s notion of the homodiegetic narrator, as suggested by Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck, not least since all of these scholars invoke Dr Watson as the prime example of this particular type of narrating instance. When defining the homodiegetic narrator, Genette introduces a distinction between the homodiegetic narrator strictu sensu and the autodiegetic narrator: So [we] will have to differentiate within the homodiegetic type at least two varieties: one where the narrator is the hero of his narrative (Gil Blas) [i.e. an autodiegetic narrator] and one where he plays only a secondary role, which almost always turns out to be a role as observer and witness: [...] Ishmael in Moby Dick, Marlow in Lord Jim, Carraway in The Great Gatsby [...] — not to mention the most illustrious and most representative one of all, the transparent (but inquisitive) Dr. Watson of Conan Doyle. 17 For Genette, Watson is the prime example of the narrator as observer and witness, or the homodiegetic narrator strictu sensu, as contrasted with the narrator-hero, or the autodiegetic narrator. 18 16 Rzepka, Detective Fiction 20. Cok Van der Voort has suggested calling this type of narrator “allodiegetic,” a term that has been taken up by Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck in their Handbook of Narrative Analy- 17 Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1980), 245. 18 The phrase “strictu sensu” is mine, since Genette himself does not offer a term for this witness-narrator. Watson and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives 85 sis. 19 3. Watson’s Functions: Writer, Foil, Reader Herman and Vervaeck also mention Watson, stating that “he is a mere witness of the things he relates (which makes him allodiegetic)” (85). Combining these narratological observations, Doyle’s Watson is viewed as the very model of the homodiegetic narrator strictu sensu, or the allodiegetic narrator. Such a general characterization is a first step in the analysis of Watson’s importance for the Sherlock Holmes story formula and beyond. To what use this allodiegetic narrator is put, is the question addressed in the following section. The detective sidekick has been a staple of the genre since its formal inauguration in Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” “In the traditional mystery story,” as Frederic J. Svoboda has it, “the sidekick functions as a surrogate for the reader, providing the immediacy of a first-person voice without giving away the case’s solution, which the detective often intuits early on.” 20 The allodiegetic Watson fulfils three functions that are central to the generic form and cultural effect of detective fiction, in which most devices aim to prolong the dénouement and thus to delay intellectual (and moral) gratification until the very end. He functions as a representative of the writer, a foil to Holmes, and a double of the reader. An investigation of the corresponding writerly, contrastive, and readerly functions of the allodiegetic narrator Watson can benefit from a comparison with some of Doyle’s competitors in the transatlantic market of detective fiction, thus shedding light on the similarities and differences of Doyle’s model. John Watson might thus well be called the paradigm of the detective sidekick. In terms of the narratorial characteristics of late nineteenth-century detective fiction, there is a strong contrast between Doyle’s Holmes narratives beginning with A Study in Scarlet (1887) and such autodiegetic detective novels as Maarten Maartens’s The Black-Box Murder (1889). Maartens’s novel is regarded as the first detective novel by a Dutchman, and it is particularly interesting since it was written in English. 21 19 Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck, Handbook of Narrative Analysis (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2005), 84. Maarten Maartens was the pen name of Joost Maria Willem van der Poorten Schwartz, who was popular in Late Victorian times but whose works have not withstood the test of time. What becomes visible in contrasting A Study in Scarlet with The Black-Box 20 See Frederic J. Svoboda, “Detective Sidekicks,” The Guide to United States Popular Culture, ed. Ray B. Browne and Pat Browne (Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 2001), 230. 21 On Maartens, see Hendrik Breuls, “A Comparative Evaluation of Selected Prose by Maarten Maartens” (Ph. D. dissertation, Technische Universität Dresden, 2005), http: / / webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ ebook/ dissts/ Dresden/ Breuls2005.pdf. G ERO GUTTZEIT 86 Murder is Watson’s “writerly” function. This means that Watson’s role is structurally akin to that of the extratextual writer or author in the double sense of Watson being a reporter of events but at the same time a poet or stylist. This corresponds closely to Watson’s role as Holmes’s biographer, which Holmes himself acknowledges, for instance in “The Blanched Soldier”: “my old friend and biographer.” 22 The full title of Maartens’s novel already gives an indication of its narrating instance: The Black-Box Murder: By the Man Who Discovered the Murderer. The novel features a narrator who is simultaneously the detective, thus combining Watson’s and Holmes’s roles in one. Right from the first lines, the narrator-detective, Spence, posits himself as a reporting witness, distancing himself from any literary claims: In Maartens’s novel, we find an attempt at a similar writerly function which jars, however, with its manner of narrating which veers from allodiegetic to autodiegetic. If I sit down to-day to write my account of what is known at Scotland Yard and among the newspaper people as the ‘Black-Box Murder,’ it is because, truthfully, after long consideration, no man appears to me better qualified than I to speak on the subject. I am not in any way alluding to the literary point of view; literary capacities I never have possessed, and, therefore, wisely shall not seek to acquire. 23 This declared intent, however, proves hard to maintain for the initially allodiegetic narrator. Similar passages foreground the act of narration itself, and their inevitable effect on the reader is to induce reflection upon the narrator’s telling and its quality. This process reaches an early climax in the following passage: The room was cleared, the dead body carried away, and the two ladies walked out in custody. What am I saying? Is this how men write history? The old lady remained unconscious, and they had to lift her up like a second corpse. It was the young one who marched past me, white and erect, with a sergent de ville on either side (17). Because of the strong presence of Spence’s reflections, the reader’s impression of him at the beginning of the novel is very much that of an unreliable narrator. While direct markers of unreliability ultimately disappear, the impression of a strong narratorial presence remains and, in some regards, becomes intensified. Spence’s observations and inferences as well as his personal interactions with the suspects become so numerous that he appears to become the protagonist of the story, leading the narration away from allodiegesis towards autodiegesis. This process is important since it is a way of 22 Arthur C. Doyle, “The Blanched Soldier,” The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, ed. Owen D. Edwards and W.W. Robson (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2009), 151. 23 Maarten Maartens, The Black-Box Murder: By the Man Who Discovered the Murderer (New York: John W. Lovell, 1890), 3. Watson and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives 87 prolonging the dénouement of the story of the investigation, and this is in many ways how detective novels function: they prolong the conclusion of the investigation. 24 In contrast, as becomes obvious from A Study in Scarlet, the first Holmes novel, Watson and Holmes fulfil similar functions to the narrator in Maartens’s novel, but these are split between them. In Doyle’s model, the attempt is made to allocate the factual scientific reporting and the literary stylization of the story to two different characters. Both Watson and Holmes narrate, but Holmes’s narration is - with two very interesting exceptions to be discussed later - embedded in Watson’s. While Watson stylizes the story, Holmes sticks to the facts of the case and reports them in a matter-of-fact manner, thus keeping up the illusion of a factual investigation that is only subsequently made literary - in a secondary process. There is thus a way of using Watson’s function as a writer of the story of investigation to prolong the dénouement. In contrast, Holmes’s comments on Watson’s narration and his own customary statement of the case are kept factual in order to give the reality effect of detection. However, Maartens’s means of doing so - i.e. through increasing Spence’s interior monologues and his interactions with characters - seem rather ill-chosen. This is not, or at the very least not solely, the result of a lack of skill on Maartens’s part. Rather, it is a consequence of the choice of a narrating instance that veers from allodiegesis to autodiegesis. 25 The tremendous importance of this function for the reception of Holmes can be witnessed in the many biographies of Holmes and articles on the stories which purport to regard Holmes and Watson as factual characters - the Great Game of Sherlockians or Holmesians. Chris Redmond, in the second edition of A Sherlock Holmes Handbook, asserts that “Watson thus must be considered first as an ‘author’ (in which case Arthur Conan Doyle is relegated to the status of Literary Agent, a title some Sherlockians have been happy to give him) and then as a character.” The writerly function of Watson thus connects the illusion of factual detection with the literariness of the genre - without any apparent contradiction. 26 24 See the discussion below and Dennis Porter, The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction (New Haven: Yale UP, 1981) Within Sherlockiana, the role as biographer and Watson’s corresponding writerly function has thus led to the playful establishment of what one might call an inverse editorial fiction. Rather than the author inventing an editor or posing heror himself as editor of an already existing manuscript (as for instance in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose), the author-within-the-work is here supposed to have empowered the author outside of the work. As becomes obvious from this re- 25 On the “reality effect,” see Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard, Berkeley: U of California P, 1989, 139. 26 Chris Redmond, A Sherlock Holmes Handbook, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Dundurn, 2009), 46. G ERO GUTTZEIT 88 ception history, if we take the examples of The Black-Box Murder and A Study in Scarlet, then the writerly function can clearly be achieved with more lasting effect in the allodiegetic mode (or, in Genettian parlance, mood). A second characteristic of Watson becomes apparent via a comparison with the narrator of Anna Katharine Green’s novel The Leavenworth Case. The latter, regarded as the first major American detective novel, went on to sell more than 750,000 copies. Green’s title of “mother of detective fiction” encapsulates the importance of her novels for the early phase of the genre: her serial detective, Ebenezer Gryce, makes his appearance in Green’s first novel in 1878, almost a decade before Sherlock Holmes in 1887. The narrating instance in The Leavenworth Case is quite similar to the one in A Study in Scarlet: the case is not narrated by Ebenezer Gryce, but by the lawyer Everett Raymond. This similarity brings out the second function of the narrating agent, which I call ‘contrastive.’ Raymond and Gryce, lawyernarrator and police detective, are carefully contrasted or orchestrated by Green: the young, hasty lawyer Raymond who only has eyes for the main female suspect, complements the old, calm, distanced, all-observant police detective Gryce. The resultant contrast between the two characters is played out, for instance, straight after the dénouement scene, before which Gryce had set up a trap for the main suspects: “Well, [says Gryce] that is the best day’s work I ever did! Your congratulations, Mr. Raymond, upon the success of the most daring game ever played in a detective’s office.” I looked at the triumphant countenance of Mr. Gryce in amazement. “What do you mean? ” I cried; “did you plan all this? ” 27 Raymond’s surprise at the extent of deliberate planning on Gryce’s part contrasts them intellectually. Green’s use of the phrase “triumphant countenance” and the verb “cry” might be viewed as indicative of what is often regarded as the heaviness of Green’s style; but the passage - both in content and form - would also match the Holmes story formula. Patricia Maida, author of the sole scholarly monograph on Green to date, has argued that Green’s narrator Raymond “never becomes a stooge or simply a sounding board for the official detective” like Watson, 28 yet the differences to Watson, who also tends to give “a gasp and a cry of amazement” are not that great. 29 27 Anna Katharine Green, The Leavenworth Case (New York: Penguin, 2010), 305. Due to his romantic involvement in the case, the narrator Raymond might be said to become more autodiegetic than Watson (at least in A Study in Scarlet), but they represent very similar models. 28 Patricia D. Maida, Mother of Detective Fiction: The Life and Works of Anna Katharine Green (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989), 14. 29 Arthur C. Doyle, “The Empty House,” The Return of Sherlock Holmes, ed. Richard L. Green (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1993), 14. Watson and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives 89 Watson works particularly well as a foil to Holmes because their professions - medical doctor and consulting detective - exhibit strong similarities. Both are professionally engaged in the interpretation of indexical signs: Watson of symptoms of diseases, and Holmes of clues to crimes. Doyle’s own education and practice as a doctor might be adduced as a reason for the prevalence of such inferential processes. So is, of course, the real-life model of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle’s medicine professor Joseph Bell, who had taught him at the University of Edinburgh. 30 From the writerly and contrastive functions we turn now to the third and most important function of Watson, which is absent from Maartens’s novel and present, though less pronounced, in Green’s novel: Watson’s ‘readerly’ function. Watson is a representative of the writer, a foil to Holmes, and also a double of the reader, particularly the reader’s curiosity. It is this which makes him both “transparent” and “inquisitive” in Genette’s words and which turns the detective story into a narrative of detection sensu Rzepka. This becomes obvious through a variety of factors, of which Watson’s questions are the strongest. If the story of investigation in detective fiction consists of the anatomy of question and answer, as Richard Alewyn once suggested, The fact that Watson, who is by profession an interpreter of symptoms, is so eclipsed by Holmes in the reading of clues, leads to the oft-cited impression of Holmes as a superhuman reasoner. It is precisely because of their similarity, then, that the contrast between Holmes and Watson becomes particularly pronounced. 31 then Watson is the very embodiment of the question; indeed, the very first sentence Watson utters to Holmes in the storyworld of A Study in Scarlet is: “‘How on earth did you know that? ’ I asked in astonishment.” 32 “What ineffable twaddle! ” I cried, slapping the magazine down on the table, “I never read such rubbish in my life.” Watson’s questions, both as a result of astonishment and curiosity, can be said to embody central cognitive effects of the genre of narratives of detection. That these are channelled in particularly readerly ways becomes obvious in the following short exchange about Watson’s actual reader response: “What is it? ” asked Sherlock Holmes. “Why, this article,” I said, pointing at it with my egg spoon as I sat down to my breakfast. “I see that you have read it since you have marked it. I don’t deny that it is smartly written. It irritates me though. It is evidently the theory of some armchair lounger who evolves all these neat little paradoxes in the seclusion of his 30 On Joseph Bell, see, for instance, Andrew Lycett, Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007), 178, 50. 31 Richard Alewyn, “Anatomie des Detektivromans,” Der Kriminalroman: Poetik - Theorie - Geschichte, ed. Jochen Vogt (München: Fink, 1998), 53. 32 Arthur C. Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet,” The Novels, ed. Leslie S. Klinger, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, vol. 3 (New York: Norton, 2005), 21. G ERO GUTTZEIT 90 own study. It is not practical. I should like to see him clapped down in a third class carriage on the Underground, and asked to give the trades of all his fellowtravellers. I would lay a thousand to one against him.” “You would lose your money,” Sherlock Holmes remarked calmly. “As for the article, I wrote it myself.” 33 As a literal reader of Holmes’s arguments, Watson here represents the reader’s potential reluctance to the suspension of disbelief in Holmes’s magisterial intellectual feats - which is, of course, overcome. In the standard Holmes story formula, this occurs at least once in the first meeting with the client and once again when the final dénouement is no longer prolonged. What is revealed directly after this exchange in A Study in Scarlet is Holmes’s actual profession as consulting detective which Watson had been at a loss to discover. The scene of reading thus leads to the dénouement of the first mystery that Watson and, with him, the reader have to solve: the mystery of Sherlock Holmes. That Watson misreads the text and concurrently the character of Holmes, and that, as a result of this misreading, he writes a particular version of Holmes, shows the contrast between him and Holmes, and simultaneously lets us imagine the contrast between him and us. The writerly, constrastive, and readerly functions add up to the central formal effect of a prolongation of the dénouement, a postponement of the solution, or a retardation, as the Russian formalists would have called it. 34 What is important is that the Watson narrator can function as an equally retardatory device as the clues themselves. That this does not merely mean turning Watson into a “perpetual idiot,” as some have called him, 35 33 Arthur C. Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet,” The Novels, ed. Leslie S. Klinger, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, vol. 3 (New York: Norton, 2005), 41. has become apparent in the three functions he fulfils. While the examples from 1870s and 1880s detective fiction discussed in this section are certainly not exhaustive, they nonetheless serve as an indication that Moretti’s concentration on clues as the sole factor in the transatlantic emergence of detective fiction does not suffice. Rather, the specific allodiegetic narrative mediation by the Watson figure is an additional factor which made the form of Doyle’s detective fiction so successful. This becomes particularly apparent if we ex- 34 I am here following the seminal arguments on the prolongation of the dénouement in Dennis Porter, The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction (New Haven: Yale UP, 1981). The effect of frustration that Krasner views as a result of Watson’s narration can be interpreted as one emotional aspect of this retardation. Krasner (“Watson Falls Asleep,“ 425) argues: “The stories are [structured] around their narrator’s frustrated desire to behold and comprehend [Holmes’s] detecting. […] The stories can perhaps best be described as portrayals of Watson’s many strategies for biding his time while nothing is revealed because Holmes either does not speak, or will not explain.” 35 Porter, The Pursuit of Crime, 33. Watson and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives 91 amine the very few cases in the Sherlock Holmes canon in which Watson is not the narrator. 4. Other Narrating Instances in the Canon If Watson as an allodiegetic narrator with three central functions is integral to the Holmes story formula, then the four stories in which he does not narrate need to be investigated in terms of their narrating instance. In all four narratives, I argue, the Holmes story formula is eroded to the point of breakdown. The stories, published between 1917 and 1926, are late additions to the canon. Two of the stories are heterodiegetic; 36 the other two are narrated by Holmes himself as autodiegetic narrator. 37 It is fitting that the story that breaks with the established formula of the Holmes stories is “His Last Bow,” a tale that has more of the spy than the detective genre. The story, subtitled “The War Service of Sherlock Holmes” in its original magazine publication in September 1917 and set on the eve of World War I, is told in heterodiegetic fashion: Interestingly, these changes appear one after the other: Doyle at first introduces heterodiegetic narration and only towards the very end does he experiment twice with Holmes as the autodiegetic narrator. It was nine o’clock at night upon the second of August—the most terrible August in the history of the world. One might have thought already that God’s curse hung heavy over a degenerate earth, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectancy in the sultry and stagnant air. The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash, like an open wound, lay low in the distant west. Above, the stars were shining brightly, and below, the lights of the shipping glimmered in the bay. The two famous Germans stood beside the stone parapet of the garden walk, with the long, low, heavily gabled house behind them […] 38 The differences both to Watson’s narrative voice and to the standard setting of Baker Street 221b are apparent. The two Germans are spies, the more famous of whom, Von Bork, is tricked by Sherlock Holmes. We are not let in on 36 This is Genette’s original definition of heterodiegetic narrative: “We will therefore distinguish here two types of narrative: one with the narrator absent from the story he tells, (example: Homer in the Iliad, or Flaubert in L’Education sentimentale), the other with the narrator present as a character in the story he tells (example: Gil Blas, or Wuthering Heights). I call the first type, for obvious reasons, heterodiegetic, and the second type homodiegetic.” Genette, Narrative Discourse, 244-45. 37 I am not discussing the two adventures in which Holmes’s narrative is embedded in Watson’s, namely “The Gloria Scott” and “The Musgrave Ritual,“ which are both in Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, ed. Owen Dudley Edwards and Christopher Roden (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2009). 38 Arthur C. Doyle, “His Last Bow,” His Last Bow, ed. Owen Dudley Edwards. (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1993), 155. G ERO GUTTZEIT 92 Holmes’s plans in any way; the story is focalised through Von Bork’s eyes and the only kind of surprise dénouement occurs when Holmes drops his (rather thin) disguise. While Watson appears as a character, this is more of a cameo appearance. Initially described as “the chauffeur, a heavily-built, elderly man, with a grey moustache,” (162) Watson still partakes in the capture of evildoers. The narrative becomes most interesting when, in the heterodiegetic narration, Holmes laments the state of the world and directly addresses Watson: “Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.” (172) Holmes’s rather untypical, high-strung religious vision of a struggle and ultimate victory against the Germans turns on images of change: from the wind and the final image of a transformed land to the implied analogy of war to winter. Rather than being contrasted to the heterodiegetic narration in the beginning (“God’s curse hung heavy over a degenerate world”), Holmes’s voice has taken on the same propagandistic tone that would be highly untypical of Watson’s narration. What makes the passage so interesting in narratorial terms is that, in the very first story in which Watson is not the narrator, Holmes describes Watson as “the one fixed point in a changing age.” Despite Holmes’s assertion to the contrary, Watson has already stopped being the “fixed point” of view of the story: the allodiegetic Watson has been replaced by heterodiegetic narration. The story’s subtitle in the book version, “An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes,” thus presents an apt epithet both for Holmes and Watson (155, 225): the first Holmes story not narrated by Watson marks an attempt to exploit Holmes for propagandistic purposes but beneath this strain the narrating agent and, with it, the generic formula break down. “His Last Bow” is a Holmes story in the sense that Holmes and Watson figure as characters in it; yet it is no longer a narrative of detection. In other words, it is a Holmes story that is no Holmes story because Watson has ceased being Watson. We see a similar dynamic at work in the second of the two Holmes stories that are narrated heterodiegetically, though this differs for medial rather than propagandistic reasons. “The Mazarin Stone” appeared in the Strand Magazine in October 1921, but it still bears the clear mark of its medial origin as a one-act stage play “The Crown Diamond” that premiered earlier in the same year. 39 39 The Crown Diamond opened at the Bristol Hippodrome on 2 May 1921. The villain in that version is Colonel Sebastian Moran who had already made an appearance in “The In the magazine version, Watson initially appears as focalizer: “It was Watson and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives 93 pleasant to Dr Watson to find himself once more in the untidy room of the first floor in Baker Street which had been the starting-point of so many remarkable adventures.” 40 The two Holmes narratives completely narrated by the famous detective himself appeared one after the other towards the very end of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series in October and November 1926, respectively. Yet this soon ceases - Holmes sends him to fetch the police and Watson subsequently disappears from the action. In a striking similarity to “His Last Bow,” Holmes also tricks his opponent: rather than using a disguise, here he poses as his own wax figure in order to overhear the criminals conspiring. Thus, both in “His Last Bow” and “The Mazarin Stone,” there is no detection in the narrative and the reader is not actively involved in any inferential process. Once Watson is no longer the allodiegetic narrator, the Holmes stories are no longer narratives of detection. While Watson still appears in these two stories, he completely disappears from the action once Holmes himself takes over as autodiegetic narrator. 41 Thus, the introductory paragraph of “The Blanched Soldier” consists of three parts, all of them focusing on Watson. Holmes invokes the familiar contrast between Watson’s supposedly superficial accounts which are “pandering to popular taste” and the ideal of confining oneself “rigidly to facts and figures.” “The Blanched Soldier” is the earlier of the two and it stays comparatively true to the standard formula: a few words of introduction that place the adventure in relation to others, the appearance of the client, the presentation of Holmes’s observational and inferential skills, the client’s narrative, Holmes’s detection and solution of the case. While Watson is absent from the story level, however, he figures strongly on the discourse level and his invocation is used to justify Holmes’s autodiegetic narration. 42 Empty House.” See The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, ed. Owen D. Edwards and W.W. Robson (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2009), 239. Yet, once Holmes has taken up the proverbial pen, there emerge indications of the pressures and strictures of the authorial situation: “I do begin to realize that the matter must be presented in such a way as may interest the reader.” (ibid.). The narrator Holmes then comments on Watson directly (ibid.): “A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a 40 Arthur C. Doyle, “The Mazarin Stone,” The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, ed. Owen D. Edwards and W.W. Robson (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2009), 5. 41 Dermatologist Richard M. Kaplan points out that both stories told by Holmes “seem to demand Watson’s absence because the final elucidation requires skill in cutaneous diagnosis; the presence of a medical man would have, or should have, relieved the dramatic tension of the mystery too soon.” See Kaplan, “The circumstances of the missing biographer or why Watson didn’t narrate these four Sherlock Holmes stories,” Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 2 (1982): 1112. 42 Arthur C. Doyle, “The Blanched Soldier,” in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, 151. G ERO GUTTZEIT 94 perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, is, indeed, an ideal helpmate.” While the description almost inevitably reads as ironic if we view it within the parameters of the storyworld (Watson’s greatest excellence is his total ignorance), its more important meaning is metafictional. The danger of someone who is not the criminal foreseeing conclusions is hardly real to the detective himself but it is very much so for the author of the detective story. “A confederate who foresees your conclusions” is an expert reader who will not be duped by any red herrings. Watson’s role of mediator between reader and detective is thus indirectly reinforced while Holmes is constituted as narrator. The initial paragraphs are clearly an attempt to establish a distinctive narrative voice for Holmes, one that is characterized both formally and contentwise by strong contrasts to Watson. But this very opening threatens the established generic model, and later paragraphs make evident the strain beneath which many aspects are placed as a result of the substitution of Holmes for Watson, particularly when Holmes arrives at the insight into the case and does not let the reader in on the ‘secret.’ At this point, Holmes comments: “Alas, that I should have to show my hand so when I tell my own story! ” - without actually showing his hand (164). Thus, the gap in the narrative is marked, yet not filled until the dénouement. And again, the ‘reason’ Holmes gives is based on a reference to Watson: “It was by concealing such links in the chain that Watson was enabled to produce his meretricious finales” (ibid.). Because of this quasi-metafictional foregrounding of Watson’s importance for the Holmes story formula, “The Blanched Soldier” remains the most successful of the untypically narrated stories in terms of the prolongation of the dénouement. The strongest indication of what the lack of Watson’s functions as allodiegetic narrator means for the formula can be found in “The Lion’s Mane,” which is highly untypical of the Holmes canon. Here, the retired Holmes clears up a mysterious death on the beach which turns out to be the result of poisoning by the jellyfish Cyanea capillata, hardly Holmes’s greatest exploit. Yet, since Holmes is the autodiegetic narrator and the dénouement has to be prolonged as far as possible, the narrator Holmes constantly stresses how complicated the case is. It is at this point that the normally superhuman reasoner Holmes becomes similar to the insecure narrator Spence in Maartens’s The Black-Box Murder. Phrases of obscurity and nebulosity abound, reaching their apex in this description by Holmes: My mind was filled with racing thoughts. You have known what it was to be in a nightmare in which you feel that there is some all-important thing for which you Watson and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives 95 search and which you know is there, though it remains forever just beyond your reach. That was how I felt that evening as I stood alone by that place of death. 43 In passages such as these, Holmes is no longer the consulting detective and reasoning machine of former days, since he - as autodiegetic narrator - has to fulfil the prolonging function that Watson’s allodiegetic narration had once carried out: in other words, as a result of the narratorial setup, Holmes ceases to be Holmes. What had still worked to a certain extent in “The Blanched Soldier,” because Holmes’s narrative voice is constituted by an invocation of Watson, is no longer functional in “The Lion’s Mane.” Here, the Holmes story formula has lost its narrating instance, the allodiegetic Watson, whose writerly, contrastive, and readerly functions constituted an integral part of its success. 5. Watson as a Clue to Cultural Change Watson is the most famous of the detective sidekicks that played an important role in classical detective fiction from its very origins in Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Dupin and his nameless narrator friend are clearly the model for Holmes and Watson. Doyle even acknowledges as much in A Study in Scarlet when Watson says to Holmes: “‘You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories.’” 44 What I have called, following Porter, the prolonging effect of Watson’s allodiegetic narration is a staple of many classic detective fiction stories. What makes Doyle’s sidekick particularly relevant is the way in which he serialises the highly-structured, self-contained, and short adventures. As Ed Wiltse has it: “Unlike even the longest-running serial publications, which could eventually be counted upon to end, the Holmes stories, individual, self-contained ‘adventures’ within a continuous diegetic frame, were potentially infinite.” 45 The role of the sidekick as a mediating agent has been traced by Ron Buchanan to the emergence of the modern novel, and he goes so far as to call the sidekick the “modern equivalent of the Greek chorus, performing traditional tasks of providing interludes, reacting as a miniature audience, reinforcing the actions of the major character, providing information about new This quasi-infinity of the diegetic frame, to which the ongoing adaptations and rewritings of the Holmes canon are a clear testament, is also an indication of the larger cultural implications of Watson as quintessential mediator. 43 Arthur C. Doyle, “The Lion’s Mane,” The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, 183-84. 44 Arthur C. Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet,” The Novels, 42. 45 Ed Wiltse, “‘So Constant an Expectation’: Sherlock Holmes and Seriality,” Narrative 6.2 (1998): 106. G ERO GUTTZEIT 96 characters, and marking passages of time from one event to another.” 46 Put simply, the interplay between Holmes and Watson, as shown in Watson’s writerly function, works as a popularizing agent for science. The figure of Watson mediates between Holmes’s cold, machine-like science and the audience. This fact was already central to A Study in Scarlet but emerges repeatedly in other stories of the canon, particularly in this oft-quoted passage from “The Abbey Grange” (1904). Holmes says: If we take into consideration the close connections between the narrative of detection and the development of the sciences, Watson’s mediating position might be connected to the cultural process of the popularization of science that also began in the nineteenth century. “I must admit, Watson, that you have some power of selection which atones for much which I deplore in your narratives. Your fatal habit of looking at everything from the point of view of a story instead of as a scientific exercise has ruined what might have been an instructive and even classical series of demonstrations. You slur over work of the utmost finesse and delicacy in order to dwell upon sensational details which may excite but cannot possibly instruct the reader.” 47 In 1872, fifteen years before the emergence of Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, the magazine Popular Science Monthly was established, and it continues to this day. The writerly function of Watson as a reporter and stylist of Holmes’s alleged science of deduction might thus be viewed as similar to that of the rise of popular science. As James Mussell argues in his work on popular science writers of the time: “Like a Sherlock Holmes case, the popular science of [Andrew] Wilson, [H.G.] Wells, [Edward A.] Martin and [E.A.] Butler renders the familiar world strange, bewildering the reader before explaining the strangeness of the ‘case’ with a Holmesian dénouement.” 48 The analogy was not lost on contemporaries either. In an article in Nature, H.G. Wells proposed the form of detective fiction as the base for a rhetoric of science: “The fundamental principles of construction that underlie such stories as Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ or Conan Doyle’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’ series, are precisely those that should guide a scientific writer.” 49 46 Ron Buchanan, “"Side by Side”: The Role of the Sidekick,” Studies in Popular Culture 26.1 (2003): 15-26, 25. That Popular Science Monthly regularly featured articles by Charles Sanders Peirce, by all accounts the philosopher who is connected most closely to Sherlock Holmes’s infer- 47 Arthur C. Doyle, “The Abbey Grange,” The Return of Sherlock Holmes, ed. Richard L. Green (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1993), 266-67. 48 James Mussell, “Nineteenth-Century Popular Science Magazines,” Journalism Studies 8.4 (2007): 656-66, 665. 49 H.G. Wells, “Popularising Science,” Nature 50, July 26 (1894): 301. Watson and the Sherlock Holmes Narratives 97 ences, 50 might then be viewed as a further indication of the importance of the Sherlock Holmes story formula but also as a clue to Watson’s significance. 50 Umberto Eco and Thomas A. Sebeok, eds., The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983). G ERO GUTTZEIT 98 Works Cited Alewyn, Richard. “Anatomie des Detektivromans.” Der Kriminalroman: Poetik - Theorie - Geschichte. Ed. Jochen Vogt. München: Fink, 1998. 52-72. 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Oxford: Wiley- Blackwell, 2010. 12-27. C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER AND K ATE M ACDONALD Beyond the Subversion/ Containment Binary: Middlebrow Fiction and Social Change 1 The relations between cultural change and literary production have been subject to extensive research and discussion, particularly in the study of twentieth-century British literary culture. Avant-garde or high modernism is commonly characterised by radical uncertainty on an ontological as well as an epistemological level, which finds artistic expression in the subject matter, as well as in aesthetic experimentation. In the words of Michael Levenson, “[t]he catastrophe of World War I, and, before that, the labor struggles, the emergence of feminism, the race for empire, these inescapable forces of social modernization were not simply looming on the outside as the destabilizing context of cultural Modernism; they penetrated the interior of artistic invention.” 1 While critics have always readily acknowledged this with regard to avant-garde literature of the period, more popular, more accessible, and less rhetorically innovative literary genres have received little attention, or have been regarded as unacceptably conservative in their form and content. Since the 1990s, however, a straightforward distinction between avant-garde modernist writing and popular, accessible literature has been challenged in a number of ways. 2 Largely influenced by cultural studies, new scholarly approaches have “[discouraged] the popular view of modernism as a highly selective and monolithic coterie of privileged white male artists.” 3 The assumption of inherent conservatism in less experimental writing has been shown to be reductive. 4 1 Michael Levenson, “Introduction,” The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, ed. Michael Levenson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011), 1-8, 4. We recognise that lines of distinction between the content and nature of cultural productions remain provisional and permeab- 2 See, for instance, Lynne Hapgood and Nancy L. Paxton, eds., Outside Modernism: In Pursuit of the English Novel, 1900-30 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000). 3 Lisa Rado, “The Case for Cultural/ Gender/ Modernist Studies,” Modernism, Gender, and Culture: A Cultural Studies Approach, ed. Lisa Rado (New York: Garland, 1997), 3-14, 12. 4 See, for example, Suzanne Clark, Sentimental Modernism: Women Writers and the Revolution of the Word, (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991). C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER AND K ATE M ACDONALD 102 le, or simply nebulous, as Nicola Humble describes it. 5 In the present article we argue that British middlebrow literature often adheres to conservative plot structures aimed at a generic market; still, its impact in socio-cultural terms requires and rewards scrutiny. As Jane Eldridge Miller observes, “it was not easy for [Edwardian] New Woman novelists to change the signification of strongly rooted conventions which associated marriage with feminine success and the suffering or death of the heroine with some kind of moral retribution,” Nevertheless, we believe that there are differences between the literary ‘brows’ (classically, the highbrow, lowbrow and middlebrow) that can be revealed by exploring the interrelations between literature and cultural change. 6 avoiding the trap of narrative containment. We will examine the subversive potential within such containment, with suicide, one of its classical forms, as an example. To this purpose, we will use Victoria Cross’s novel Six Chapters of a Man’s Life (1903) 7 to illustrate a distinctively middlebrow way of contesting constructions of gender and sexuality. Its publication at the beginning of the avant-garde period indicates that Cross was among the New Woman novelists who in the words of Eldridge Miller “tried to make their heroines’ failure an indictment of society, not an indictment of their heroines’ ideals.” 8 Although the earliest known use of ‘middlebrow’ dates from 1923, 9 it was defined in 1884 by Walter Besant as a recognised literary phenomenon without using the term. 10 Kate Macdonald and Christoph Singer have shown how middlebrow was a transitional mode at the end of the long nineteenth century, and present evidence to demonstrate the legitimate use of the term to categorise texts produced after 1900. 11 5 Nicola Humble, “Sitting Forward or Sitting Back: Highbrow v. Middlebrow Reading,” Modernist Cultures 6.1 (2011): 41-59, 42. Gender and related issues of identity are central to understanding the evolution of middlebrow as a reading experience and as a marketing concept for this transitional period, when Cross was active. Our discussion will show how reading the novel in terms 6 Jane Eldridge Miller, “The Crisis of 1895: Realism and the Feminization of Fiction,“ Modernism, ed. Tim Middleton (London: Routledge, 2003), 38-68, 48. 7 Victoria Cross [Annie Sophie Cory], Six Chapters of a Man’s Life (London: Walter Scott, n.d.). 8 Eldridge Miller 48. 9 Marjorie Bowen in The Daily Chronicle, cited in The Queenslander, 12 May 1923, 7. 10 Walter Besant, “The Art of Fiction,“ The Art of Fiction, by Walter Besant and Henry James (Boston MA: Cupples, Upham & Co, 1885), 1-48, 38-39. 11 Kate Macdonald and Christoph Singer, “Introduction: Transitions and Cultural Formations,” Transitions in Middlebrow Writing, 1880-1930, ed. Kate Macdonald and Christoph Singer (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 1-13. Middlebrow Fiction and Social Change 103 of John Fiske’s concept of the producerly text 12 2 allows us to uncover severe social criticism in an apparent case of the narrative containment of genderand sexuality related anxieties. The category, or accusation, of ‘middlebrow’ is applied indiscriminately by critics to the producer, the distributor and the consumer, thus defining it from the outside. It is important to consider how such a critical perspective also applies bias. The best-known use of the term, from Punch in 1925, refers to the taste of the reader, or, more accurately, the consumer, since middlebrow cultural forms are not confined to the novel. In 1925, these consumers are “a new type, the ‘middlebrow’ […] consist[ing] of people who are hoping that some day they will get used to the stuff they ought to like.” 13 In 1924, Irish music reviews used ‘middlebrow’ as a cultural indicator referring to consumers’ musical taste, 14 and a London drama critic referred to plays “designed to appeal to that middle area which lies between high-brow and low-brow.” 15 It is important to consider the cultural evidence, and what it tells us about production as well as consumption. Middlebrow emerged in the early years of the twentieth century after a long and unconsidered gestation, developing “different relations with broader trends in society.” Taste is, therefore, crucial in assessing the cultural position of middlebrow. 16 This examination shows how middlebrow publications and authorship function in parallel with other streams of cultural production, and with its market as well as its producers. Macdonald and Singer have noted that Examining the publication history of a text that was reissued over several years or even decades in differently-priced editions, or how the career of a novelist relates to their record of production, or the marketing of a magazine that survived against vigorous competition in a crowded market, will help us to understand how middlebrow sold as well as how it was read. the difficulty with studying middlebrow […] is that it never had any organization, and had no standard-bearing leaders or advance forces. Modernism had Futurists, 12 John Fiske, “Moments of Television: Neither the Text nor the Audience,” Television, Audiences and Cultural Power, eds. Ellen Seiter et al. (London: Routledge, 1989), 56-78, 99. 13 “Charivari,“ Punch, 23 December 1925, 673. 14 3 May 1924, Freeman’s Journal, 6. 15 Anon, ‘The London Season,’ The Saturday Review, 7 June 1924, 581. 16 P. Brooker and A. Thacker, ‘General Introduction,’ The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Vol 1. Britain and Northern Ireland 1880-1955, eds. P. Brooker and A. Thacker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 1-26, 18. C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER AND K ATE M ACDONALD 104 Impressionists and Vorticists to attract the public’s attention and prime the market for the production of avant-garde literature and art in the 1910s. There was no such trumpet-blast of a moment for middlebrow. Middlebrow never had a manifesto. 17 Middlebrow emerged from a Victorian reading culture in which taste derived from literacy, social aspiration and self-improvement produced demarcations that solidified much later into cultural value judgments. For the period we are considering, middlebrow is most usefully conceptualised as one of several possible points on a continuum of reading taste and intensity. Highbrow sits to one side, mass market and lowbrow on the other. The actual loci on the continuum depend on the individual cultural values and aspirations of the consumer. Humble draws our attention to the remarkable difficulties in defining the term. In the interwar years, there was an almost pathological worry about classification that she identifies as indicative in itself, suggesting to “make sense of [middlebrow] not by replicating the elaborate processes of ruling in and out which the guardians of the highbrow pursued so obsessively, but in understanding that those acts of inclusion and exclusion were absolutely the point.” 18 The very process of definition is a process of containment, positioning middlebrow both as an act and an object. This speaks to the fluidity of middlebrow as a cultural force, and also identifies the temporal moment when this fluidity was most challenging to the modernist project. This was the 1920s, when, as Humble notes, class consciousness reinforced ‘brow’ consciousness. 19 Education and intellectual snobbery completed the process of containing middlebrow within a palisade of highbrow criticisms. Humble’s point that middlebrow became most challenging to critics at the moment when English literature in British education became “recognised as a serious subject, one capable of rigorous examination” connects directly to the rapid containment of middlebrow texts as unworthy of the newly possible ‘study.’ 20 17 Macdonald and Singer, “Introduction,” 5. In the 1920s and 1930s, the canonising forces of literary criticism set middlebrow authors, texts, forms and genres aside, segregating them until very recently from critical scrutiny. But at the beginning of the twentieth century, middlebrow was more evanescent, not needing to be contained. Macdonald and Singer assert that “middlebrow emerged as a miasmic force, an uneffaceable cultural presence that existed through market forces despite the semi-organized efforts of some modernist critics to restrict 18 Humble, “Sitting,“ 43. 19 Humble, “Sitting,“ 44-45. 20 Humble, “Sitting,“ 45. Middlebrow Fiction and Social Change 105 and shame its consumers.” 21 3 In the early years of the twentieth century, containing such a miasma was not yet a concern. Nicola Humble has theorised the reading position of middlebrow consumers by using the body, suggesting a visual delineation between sitting forward and sitting backward when reading, with the position of the body being intimately related to the assumed cultural value of the text under study, or the text being consumed. The difference between ‘study’ and ‘consume’ is significant, since Humble asserts that to lean back while reading connotes relaxation, while to sit forward invokes a conscious intellectual effort. The former position is middlebrow, the latter is highbrow. 22 Yet she also notes that one of the characteristics of any discussion of a middlebrow text or author is “the nebulousness of the divide between the highbrow and the middlebrow.” 23 This supports the suggestion that middlebrow as a reading position depends upon many variables: the eye, the taste, the perspective of the beholder. Middlebrow can be regarded as a type of reading position, and as a textual form it can also be regarded as inviting such a reading position. Humble relates ‘consumption’ to Roland Barthes’ ‘readerly’ texts and ‘study’ to ‘writerly’ texts. 24 We, however, share the view of Christoph Ehland and Cornelia Wächter that middlebrow texts are best characterised as producerly in John Fiske’s terms. 25 Fiske famously contests the common claim that popular entertainment, especially television, almost forces consumers into passive reception. To that end, he complements Barthes’s two types of fictional text, the readerly and the writerly, with a third one: the producerly text. 26 According to Barthes, the readerly text is suitable for passive reception without noticeable or deliberate cognitive effort. “[C]ontrolled by the principle of non-contradiction,” 27 it is a text catering to escapist tendencies. In Fiske’s words, it “invites an essentially passive, receptive, disciplined reader who tends to accept its meanings as already made. It is a relatively closed text, easy to read and undemanding of its reader.” 28 21 Macdonald and Singer, “Introduction,” 5. In its relation to its socio- 22 Humble, “Sitting,” 42. 23 Humble, “Sitting,“ 42. 24 Humble, “Sitting,“ 41-42. 25 Christoph Ehland and Cornelia Wächter, “Introduction: ‘All Granite, Fog and Female Fiction,’” Middlebrow and Gender, 1890-1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 1-17, 3. 26 John Fiske, “Moments of Television: Neither the Text nor the Audience,” Television, Audiences and Cultural Power, eds. Ellen Seiter et al. (London: Routledge, 1989), 56-78, Print, 99. 27 Roland Barthes, S/ Z. 1974 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008), 156. 28 John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 1989), 99. C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER AND K ATE M ACDONALD 106 cultural context, the text sides with and serves to perpetuate the dominant ideology. This type of text can be associated with the lowbrow - catering to ‘the masses’ - as well as being used to encompass all that is ‘popular.’ The writerly text, by contrast, is cognitively demanding and forces the reader into an active reading process and active participation in the generation of meaning - ‘studying’ in Humble’s terms. This could be paradigmatically represented by avant-garde modernism, the “highbrow,“ in its demands to not just “make it new” but also to “make it difficult” and thereby to evoke defamiliarisation, in Russian Formalist terms. However, it would be a mistake to neatly assign the ‘writerly’ with the avant garde, and the ‘producerly’ with indistinguishable mass-market fiction. Similar to the importance of the individual perspective in placing a text or an author on a “brow” continuum, noted above, the “browness” of a text depends primarily on who is reading it. A well-read and highly-educated reader could find a “writerly” text relaxing, and thus call it middlebrow, whereas a less educated reader might find it demanding, calling it highbrow: thus the same text could be given different “brow” values by different readers, an example of the variables mentioned above. If we think of a middlebrow novel as a producerly text, Fiske would thus describe it as having the accessibility of a readerly one, and can theoretically be read in that easy way by those of its readers who are comfortably accommodated within the dominant ideology […], but it also has the openness of the writerly. The difference is that it does not require this writerly activity, nor does it set the rules to control it. Rather, it offers itself up to popular production. 29 The complex of variables that influence a reader’s response to a text will include acknowledgement of its “producerly,“ “writerly” and “reader” qualities, which it may have in different amounts, at different points within the text, and may also vary depending on other variables, such as having prepared the text beforehand with study or acquiring background knowledge on its cultural reception, or having read it accidentally, on a train, at leisure. These variables also influence the reader’s adoption of the ‘studying’ reading position or leaning back in relaxed consumption. The text does not simply fortify a single dominant ideology. In fact, we maintain that the middlebrow often presents a significant challenge to dominant ideologies, especially regarding gender and sexuality, while still allowing for the possibility of narrative enjoyment. 30 29 Fiske, Understanding, 99. 30 See Christoph Ehland and Cornelia Wächter, “Introduction,” 3-4. Middlebrow Fiction and Social Change 107 4 From a constructivist perspective, the distinction of the brows has a close relationship and is intertwined with patriarchal ideology. This is particularly pronounced in the modernist period. Tellingly, Bonnie Kime Scott notes that perhaps the most-quoted statement in her introduction to The Gender of Modernism (1990) was that “by the middle of the twentieth century, modernism had been ‘unconsciously gendered masculine’ in its selection of privileged authors, and in its style and concerns.” 31 While avant-garde modernism was generally connoted as masculine and superior, the middlebrow was connoted as feminine and inferior, 32 and this gendered categorisation was directly related to class anxieties and growing concerns regarding literary commercialisation and the sanctity of the academic canon. In Pierre Bourdieu’s words, “the manner of using symbolic goods, especially those regarded as the attributes of excellence, constitutes one of the key markers of ‘class’ and also the ideal weapon in strategies of distinction.” 33 Bourdieu observes that “[t]he ideology of natural taste owes its plausibility and its efficacy to the fact that […] it naturalizes real differences, converting differences in the mode of acquisition of culture into differences of nature.” Literary taste is such an “attribute of excellence” and not purely subjective; it is the product of exposition and formal education. Immersion in the ‘right’ kinds of cultural products generates the ‘connoisseur’ or ‘native speaker’ of high culture, whereas institutionalised education without sufficient immersion can only ever produce the (typically middle-class) ‘second-language learner’ (59-61). Taste or ‘cultural language proficiency’ gives the guardians of high culture the leverage to expose those encroaching upon their sacred space as impostors, and those closest to the borders of one’s own group on the social ladder are those met with most emphatic derision, often even visceral intolerance (49). 34 31 Bonnie Kime Scott, “Introduction,” Gender in Modernism: New Geographies, Complex Intersections, ed. Bonnie Kime Scott (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 1. Patriarchal ideology operates in an analogous manner, not only constructing one gender as inferior to another, but also naturalising the constructedness of gender as expressive of biological difference. Literary taste and gender are both parts of an individual’s habitus, and both are deployed to justify factual inequality. With reference to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Paul Delany points out that 32 Melissa Schaub, Middlebrow Feminism in Classic British Detective Fiction. The Female Gentleman (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 3-4. 33 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Oxon: Routledge, 2010), 59. 34 Bourdieu 61. C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER AND K ATE M ACDONALD 108 [t]he purchasing power of the female reader generated the successful female popular author, a constant target for modernist misogyny. Women’s power as consumers and sponsors of art made them, in the eyes of Pound and Eliot, threats to their phallic autonomy. The modernists routinely produced work of ressentiment against the milieu that sustained them. 35 Accordingly, the dictate of taste, supporting the hegemonic ‘masculine’ avant-garde as the ‘true’ form of art, served to subdue both the aspiring middle classes and women in their reading choices and literary output. For that reason, following Faye Hammill, any study of middlebrow writing “is in part a feminist undertaking, since it involves attention to an undervalued literature which was, indeed, mainly produced by and for women.” 36 Victoria Cross was among the great commercial successes of the Edwardian period, singled out by Ezra Pound for derision. 37 Is literature possible in England and America? Is it possible that the great book and the firm book can appear ‘in normal conditions’? That is to say, under the same conditions that make musical comedy, Edna What’s-her-name, Victoria Cross, Clement Shorter, etc. etc., so infernally possible! Bemoaning the degeneration of literary standards, he wonders scathingly: It seems most unlikely! 38 One of the most derided but also highly successful genres for middlebrow and lowbrow production was the romance. Martin Hipsky speaks of “the meteoric rise of the woman-authored love-story in Britain.” 39 This commercial success is directly related to a market in which “[r]omance sold, and romantic novels required a love story with a happy ending, especially if they were to be sold as cheaper fiction to the less highly educated.” 40 35 Paul Delaney, “Who Paid for Modernism? ” The New Economic Criticism: Studies at the Interface of Literature and Economics, ed. Martha Woodmansee and Mark Osteen (London: Routledge, 1999), 289-90. In its demand for the marital ending, the romance genre makes explicit the tensions between subversion and containment, between contestation and conservatism. Numerous works of middlebrow fiction explore alternative role identities for women - only to finally lead them safely into marriage or to inflict a narrative death penalty on their bodies and aspirations. To quote 36 Faye Hammill, Women, Celebrity, and Literary Culture between the Wars (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 6-7. 37 Petra Dierkes-Thrun, “Victoria Cross’ Six Chapters of a Man’s Life: Queering Middlebrow Feminism,” Middlebrow and Gender, 1890-1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 202-227, 202-203. Further citations in parentheses. 38 Ezra Pound, “Meditatio,” The Egoist 3.3 (1 March 1916): 37. 39 Martin Hipsky, Modernism and the Women’s Popular Romance in Britain, 1885-1925 (Athens: Ohio UP, 2011), xii. 40 Kate Macdonald, “Edwardian Transitions in the Fiction of Una L. Silberrad,” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 54.2 (2011): 220. Middlebrow Fiction and Social Change 109 Suzanne Clark, the failure of ‘sentimental’ novels to “invent a revolutionary order beyond patriarchy has made the happy endings seem hollow to succeeding generations of political women.” 41 Clark, however, contests this view by asserting that “the sentimental has also successfully functioned to promote women’s influence and power.” 42 One can argue that instead of constituting simple reaffirmations of the dominant ideology, both marriage and demise endings can be regarded as what Ehland and Wächter have described as forms of “anxiety management that allows unsettling issues to be raised while maintaining at least a superficial impression of narrative stability and security.” 43 5 Applying Fiske’s concept of the producerly text, this suggests that it is the reader’s choice to what extent the ending cancels out any subversive ideas presented over the course of the narrative. Additionally, as we will demonstrate, even the ending of a novel can challenge established values, reaching beyond the text to target the reader’s moral framework. In Cross’s Six Chapters of a Man’s Life, Theodora, the female protagonist, oscillates between a feminine and a masculine gender identity - to the great satisfaction of her male partner. At the end of the novel, however, Theodora commits suicide by drowning, triggered by a psychological backlash of internalised heterosexist, patriarchal norms. A dominant hegemonic reading of this ending would render Theodora’s death an obvious case of reaffirming the dominant ideology - the narrative punishment of a ‘deviant’ character as demanded by the laws of censorship and public sensibilities. In her preface to Six Chapters, Cross invokes an obedient morality: The following pages from a human life came into my hands after that life had ceased to be, and from the terrible story of reckless transgression and its punishment contained in them, it seemed to me that Humanity might learn some of those lessons which Life is ever striving to teach it. 44 Authorial intent and narrative execution thus apparently present Theodora’s suicide as punishment. In Petra Dierkes-Thrun’s words, however, while “[t]he novel’s pseudo-moralistic preface serves to temper some of the expected criticism presenting its story as a moral lesson, […] given the novel’s sensational sensuality, this feels rather disingenuous” (218). We go 41 Suzanne Clark, Sentimental Modernism: Women Writers and the Revolution of the Word (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 38. 42 Ibid. 43 Ehland and Wächter, “Introduction,” 3. 44 Cross, n.p.; our emphasis. C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER AND K ATE M ACDONALD 110 even further in maintaining that ‘contained within this containment’ is a subversive exploration of queer identities that may not be contained, and instead levels severe criticisms at society. There are sufficient cues in the text which make it apparent that the internalised norms and values which ultimately drive Theodora into suicide are culturally contingent and deleterious, and that it is not the character’s ‘deviancy’ which is harmful and erroneous, but rather society’s construction of deviancy. While Adorno, for instance, would grant such defamiliarising potential to avant-garde literature only, this middlebrow text illustrates how processes of defamiliarisation with regard to the queering of gender and sexuality can be traced in more popular iterations as well. We will demonstrate how the text stages the interaction between internalisation and resistance within the protagonists precisely so as to unveil naturalised deleterious concepts of gender and sexual identity. Victoria Cross is one of the pen names of Annie Sophie Cory, a prolific and extremely successful middlebrow writer of - in her day - notoriously scandalous novels. 45 The pseudonym is “evocative at once of courage, and of annoying Victoria and transgressing Victorian values.” 46 Six Chapters of a Man’s Life originated from Cross’s short story “Theodora, a Fragment,“ published in The Yellow Book in 1895. It thus serves to metonymically represent Cross’s work, which in its exploration of gender transcends even the challenges the New Woman represented to Victorian ideals of femininity. Cross’s work “casts the New Woman as a passionate sexual being who feels and expresses unconventional desires that challenge major taboos,” and, as Dierkes-Thrun emphasises, “[t]hat she did so as a hugely successful early middlebrow writer makes her all the more relevant to both modernist and feminist scholarship today” (204). 47 Associated with avantgarde culture, The Yellow Book “was meant to provoke or challenge the repressive bourgeois morality of the Victorian age - thereby realizing Oscar Wilde’s vision of a yellow book […] in which ‘the sins of the world were passing in a dumb show before him.’” 48 In 1993, this short story was anthologised by Elaine Showalter in Daughters of Decadence 49 45 Although Cory used several pen names, we will refer to her as Cross throughout this chapter, as this is her most well-known pseudonym. as one example of “stories offer[ing] a feminist point of view on issues of sexuality, aesthetics, ‘decadence,’ and quest” in contestation of male hegemony in mo- 46 Gail Cunningham, “Introduction,” Anna Lombard, by Victoria Cross (London: Continuum, 2003), vii-xxv, vii. 47 Victoria Cross, “Theodora: A Fragment,” The Yellow Book: An Illustrated Quarterly. Vol. IV (January 1895) (London: John Lane), 156-188. Web. 48 Sabine Doran, The Culture of Yellow: Or, the Visual Politics of Late Modernity (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 48. 49 Victoria Cross, “Theodora: A Fragment,” Daughters of Decadence: Woman Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle, ed. Elaine Showalter (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1993), 6-37. Middlebrow Fiction and Social Change 111 dernist criticism. 50 According to Showalter, Cross is among those female authors who form “the missing links between the great women writers of the Victorian novel and the modern fiction of Mansfield, Woolf, and Stein.” 51 Showalter goes on to maintain that “Theodora: A Fragment” “is a fragment both because Cross has taken her imagination to its limits, and because she hints that women’s sexual narratives are unfinished.” 52 Theodora, the heroine, is markedly androgynous. Apart from straddling the gender boundary, the characterisation of this figure also refutes the (heteronormative) reproductive purpose of the female body and opens up a space to present a sexuality with no purpose other than pleasure. Albeit ‘contained’ by introductory remarks of a clearly moral nature, warning against excess, Cross challenges ideals of femininity and undermines binary constructions of gender, sexuality and ethnicity. Moreover, as Dierkes-Thrun observes, “Cross’ choice of a male first-person narrator, Cecil, […] allows both author and female readers to ‘cross-dress’ by delving into the mind of a modern man as he struggles with his fascination for a mysterious New Woman” (208). However, Dierkes-Thrun also argues that while Cross drafts a radically new relationship between the New Woman and the New Man, the author does so only to “[demonstrate] the New Man’s inability to meet [this New Woman] on equal physical and mental grounds” (207). While the present chapter follows Dierkes-Thrun’s reading of the novel as a genuinely queer text, it contests her reading of the ending, by foregrounding both the New Man’s and the New Woman’s limitations in shedding internalised ideologies. Both characters come to realise that while one may question and challenge norms on an intellectual level, the forces of internalisation and embodiment are resilient. Cross deploys the homodiegetic narrative situation, with a New Man as the narrative voice, to explore the struggle between internalised norms, values and roles and their contestation. The same can be said of the ensuing novel, although Cross is by then established as a middlebrow writer rather than representing avant-garde decadence, and in spite of the novel’s apparent anxiety management. Cecil Ray, the 28-year-old narrator, is an English geographer who has spent several years working in the East and displays a keen, even erotic interest in its indigenous peoples (4-5). His encounters with other cultures and the perpetual proximity of death in the East have allowed him to recognise and liberate himself from the social constraints of late Victorian values in England. His erotic tastes in particular do not correspond to Victorian standards of gender and sexuality. He says to a friend: “I think I 50 Elaine Showalter, „Introduction,“ Daughters of Decadence: Woman Writers of the Fin-de- Siècle, ed. Elaine Showalter (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1993), viii. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. xi. C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER AND K ATE M ACDONALD 112 have heard of men remaining celibates before now, especially men with my tastes” (35) - but what exactly his tastes are remains unclear. 53 They appear to defy categorisation and may therefore be best described as queer in the sense that the term can “[signify] the messiness of identity, the fact that desire and thus desiring subjects cannot be placed into discrete identity categories which remain static for the duration of people’s lives.” 54 The immediate attraction is mutual, and Theodora decides to leave England and its social constraints, cross-dressing as Cecil’s male companion ‘Theodore.’ Like many other female protagonists in New Woman literature, Theodora deploys cross-dressing to gain a degree of freedom that is still a male prerogative. Even beyond New Women fiction, the female cross-dresser was a prominent discursive figure at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Alison Oran observes, Hence it is unsurprising that Cecil is immediately attracted to the equally queer Theodora: “What a face it was […]. The mouth was a delicate curve of the brightest scarlet, and above, on the upper lip, was the sign I looked for, a narrow, glossy, black line” (13). Theodora’s face displays the unique combination of a decidedly feminine mouth with the masculine feature of the moustache. It synecdochally represents an ambivalent character in terms of biological sex and gender. Sometimes masculine and feminine traits in body and character are directly juxtaposed - in other respects Theodora rather appears to oscillate between the masculine and the feminine. Cross-dressing women were both disruptive and respectable. Newspapers represented them as exciting, sensational figures, yet applauded them for successfully following what were quite conservative ideals of masculine behaviour. Within a familiar story formula they were safely entertaining, yet sowed the seeds of the insurrectionary idea that gender was not innate but a social sham. 55 Much feminist literature of the time appropriated contemporaneous theories of the ‘invert’ - often without any ties to queer sexualities. As Heike Bauer purports, feminists “appropriated a notion of female inversion understood as a form of rational female masculinity, formulating an affirmative feminist project that politicized gender but marginalized female same-sex sexuality.” 56 53 Cf. Dierkes-Thrun 211. Due to the fact that Theodora’s relationship with Cecil thrives precisely on Theodora’s gender ambiguity, cross-dressing in Six Chapters represents more 54 Noreen Giffney, “Introduction: The ‘q’ Word,” The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, ed. Michael O’Rourke and Noreen Giffney (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 1-13, 2. 55 Alison Oram, Her Husband Was a Woman: Women's Gender-Crossing and Twentieth Century British Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 2007), 17. 56 Heike Bauer, “Theorizing Female Inversion: Sexology, Discipline, and Gender at the Fin de Siècle,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 18.1 (2009): 86. Middlebrow Fiction and Social Change 113 than the mere appropriation of the theory of inversion in order to challenge the patriarchal order. To borrow Anne McClintock’s words, as a crossdresser Theodora becomes “the transgressive embodiment of ambiguity.” 57 Sometimes Cecil is very obviously attracted to the ‘man’ in Theodora, at other points her female sex is equally present and relevant. Her breasts, for instance, while having “little suggestion of the duties or powers of nature” nonetheless have “infinite seduction for a lover” (66). Like many other New Woman characters’ bodies, Theodora’s does not seem to have the shape for easy childbirth (41), but is designed rather for sexual pleasure. The homoerotic aspect of her bodily appearance becomes particularly obvious when Cecil first encounters Theodora as Theodore. He narrates: “My brain seemed suddenly to reel. Here was what I had been desiring and craving put into my very hands freely” (108). Conversely, there is at least the insinuation of same-sex desire in Theodora, when Cecil observes her “making love to another girl” (204) in her male disguise. While “making love” did not mean anything more than a public flirtation at the time (and the novel does not insinuate anything more intimate in this context), Cecil’s jealousy emphasises the same-sex attraction between Theodora and the object of her affections. Significantly, what is same-sex desire for Theodora is heterosexual desire for the girl, exposing the de facto fluidity of the supposedly stable binary categories of sex, gender and sexuality. Judith Butler avers that “[t]he cultural matrix through which gender identity has become intelligible requires that certain kinds of ‘identities’ cannot ‘exist’ - that is, those in which gender does not follow from sex and those in which the practices of desire do not ‘follow’ from either sex or gender.” 58 The ease and success with which Theodora passes between her feminine and her masculine identities testifies to “the performative construction of gender within the material practices of culture” 59 and the arbitrariness of gender as a sex-based social construct. Theodora/ Theodore demonstrates that the convincing performance of gender is not contingent upon one’s biological sex. What is more, those of Theodora’s physical features which are not traditionally associated with the female body, such as her moustache, draw attention to the social construction of biological sex, which is “far from uncomplicated and by no means innocent of ideology.” 60 57 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995). Theodora thus exemplifies sexand gender fluidity in defiance of cis-normativity or the idea 58 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity 1990 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 24. 59 Butler 35. 60 Alan Sinfield, “Transgender and Les/ Bi/ Gay Identities,” Territories of Desire in Queer Culture: Refiguring Contemporary Boundaries, ed. David Alderson and Linda Anderson (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000), 150-65, 154. C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER AND K ATE M ACDONALD 114 that one’s biological sex clearly and unambiguously predetermines an equally unambiguous gender identity. Cecil and Theodora also defy convention in terms of gendered power structures. Theodora is financially independent, well-educated, and, as Cecil observes, “[i]t was not her mere income that was of worth to her, it was her peculiarly independent and uncontrolled position, the habit of command and influence […]” (96). Moreover, she is the one being “mad upon looks” (39), and in this sense Cecil is presented as the object of her erotic gaze - a role traditionally occupied by women. In contrast, even though she has a “handsome face” (13), that alone would not have been enough to attract Cecil, and, in terms of their culture’s beauty standards, her moustache renders her unattractive as a woman. It is her queerness and her rebellious mind that attract Cecil. The couple openly and explicitly challenge the constrictions of a very obviously culturally constructed morality and negotiate their relationship on radically different terms. As Theodora observes, “[w]hat one feels […] with both religion and morality is that there is no absoluteness about either. Both are merely […] things of time and place; both vary distinctly with the latitude” (22-23). Cecil’s ideal is the complete freedom of both lovers: “Intolerant myself of the least interference with my own will, I avoid, from a sort of fellow-feeling, trying to control, even where I have the power, the wills of others” (233). However, as both characters come to realise, while one may question and challenge norms on an intellectual level, the forces of internalisation and embodiment are not to be underestimated. Cross deploys the autodiegetic narrative situation to explore the struggle between internalised norms, values and roles and their contestation. As readers we experience with Cecil how the desire to be different and the will to question convention does not automatically liberate us from the power of conventions. In spite of his convictions, Cecil, for instance, experiences repeated bouts of patriarchal possessiveness. The novel’s turning point is brought about when Theodora is gang-raped in an exotic Egyptian club. Cecil and ‘Theodore’ have gained access to this underground establishment, in which an all-male audience watches a supple young male dancer. The collective erotic excitement grows into a demanding, aggressive frenzy - urging, pushing, pressing the dancer on until he faints on stage. Cecil kisses Theodora in the wake of this frenzy, and she immediately realises: “They have seen you kiss me. We have betrayed ourselves. Nothing now will satisfy them but […] our lives” (241). What exactly constitutes the betrayal, however, remains unclear. Theodora may or may not have been identified as a woman. It may have been the punishment of a heterosexual couple for having invaded a closeted homosexual space, or, in the words of Dierkes-Thrun, the kiss may have “[exposed] the preceding dance, and Middlebrow Fiction and Social Change 115 presumably all men who attended it, to a threatening interpretation of the whole gathering as homoerotic arousal” (220) - thus violating the fiction of a rigid boundary between the homosocial and the homosexual. When it becomes obvious that they have only two options - to leave Theodora to be raped or to lose both their lives - Cecil is overcome by a strong desire to kill his lover, which parallels his previous desire to possess her (248). Embodied patriarchal norms designating the woman as an object and possession, and assigning her a reduced ‘value’ as ‘spoilt’ by rape, rise to the surface in a character who prides himself on his defiance of conventions. It is Theodora who explicitly defamiliarises the naturalised notion of honour: My honour! A convenient term for the preservation to yourself and your own egotistical, jealous, tyrannical passion, of this flesh and blood. […] Cecil, you accepted me for your own desires as Theodora; you can’t now, for those same desires, turn me into a Lucretia! (249) In Roman historical legend, Lucretia is the epitome of female virtue - demonstrated first in “a contest to test the virtue of their wives” held among young princes during the siege of Ardea. 61 The Roman historian Livy tells how during the banquet given in celebration of Lucretia’s ‘victory,’ “Sextus Tarquinius was seized by an evil desire to debauch Lucretia by force. Not only her beauty but also her chastity spurred him on.” 62 What can be well when a woman has lost her honor? The marks of another man are in your b ed. But only my body has been violated; my mind is not guilty. […] Though I absolve myself of wrongdoing, I do not exempt myself from punishment. Nor henceforth shall any unchaste woman continue to live by citing the precedent of Lucretia. After the ensuing rape, Lucretia throws herself at the mercy of the males in her family and wails: 63 She immediately kills herself. Lucretia’s virtue and sense of honour have much in common with the Victorian ideal of the Angel in the House - to which Theodora is diametrically oppos ed. To quote Aisha K. Gill, “in societies with honour-based value systems, honour is typically equated with the regulation of women’s sexuality and their conformity with social norms and traditions.” 64 61 Livy, The History of Rome: Books 1-5, trans. Valerie M. Warrior (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), 79. Up to this point Theodora and Cecil had been in open defiance of Victorian morality, but now only Theodora realises that ‘honour’ 62 Livy 80. 63 Livy 81. 64 Aisha K. Gill, “Introduction: ‘Honour’ and ‘Honour’-Based Violence: Challenging Common Assumptions,” “Honour” Killing and Violence: Theory, Policy and Practice, ed. Aisha K. Gill, Carolyn Strange, and Karl A. Roberts (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 1-24. C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER AND K ATE M ACDONALD 116 is a concept in the service of an “idea,“ i.e. patriarchal ideology (251), and she is unwilling to sacrifice both their lives to this concept, since she realises that allowing the men to violate her body is their only chance of survival. Cecil finally gives in to Theodora’s plea and is forced to leave her in the club for seven nights, where - we can infer - she is raped repeatedly by several men. When she is released, it appears as though the narrative justifies the killing of a woman to protect her from this kind of violence. Theodora herself wails: “Oh, Cecil, Cecil, it would have been better had you shot me as you wished” (264), and the description of her violated body seems to fortify this. Her next words, however, reveal what this is really about: “‘Oh, I have lost you! I know I have lost you! You won’t care for me now,” and Cecil the narrator adds: “the wild, bloodshot eyes met mine in an agony of unutterable, intolerable shame” (264). 65 Ironically, this is the point where Cecil comes to love Theodora most fully: “when she came back to me disfigured and degraded - I loved unselfishly” (265). Theodora is no longer simply the object of desire but loved unconditionally and altruistically. Unfortunately, embodiment runs deep, and in Theodora’s subsequent fevered dreams it becomes very apparent that her mind is unable to battle her internalised notions of the female as pure object: “In all her raving the same theme recurred incessantly, the certainty that I should condemn her, the certainty that no pity and no mercy could be expected of me” (269). In her own mind - as well as in Cecil’s prior to and during her ordeal - the violent penetration of her body by several men reduces Theodora to her primary sexual characteristics, dissolves all ambiguity and gives precedence to patriarchal norms. To return to Butler, up to this point, Theodora had been an individual whose gender did not follow from her biological sex; whose practices of desire did not ‘follow’ from either sex or gender, since both were ambiguous - but now she has been thrown back into “[t]he cultural matrix through which gender identity has become intelligible [and which] requires that certain kinds of ‘identities’ cannot ‘exist.’” 66 In the throes of a fever attack Theodora finally commits suicide. In this sense, the narrative may be considered to have safely managed social anxiety and contained its subversive potential. This, however, would ignore the fact that over the course of the novel we have witnessed Cecil’s struggle with the opposing forces of internalisation and liberation. Through him we have 65 On shame as a very effective means of social control, see J. Brooks Bouson, Embodied Shame: Uncovering Female Shame in Contemporary Women’s Writings (Albany: State U of New York P, 2009), 1; Daniel M.T. Fessler, “From Appeasement to Conformity: Evolutionary and Cultural Perspectives on Shame, Competition, and Cooperation,” The Self-Conscious Emotions: Theory and Research, eds. Jessica L. Tracy et al. (New York and London: The Guilford Press, 2007), 174-93, 174. 66 Butler 24. Middlebrow Fiction and Social Change 117 vicariously experienced the deleterious effects of naturalisation - and Theodora’s ending is presented as its tragic culmination: Murdered her! I thought. Not I, but the egoism of men’s love, that gave birth to that delirious fear of me, instead of the sweet confidence and trust with which she should have come back to my arms. In her reasoning moments, indeed, I had been able to convince her, that of me, she need have no terror. […] But in the delirium, the instinctive knowledge of what men are, the intuitive sense of how little strain their love will bear, and the dread born of both, these had oppressed and haunted her. […] And these thoughts had murdered her. (294-6) Cecil speaks of “the egoism of men’s love” and Theodora’s “instinctive knowledge of what men are,” but considering Theodora’s previous words on the deleterious force of “an idea,“ i.e. patriarchal ideology, indicts more than just men: all who are complicit in its perpetuation. 6 Eldridge Miller draws attention to the fact that [f]or many readers the nervous breakdown, illness, madness and suicide that were characteristic of New Woman novels did not connote high tragedy but, rather, confirmed that the heroine had gone too far outside her sphere, and suffered because she tried to do things for which she was unsuited; the social order triumphs by the very fact that it has endured and the woman has not. 67 According to this view, the New Woman character’s challenges to the established order would be safely contained by her narrative punishment. Such a reading position corresponds to Humble’s sitting backward and simply ‘consuming’ the text; it is dominant-hegemonic in the sense that it allows the text to reaffirm dominant ideologies. Six Chapters may thus be read as a thrilling tale of sexual transgressions - and ultimately as the cautionary moral tale the author ostensibly announces in the preface. In this position, Theodora’s transgressions are contained, and her suicide reaffirms patriarchal notions of female ‘honour,’ the loss of which is irreversible. ‘Studying’ the text, ‘sitting forward,’ by contrast, allows us to uncover its subversive potential. This also demonstrates the alteration in the classification of the text by the changing variables of pose, of reading with the purpose of learning, and of the questions being ask ed. Six Chapters may remain a middlebrow novel, but it changes its nature from “writerly” to “readerly” and to “producerly” by the reader’s actions. To a reader who is alert to the text’s subversive potential, Cecil’s final accusations render both male and female readers complicit in Theodora’s death - male readers by way of the generalisation of “the egoism of men’s love,” and female readers 67 Eldrigde Miller 48. C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER AND K ATE M ACDONALD 118 by women’s (often involuntary) complicity in patriarchal ideology through internalisation. The novel thus reaches out to its readership and demands a reassessment of arbitrary gender norms and associated moral demands. It aims at cultural change. Middlebrow Fiction and Social Change 119 Works Cited Anon. ‘The London Season,’ The Saturday Review, 7 June 1924. Barthes, Roland. S/ Z. 1974. New York: Hill and Wang, 2008. Bauer, Heike. “Theorizing Female Inversion: Sexology, Discipline, and Gender at the Fin de Siècle. Journal of the History of Sexuality 18.1 (Jan 2009): 84-102. Besant, Walter. “The Art of Fiction.” The Art of Fiction. Eds. Walter Besant and Henry James. 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Ed. Elaine Showalter. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1993. 6-37. ---. Six Chapters of a Man’s Life. London: Walter Scott, n.d. Cunningham, Gail, ed. “Introduction.” Anna Lombard by Victoria Cross. London: Continuum, 2003. Delaney, Paul. “Who Paid for Modernism? ” The New Economic Criticism: Studies at the Interface of Literature and Economics. Ed. Martha Woodmansee and Mark Osteen. London: Routledge, 1999. 335-351. Doran, Sabine. The Culture of Yellow: Or, the Visual Politics of Late Modernity. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. Fessler, Daniel M.T. “From Appeasement to Conformity: Evolutionary and Cultural Perspectives on Shame, Competition, and Cooperation.” The Self-Conscious Emotions: Theory and Research. Ed. Jessica L. Tracy, Richard W. Robins, and June Price Tangney. New York: Guilford, 2007. 174-93. Fiske, John. “Moments of Television: Neither the Text nor the Audience.” Television, Audiences and Cultural Power. Ed. Ellen Seiter et al. London: Routledge, 1989. 56-78. Giffney, Noreen. “The ‘q’ Word.” The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory. Ed. Michael O’Rourke and Noreen Giffney. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2009. 1- 13. Hipsky, Martin. Modernism and the Women’s Popular Romance in Britain, 1885-1925. Athens: Ohio UP, 2011. Humble, Nicola. “Sitting Forward or Sitting Back: Highbrow v. Middlebrow Reading.” Modernist Cultures 6.1 (2011): 41-59. Kime Scott, Bonnie. “Introduction.” Gender in Modernism: New Geographies, Complex Intersections. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. 1-22. C ORNELIA W ÄCHTER AND K ATE M ACDONALD 120 Macdonald, Kate. “Edwardian Transition in the Fiction of Una L. Silberrad,” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 54.2 (2011): 212-33. Macdonald, Kate, and Christoph Singer. “Introduction: Transitions and Cultural Formations.” Transitions in Middlebrow Writing, 1880-1930. Ed. Kate Macdonald and Christoph Singer. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 1-13. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995. Oram, Alison. Her Husband Was a Woman: Women’s Gender-Crossing and Twentieth Century British Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, 2007. Pound, Ezra. “Meditatio.” The Egoist 3.3 (1 March 1916): 37-38. Rado, Lisa. “The Case for Cultural/ Gender/ Modernist Studies.” Modernism, Gender, and Culture: A Cultural Studies Approach. Ed. Lisa Rado. New York: Garland Pub., 1997. 3-14. Schaub, Melissa. Middlebrow Feminism in Classic British Detective Fiction. The Female Gentleman. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Showalter, Elaine. “Introduction.” Daughters of Decadence: Woman Writers of the Fin-de- Siècle. Ed. Elaine Showalter. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1993. vii-xx. Sinfield, Alan. “Transgender and Les/ Bi/ Gay Identities.” Territories of Desire in Queer Culture: Refiguring Contemporary Boundaries. Ed. David Alderson and Linda Anderson. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000. 150-65. Woolf, Virginia. “Middlebrow.” The Death of the Moth: And Other Essays. London: Hogarth Press, 1981. 113-19. A LEXANDER S CHERR The Emergence of ‘Genomic Life Writing’ and ‘Genomic Fiction’ as Indicators of Cultural Change: A Case Study of Richard Powers’ Novel Generosity: An Enhancement (2009) 1. Cultural Change: The Millennial Hype Surrounding the Human Genome and Its Symbolic Mediations While pinpointing and describing cultural change generally calls for careful observation and reconstruction, the historiographical task appears a little easier than usual in the present case. This is because the events that instigated the kind of cultural change this essay focuses on were imbued with symbolic power from the very beginning: In a climate of millennial hopes and anxieties, U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair jointly announced on June 26, 2000, that the Human Genome Project - the world’s largest collaborative research project in the life sciences to date - had just completed a working draft of the genetic composition of Homo sapiens. This rough draft, which, strictly speaking, contained the genetic information of fifteen different members of the human species, was first made available to the general public in February 2001. Looking back on the release, literary scholar Patricia Waugh recalls how she purchased her own private copy of the genome in the form of a CD-ROM that came along with the latest version of Prospect magazine: “This was a disk carrying the recipe for the human species. Like the voices of the long-dead divas and the up-andcoming rock starlets, the ‘code of life’ had now been digitally remastered and made available at the click of a mouse.” 1 To Waugh, “[t]he disk seemed the perfect symbol for the year 2000. For here was the entire string of three billion letters, arranged in the various combinations and repetitions with difference of the four-letter alphabet, proclaimed as the recipe for creating a human being.” 2 1 Patricia Waugh, “Science and Fiction in the 1990s,” British Fiction of the 1990s, ed. Nick Bentley (London, New York: Routledge, 2005), 57. 2 Waugh 58. The “four-letter alphabet,“ which Waugh talks about, refers to the four nucleobases that constitute the building blocks of a DNA molecule. For the “millennial hype” accompanying the sequencing of the genome, see also Judith Roof, The Poetics of DNA (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 2-3. A LEXANDER S CHERR 122 The language with which Waugh describes her memories of the release of the reference genome knowingly employs the very metaphors that have informed cultural communication about genes since the 1950s. Due to the influence of the new cybernetic paradigm of information, ‘life’ became somewhat synonymous with ‘writing’ at that time. 3 Apart from having been thought of as the ‘code of life,’ the genome has also been imagined as a ‘text,’ an ‘alphabet’ or - in quasi-religious terms - as nothing less than the ‘book of life.’ Thus, while they are not an invention of our post-genomic age, “scriptural representations of life,” as Lily E. Kay aptly calls such metaphors, have been revived in the context of the scientific breakthrough constituted by the completion of the first human reference genome. 4 We can find ‘book of life’ metaphors almost everywhere - from Matt Ridley’s popular science book Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (1999), which starts with a parody of the biblical story in John 1: 1 (“In the beginning was the word…”), 5 to the declaration made by Eric Lander, a Professor of Biology at MIT and a member of the Obama administration’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, in a 2001 interview: “I don’t know if people realize that we just found the world’s greatest history book. We are going to be up every night reading tales from the genome. It’s so cool.” 6 Needless to say, the central epistemological question is whether the genome actually qualifies as a “history book” from which ready-made “tales” can be read. There are at least two major reasons that cast doubt on this claim. For one thing, scientists have emphasized that genetic determinism - the idea that genes ‘predict’ a future outcome in our lives - constitutes a workable framework only in the case of rare single-gene disorders, such as Huntington’s disease. For the large majority of physical and mental traits, on 3 Sarah Franklin concisely describes the impact of the cybernetic concept of ‘information’ on the life sciences in the second half of the twentieth century with the following formula: “[N]ature becomes biology becomes genetics, through which life itself becomes reprogrammable information.” Sarah Franklin, “Life Itself: Global Nature, Global Culture,” Global Nature, Global Culture, eds. Sarah Franklin, Celia Lury, Jackie Stacey (London: Sage, 2000), 190. 4 Lily E. Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000), 2. 5 See Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (New York: Harper Perennial, 2000 [1999]), 11. 6 Qtd. in Kate O’Riordan, “Writing Biodigital Life: Personal Genomes and Digital Media,” Biography 34.1 (2011): 126. For the omnipresence of ‘book of life’ metaphors in cultural mediations of the genome, see also Roof 83: “The prevalence of book and language metaphors for DNA and genes is so great that it would be impossible to list them all. The genome as the book of life has been the most prominent of these, and we usually take the idea of DNA as an alphabet for granted.” Genomic Life Writing and Genomic Fiction 123 the other hand, the influence of genes on our lives remains ‘probabilistic.’ 7 But the idea of the genome as a kind of ‘life narrative’ also appears questionable because of a second (albeit closely related) reason: If the genome can be thought of as a language at all, then it is a language without grammatical tenses. As Jay Clayton has stressed with his felicitous concept of “genome time,” the genome constitutes something like “a perpetual present,” in which “the relationship between past, present and future is arbitrary.” 8 In this sense, “[t]he present becomes everything but the past and future are not actually effaced. Instead, all times are inscribed in the present, encoded in the moment. […] [T]he present is made to contain every possible permutation of time as a suddenly legible system of signs.” 9 Hence, with regard to its ‘tellability,’ the major problem posed by the genome is that it seems difficult, if not altogether impossible, to translate the synchronic possibilities inherent in a given genome into diachronic actualities or linear narratives. Clayton himself regards narrative time as “the opposite of genome time.” 10 In the light of this brief sketch of our ‘genomic imaginary’ at the beginning of the twenty-first century, an interesting task emerges for literary scholars interested in the interrelationship of cultural and literary change. Because of the obvious implications that the sequencing of the genome - including its cultural representations as ‘text’ or ‘book’ - has for the ways in which human beings conceive of and narrate their lives, it appears meaningful to inquire how cultural communication about the genome gives rise to new forms of ‘life writing.’ What one is concerned with here are “the cultural dynamics of generic change,” 11 My essay will investigate this question in section two by discussing the emergence of ‘genomic life writing’ at the beginning of the twenty-first century as an instance of generic change. The examples presented in this section are no literary fictions, but we will later see that a clear-cut distinction between fact and fiction appears somewhat problematic in the case of genomic life writing. In section three, I will discuss Richard Powers’ experimental novel Generosity: An Enhancement (2009), reading the text as a prime reprethat is, broadly speaking, the question of how cultural change, such as the completion of the human genome and its symbolic mediations, can lead to changes within the system of genres. 7 See Steven Pinker, “My Genome, My Self,” The New York Times Magazine, 7 January 2009. http: / / www.nytimes.com/ 2009/ 01/ 11/ magazine/ 11Genome-t.html (last retrieved on March 2, 2016). 8 Jay Clayton, “Genome Time,” Time and the Literary, eds. Karen Newman, Jay Clayton, Marianne Hirsch (New York/ London: Routledge, 2002), 33, 35. 9 Clayton 33. 10 Clayton 50. 11 See Michael Basseler, Ansgar Nünning, Christine Schwanecke, eds., The Cultural Dynamics of Generic Change in Contemporary Fiction: Theoretical Frameworks, Genres and Model Interpretations (Trier: WVT, 2013a). A LEXANDER S CHERR 124 sentative of the literary genre that Everett Hamner has aptly called “genomic fiction.” 12 The main goal of the analysis is to argue that Powers’ novel is not only fundamentally concerned with genomic science and its public representations, but also with the epistemological difficulties of making human lives ‘narratable.’ More specifically, I will show that Generosity manages to problematize genomic life stories by exposing the ways in which genomic science is always already entangled in economic regimes that require it to produce marketable narratives. Such “tales from the genome,” to use Lander’s phrase, are presently produced, first and foremost, by so-called “direct-to-consumer genome scanning services.” 13 2. Generic Change: The Emergence of ‘Genomic Life Writing’ at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century These companies engage in the production of ‘genomic life writing’ - a term which I use to refer to the emergence of a new genre in contemporary Western cultures that is itself indicative of cultural change. As such, it is to be reviewed in the following section. In order to arrive at a better understanding of the inter-dynamics between cultural and literary change, the category of ‘generic change’ can play a helpful intermediary role. More specifically, by putting forward the genre label of ‘genomic life writing,’ which is meant to refer to the formation of new narrative forms in the wider domain of life writing at the beginning of the twentyfirst century, I propose that there is a close interrelationship between scientific knowledge acquired about the genome and (auto-)biographical storytelling practices. In a recent article on “Life Sciences and Life Writing,” Alfred Hornung has called attention to the alliance that can be posited to exist between the two phenomena alluded to in the title of his essay. Taking autobiographies and autobiographical fiction by David Suzuki, E.O. Wilson and Siri Hustvedt as his examples, Hornung sheds light on the interaction between the life sciences and life writing. However, whereas Hornung’s article convincingly argues for “the advantage of life writing for the presentation of scientific ideas to a larger audience in publications or on TV,” 14 12 Everett Hamner, “The Predisposed Agency of Genomic Fiction,” American Literature 83.2 (2011): 413-41. it is also possible to investigate in what ways the life sciences, and genomic science in particular, can bring about modifications in the genre of life writing itself. This approach opens up perspectives for studying “the cultural dynamics of generic change,” to cite the title of a collection edited by Michael Basseler, Ansgar Nünning and Chris- 13 See also O’Riordan 119. 14 Alfred Hornung, “Life Sciences and Life Writing,” Anglia 133.1 (2015): 37. Genomic Life Writing and Genomic Fiction 125 tine Schwanecke. As the editors point out in their introduction, research in this field focuses upon “the question of how genres are determined not only by changes within the literary system but also by extra-literary, e.g., cultural, economic, and social factors and contexts.” 15 In so doing, the study of generic change responds to a question pointedly raised by Heta Pyrhönen in her article on “Genre” in The Cambridge Companion to Narrative: “What accounts for shifts and changes within a genre? ” 16 Pyrhönen herself provides a valuable starting point for tackling this question, emphasizing the significance of both “modifications within the literary system” and “the impact of the larger socio-cultural context.” 17 Moreover, as Basseler, Nünning and Schwanecke add, “new genres are likely to occur at challenging cultural moments, fostering and engendering change within and beyond the literary system.” 18 With regard to the significance of the socio-cultural context for the particular phenomenon focused upon in the present essay, I would like to suggest that scientific knowledge about the genome has manifested itself in two different forms of genomic life writing: On the one hand, there are genotyping services like 23andMe or Oxford Ancestors Ltd, which offer their clients knowledge about their genetic and personal identity and thus inevitably partake in the making of life narratives. Since such companies promise reliable insights into one’s genetic roots, one might refer to the stories they offer as the ‘realist’ strand in non-fictional genomic life writing: The way in which they market their research suggests that genotyping companies can help people to ‘complete’ their life stories, but this also implies that these stories are already there, readable as “tales from the genome.” On the other hand, several scientists, journalists and authors - Richard Powers being one of them - have had their genomes fully sequenced and written about their individual experiences. This type of genomic life writing is more ‘essayistic’ from the outset, as the authors’ accounts include explanations of genomic testing itself as well as their intellectual and emotional experiences during the process. Such essays are not so much straightforward ‘tales’ than meditations on the In line with this assertion, it was already suggested in this essay that the beginning of the new millennium can be regarded as such a crucial historical juncture, given the proliferation of research in the life sciences and the revival of scriptural metaphors in public discourses about genomic research. 15 Michael Basseler, Ansgar Nünning, Christine Schwanecke, “The Cultural Dynamics of Generic Change: Surveying Kinds and Problems of Literary History and Accounting for the Development of Genres,” The Cultural Dynamics of Generic Change in Contemporary Fiction: Theoretical Frameworks, Genres and Model Interpretations, eds. Michael Basseler, Ansgar Nünning, Christine Schwanecke (Trier: WVT, 2013b), 1. 16 Heta Pyrhönen, “Genre,” The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, ed. David Herman (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007), 119. 17 Pyrhönen 122. 18 Basseler, Nünning, Schwanecke, “The Cultural Dynamics of Generic Change,” 12. A LEXANDER S CHERR 126 premises of genomic research and life writing, and, as such, they inevitably raise epistemological questions. Both the realist and the essayistic form of genomic life writing testify to Kate O’Riordan’s thesis that genome scanning services can be thought of as “narrative machines.” 19 Even if a comprehensive review of the kind of life writing associated with genotyping services is beyond the scope of this essay, a glance at the website of the California-based company 23andMe reveals to what extent genetic sequencing has become “a technology of stories about genetics, health, and behavior,” Nevertheless, they vary considerably with regard to the ways in which they frame the relationship between genomic information, on the one hand, and storytelling practices, on the other. I will review the two forms of genomic life writing in the following, showing that especially the essayistic strand provides valuable intellectual perspectives for the discussion of Powers’ novel, while the realist form represents a kind of life writing of which Generosity is inherently critical. 20 but also about personal identities. To clarify, companies like 23andMe scan a certain (comparatively small) percentage of people’s genomes with the primary aim of better understanding the nature of genetic diseases and of being able to suggest individualized medical treatment. But they also offer identity-related services: In a section entitled “Everyday people. Extraordinary stories,” potential clients are invited to “[s]ee how knowing more about your DNA can impact your life.” 21 A different, and potentially more reflective, form of genomic life writing manifests itself in autobiographical essays written by authors who have had Accordingly, the website presents the reader with a number of success stories of former clients who have acquired an amount of self-knowledge thanks to DNA analysis they could not otherwise have attained. The stories exhibited on the website feature various people who have all used 23andMe “to learn more about themselves.” In some cases, the company has enabled clients to connect with family members of whose existence they had previously been unaware. In other cases, 23andMe has provided customers with knowledge regarding their “ethnic make-up” or their “ancestral origins.” It is thus possible for clients to obtain information about how much “Neanderthal DNA” lives on in them, or to discover their “unique history from over 750 maternal lineages and over 500 paternal lineages” - services which evidently evoke the dimensions of genome time. Even if it could certainly be questioned how informative such knowledge actually is, the impression one receives from the website is that 23andMe can help people to complete their life stories and to understand who they really are. 19 O’Riordan 121. 20 O’Riordan 119. 21 This and the following quotations in this paragraph are all cited from the company’s official website: www.23andme.com (last retrieved on March 2, 2016). Genomic Life Writing and Genomic Fiction 127 their genomes sequenced. Among the writers who have produced such essayistic accounts are Steven Pinker and Richard Powers, who both participated in the Personal Genome Project (PGP) initiated by the Harvard geneticist George M. Church. 22 Pinker, for one, is generally known as an outspoken public advocate of scientific research in general, and of evolutionary psychology and behavioural genetics in particular. Nevertheless, his outlook on genomic testing in “My Genome, My Self,” which appeared in The New York Times in January 2009, is fairly ambivalent. On the one hand, the essay reveals that Pinker is a believer in scientific progress who looks at genome sequencing as a democratic technology that will enable people to “read their essence as a printout detailing their very own A’s, C’s, T’s and G’s”; all of this will be possible one day “for the price of a flat-screen TV.” The titles of their essays - Pinker’s “My Genome, My Self” (2009) and Powers’ “The Book of Me” (2008) - already indicate in what sense genome sequencing can be thought of as an autobiographical technology. However, the two essays are not only autobiographical; they are also intellectual engagements with both the possibilities and limits of genome sequencing, and the question of what this technology means with regard to the ways in which we write our lives. This is what also turns them into highly relevant contexts for the interpretation of Powers’ Generosity. 23 Moreover, he attributes a certain liberating impulse to genomic science, arguing that, “[w]ith the genome no less than with the Internet, information wants to be free” instead of being stifled by “paternalistic measures.” 24 But Pinker’s essay also displays critical potential, especially to the extent that it cautions against understanding the genome as a form of selfknowledge and, in that sense, as the revelation of our life narratives. In this context, he also details in what sense the relationship between genomic information and life writing is fraught from the beginning. Recalling his attempt to use the sequence information as a source of self-knowledge, Pinker concedes that the result was a sobering one: “For all the narcissistic pleasure The underlying implication of a statement like this is that scientific progress will come sooner or later, anyway, and that there is no need for restrictive politics. This way of positioning the two domains against one another is in danger of declaring politics superfluous while rendering science as an irresistible and objective force of progress. The implied conclusion that science could itself act as an improved and ‘nonideological’ manifestation of politics strikes me as problematic, and we will later see that it is questioned by Powers in both his essay and his novel. 22 The difference between the PGP and genotyping companies like 23andMe is that the former sequences the complete genomes of its participants while the latter only analyze a relatively minimal amount of DNA. 23 Pinker online. 24 Ibid. A LEXANDER S CHERR 128 that comes from poring over clues to my inner makeup, I soon realized that I was using my knowledge of myself to make sense of the genetic readout, not the other way around.” 25 This statement suggests that narrative is not simply secondary to the genome, but an indispensable tool for its interpretation from the very beginning. The idea of the genome as a reliable source of life writing gives way to a picture of its relationship to narrative as one that is marked much more by recursion, as Kate O’Riordan shrewdly observes: “All life writing is recursive in the sense that it refers back to and draws upon the life that it narrates. Genomic life stories are endlessly recursive tales that loop through a series of tellings about my genome, myself, my life, and my genomic life writing.” 26 As O’Riordan further explains, the important insight to be gained from this observation is that, “[w]hile genomes are a technology of story, they are not by themselves stories. Genome sequences or scans have to be narrated through annotation, commentary, interpretation, and explanation, in relation to the life of the protagonist.” 27 Since the novel is fairly experimental in its literary style, the interpretation might further benefit from some insights into genomic life writing to be gleaned from Powers’ essay “The Book of Me,” which appeared in GQ magazine in September 2008, about a year before Generosity was first published. Similar to Pinker’s account, the essay details Powers’ personal experiences (and emotional struggles) with genomic testing, including his conversations with George Church, the director of the Personal Genome Project. Powers goes into virtually all of the prospects, hopes and social concerns associated with genomic research. He thematizes his worries about genomics as “the new juggernaut created by embedding commerce so deeply into experimental research, and vice versa,” We will see in section three that Powers’ novel Generosity capitalizes on the epistemological problem of recursion in the making of (genomic) life narratives in various ways. 28 as much as his concerns regarding the biopolitical consequences of genomic research. Accordingly, Powers poses the question “if we aren’t in danger of pathologizing ordinary health” as a result of our knowledge about potential future illnesses, “turning us all into pre-patients for diseases we are only at a risk of contracting.” 29 25 Ibid. All of these issues would later resurface in Generosity in one way or another, but my present interest is in the aspects Powers’ essay addresses with regard to the implications of genomic research for the project of life writing. 26 O’Riordan 128. 27 O’Riordan 129. 28 Richard Powers, “The Book of Me,” GQ, 30 September 2008. http: / / www.gq.com/ story/ richard-powers-genome-sequence? currentPage=11 (last retrieved on March 2, 2016). 29 Ibid. Genomic Life Writing and Genomic Fiction 129 That Powers displays strong interest in these questions is already emphasized by the fact that the GQ website on which the essay has been published features an image of a typewriter producing a printout with linguistic content arranged in the form of a double helix. The picture thus clearly suggests that the ‘genome’ and ‘writing’ are caught up in a highly recursive relationship: The genomic text presumably authors a life, but the typewriter indicates that this text has itself been authored: Somebody must have typed it. Moreover, by naming two of the sections in the essay “climax” and “denouement,” Powers evokes a structure for his experience with genomic testing that is reminiscent of ancient Greek drama. Indeed, the author draws a rather obvious connection between the genomic agenda of making the future predictable and the role of the Oracle in ancient tragedies: Stripped to its essential plot, the personal genome is a story of management. It’s the latest expression of an ancient obsession, one favored by natural selection and coded by our genes. We have dreamed, from the beginning, of intercepting our destiny before we reach it. But this story’s mode is still prophecy. The hero consults the Oracle in order to circumvent the information the Oracle gives him. Unfortunately, nine times out of ten, the hero can’t tell what the hell the Oracle is saying until the murk comes true and reveals how to read it. 30 What Powers is suggesting here is that interpretation can never be innocently retrieved from any given text, especially not from one that is as ambivalent and enigmatic - at least for the time being - as the genome. For obvious reasons, it is much easier to interpret the text if we already know the story, which brings to mind Steven Pinker’s experience with his genetic readout. Another aspect in which Powers’ essay provides insightful perspectives on the idea of genomic life writing concerns the moment when people are confronted with their own genomic ‘text,’ holding the printout with the results of their testing in front of them like a ‘book.’ Powers explains the logic of this moment - the specific kind of temporality that characterizes it - with reference to Peter Brooks’ classic study Reading for the Plot (1984): In Reading for the Plot, Peter Brooks suggests that “our chief tool in making sense of narrative, the master trope of its strange logic,” is “the anticipation of retrospection.” Page one means what it means only because we already know that page 300 is going to change it forever. […] I wonder if getting my personal genome turns me into one of those contemptible readers who stand around in bookstores browsing the last pages before they decide whether or not it’s worth picking up a book. 31 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. The original quotation in Brooks’ Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (New York: Vintage, 1984), 23, reads: “Perhaps we would do best to speak of the anticipation of retrospection as our chief tool in making sense of narrative, the master trope of its strange logic.” A LEXANDER S CHERR 130 In this passage, Powers takes the metaphor of the genome as ‘book’ seriously - but only to reveal its limitations. The analogy he foregrounds is that the genome is a totality of information, much like a novel is to the extent that it gives the reader the impression of having an end-point - a certain number of pages, but no more. However, the logic of recursion strikes again as Powers makes clear that the lived experience of human beings faced with the entirety of their genetic information is not reducible to the genomic ‘text’ as such: The highly individual emotional reaction to the genome sequence already marks a development in one’s life narrative that is not part of the printout. Accordingly, Powers reports how he felt shaky after the announcement that he did not have any single-gene disorders, “realizing what a different article this would have been if [he] had.” 32 This assessment clearly indicates that the genome sequence is “a technology for autobiography” for Powers, too. 33 3. Literary Change: Richard Powers’ Novel Generosity: An Enhancement (2009) as a Representative of Contemporary ‘Genomic Fiction’ Yet, other than with the impression one receives from the 23andMe website, the essay stresses that the technology of genomic testing does not make the telling of a life easier but rather complicates it. It is this insight that will turn out to be a helpful entry point for the interpretation of Powers’ novel. The felicitous genre label of ‘genomic fiction’ has been suggested by Everett Hamner for literary works which, broadly speaking, “may engage genomic testing, modification, or cloning,” or which “may imagine themselves as rigorous forms of scientific self-representation or utilize scientific possibilities only superficially en route to other concerns.” 34 Hamner finds important precursors of the genre in novels such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), and Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End (1953). But he also explains that “in the wake of the Human Genome Project’s 2003 completion, slipstream treatments of genomic identity have been multiplying beyond the genre shelves.” 35 32 Powers online. Apart from Powers’ Generosity: An Enhancement, one might think of such highly popular and renowned works as, for example, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex (2002), Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005), or Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy (2003- 2013). Hamner’s emphasis on issues of “genomic identity” already suggests 33 O’Riordan 125. 34 Hamner 420. 35 Ibid. Genomic Life Writing and Genomic Fiction 131 possible connections to life writing as one of the paramount human practices in which identities and ‘selves’ are negotiated. Focusing on both cultural change and the idea of genomic life writing, as outlined in the first two sections of this contribution, my main aim in the following is to discuss Powers’ Generosity as a prime representative of contemporary genomic fiction in two senses: Firstly, I intend to show that the novel illustrates the various dimensions of cultural change brought about by the possibilities of sequencing complete human genomes. Secondly, I will argue that the text performs literary change with regard to its formal and stylistic features. We will see that the experimental aesthetics of the novel can be interpreted to be a result of its engagement with both genomics and life writing. Generally speaking, one may not be surprised about the fact that a novel penned by Richard Powers engages in some sort of cultural diagnosis, paying special attention to the social impacts of scientific inventions and technologies. Commentators on his fiction have emphasized the sense of ‘interconnectedness’ it almost always conveys. Kathryn Hume, for instance, has argued that Powers’ novels advance their readers’ understanding of “the networked nature of reality,” 36 even if the picture of society painted in these novels is frequently rather bleak. As Hume puts it: “Not only is his vision too dark to admit much improvement, his grasp of all the social vectors lets him ground such pessimism on a myriad of facts - economic, technological, and related to the structure of the brain and mind. The interconnectedness of everything makes his world very difficult to change.” 37 It is therefore not really surprising that Powers has been called “the novelist of ‘science studies’” by no other than one of the most eminent representatives of the discipline, the French sociologist Bruno Latour. 38 Latour has shown in his works how science and society are intertwined to the extent that ‘facts’ and ‘knowledge’ are always coproduced in complex social networks that involve various actors. According to his analysis, science cannot be placed outside of society but, on the contrary, is always already entangled with political and economic interests and therefore necessarily ‘hybrid.’ As Latour phrases it at the beginning of his essay We Have Never Been Modern, for scholars of science studies this means that they “are always attempting to retie the Gordian knot by crisscrossing […] the divide that separates exact knowledge and the exercise of power - let us say nature and 36 Kathryn Hume, “Moral Problematics in the Novels of Richard Powers,” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 54 (2013): 7. 37 Hume 6. 38 Bruno Latour, “Powers of the Facsimile: A Turing Test on Science and Literature,” Intersections: Essays on Richard Powers, eds. Stephen J. Burn, Peter Dempsey (Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2008), 264. A LEXANDER S CHERR 132 culture.” 39 Karin Höpker has convincingly brought Latour’s philosophy of science to bear on her reading of Generosity. More specifically, she argues that the fictional text explores “the new mode of technoscientific knowledge production after a significant epistemic shift in scientific practice.” 40 In order to show to what extent Generosity displays awareness of ongoing cultural change with regard to scientific practices, a brief plot summary seems helpful. This epistemic shift is fundamentally connected to the nature of genomic research, which is not only caught up in both science and commerce, but which has also modified the practices of life writing in contemporary Western societies. 41 The novel features as its main focalizer the character of Russell Stone, a writing instructor at Mesquakie College of Art in Chicago, but the plot gains momentum with the introduction of Thassadit Amzwar, a participant in Russell’s class, who is a veritable enigma to her teacher and to everybody who makes her acquaintance. What perplexes the people surrounding Thassa is the relentless amount of joyfulness the 23-year-old woman displays - in spite of the fact that she is a refugee from the Algerian civil war, in which she lost both of her parents. Bewitching all of her peers and Russell alike, Thassa soon becomes “Miss Generosity” (28) in the writing class, but an even bigger narrative concerning her identity is already in the making: As her case becomes more and more public, Thassa attracts the interest of the genomicist Thomas Kurton and his private company Truecyte. For the scientist, the young woman is a potential “missing datum” (138) insofar as she might support his thesis that happiness and emotional well-being are predetermined by our genetic make-up. However, the novel illustrates that Kurton’s research is entangled with economic interests that govern the production of scientific knowledge from the beginning. Thassa is not only gradually turned into “the fetishized object of a mass hysteria,” 42 39 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge/ MA, London: Harvard UP, 1993 [1991]), 3. acquiring increasing popularity as “the Bliss Chick” (110). Kurton also participates in the public marketing of Thassa’s personality because his research is documented in a science edutainment show entitled “The Genie and the Genome.” As Thassa’s case becomes more and more public, she gets “hounded by the hungry, clutched by the desperate, reduced by the scientific, dissected by the newshounds, stoned by the religious, bid on by the entrepreneurs, denounced by the disappointed” (304). Being finally unable to stand the pub- 40 Karin Höpker, “Happiness in Distress - Richard Powers’ Generosity and Narratives of the Biomedical Self,” Ideas of Order: Narrative Patterns in the Novels of Richard Powers, eds. Antje Kley, Jan Kucharzewski (Heidelberg: Winter, 2012), 288. 41 Citations from the novel will be given in the text. They are based on the following edition of the novel: Richard Powers, Generosity: An Enhancement (New York: Picador, 2009). 42 Höpker 288. Genomic Life Writing and Genomic Fiction 133 lic pressure, Thassa chooses to preserve a last bit of agency by committing suicide. She is redeemed in a second ending, in which the narrator writes Thassa back to life and has her return to Algeria, where her daughter is born. This plot overview corroborates Höpker’s observation that “Generosity speaks to […] the structural, economic, social, and disciplinary ramifications of scientific knowledge production” in an age that is dominated by the Internet, social media and TV culture. 43 The novel as a whole does not really seem to answer this question in the affirmative, as the topos of the ‘scriptedness’ of lives is brought up again and again in the text. Accordingly, not only Russell himself has to “figh[t] the sense of being scripted” (81). Much to his regret, he also realizes that Thassa’s narrative is determined by social forces beyond his control. As the narrator puts it: Similar to Steven Pinker’s case, where autobiographical self-knowledge precedes the interpretation of genetic data, in Generosity it is the narratives about Thassa in edutainment shows, talk shows and online reportage that narrativize Kurton’s research into a search for the “happiness gene” long before Thassa actually agrees to genomic testing. Hence, a seminal question which Generosity provokes is who is in charge of the telling of Thassa’s narrative, and by implication of all genomic life writing in our society. Thassa invokes this question herself in one of her reflective moments, asking Russell whether “[he] think[s] it’s possible for people to change their own story” (92). He [Russell] knows this story. You know this story: Thassa will be taken away from him. Other interests will lay claim. His charge will become public property. He might have kept quiet and learned from her, captured her in his journal, shared a few words at the end of his allotted four months, then returned to real life, slightly changed. A vaguely midlist literary story. But he’s doomed himself by calling in the expert. It’s his own fault, for thinking that Thassa’s joy must mean something, for imagining that such a plot has to go somewhere, that something has to happen. (93-94) Powers’ novel thus indicates that the story of Thassa’s personality has neither been hers nor Russell’s from the beginning. Instead, it is a highly interwoven story that emerges as an accomplishment of various actors, which include the genomicist Kurton as much as the documentary filmmaker Tonia Schiff, Thassa herself and the anonymous third-person narrator whose identity is only revealed at the end of the book - a twist I will return to in due course. Life writing has obviously become a difficult practice in Powers’ postgenomic world. In fact, his novel could be read as a meditation on life writing itself, which it even renders as a potentially violent act. In this context, Kathryn Hume aptly observes that “Generosity is in part about how we consume for casual entertainment not only popular science but also people like 43 Höpker 300. A LEXANDER S CHERR 134 Thassadit; she became a momentary celebrity and has her life seriously damaged into an envied spectacle.” 44 In addition to the network of actors involved in the making of Thassa’s narrative, Generosity invites a radical approach to the question of how (all) scientific knowledge is produced in contemporary media societies. The text introduces a Darwinian stance on the nature of knowledge, in that questions of the truth of scientific hypotheses appear subordinated under matters of ‘survival’ within the scientific community. The parameters of survival, again, are determined by the various interdependencies between genomic science, the companies funding its research, and the mass media in which findings are narrativized and disseminated. The narrator explains the logic of knowledge production in a passage in which the publication of scientific theories is rendered in a sociobiological light: In one of the most drastic scenes in the novel, the wish to control Thassa’s life culminates in an attempted (but unsuccessful) rape. This criminal act, committed by one of the woman’s classmates, certainly carries symbolic force far beyond the plot level. It is a blatant metaphorical representation of an individual life’s subjection under external powers of (narrative) control, of which Generosity is generally suspicious. Even Russell himself is not completely innocent of having appropriated other people’s lives under his narrative regime in the past: At the beginning of the novel (cf. 14-16), we learn of a Native American man who once attempted to take his own life, possibly because he had been misrepresented in one of Russell’s articles. Viewed in this light, life writing appears more as an imposition of meaning than an accurate reproduction of a given person’s ‘story,’ which is never really there in the first place. All research gambles against time. Kurton calls it hunting the mastodon. An unruly band with sticks and stones stalks a creature larger than all of them combined. Hang back and lose the prey; rush too soon and get gored. Smart risks live to reproduce; poor ones die off. Thomas Kurton excels at research because his ancestors stalked well. (130) The image of science that the reader is presented with in this passage is that “truth is red in tooth and claw” (211), as the narrator puts it elsewhere. It is strongly suggested that since Truecyte is “a private company […], accountable to no one but their investors” (212), the maxim of Kurton’s actions is to secure the company’s survival in a highly competitive environment. The production of knowledge is always secondary to the Darwinian imperative. Accordingly, the factors which govern the decision to go public with one’s findings include “timing in relation to [the] research of others, hedging of risk, optimizing of economic impact.” 45 44 Hume 3. While such economic and social fac- 45 Höpker 302. Genomic Life Writing and Genomic Fiction 135 tors have always affected the question of whether a scientific theory could take hold in the community or not, Generosity asserts that “the technoscientific networks of knowledge production” are even more interwoven in the post-genomic age. 46 In order to see that Generosity performs literary change with regard to its own novelistic style, Heike Schäfer has argued that we need to look no further than its subtitle. While the idea of “Enhancement” certainly alludes to the novel’s thematic concerns, Schäfer points out that the notion is strikingly placed at a position where we usually expect the generic marker ‘A Novel.’ She thus proposes that the subtitle can be taken “to suggest that Powers’ most recent book offers an ‘enhancement’ of the novel tradition,” The novel’s narrator diagnoses this facet of cultural change in a similar way, following up on the above-cited narrative of scientific research: “The mastodon has evolved. It’s a whole new elephant” (212). The implications for scientific research are dire: Kurton may have perfected his philosophy of science, given the economic success of his private company, but the Darwinian picture also suggests that all knowledge claimed by science must remain somewhat insecure and transitional. This cultural diagnosis affects the form in which Powers’ narrative presents itself to the reader in a very fundamental sense. 47 which constitutes a highly self-conscious proclamation of literary change. The reasons for the novel to ‘enhance itself’ may partly be found in the changed media ecology, especially in the “emergence of an information culture shaped by social media and TV,” 48 which Powers’ text thematizes. From this vantage point, the key question to which the novel needs to find an answer is nicely phrased by Schäfer in the following way: “[H]ow can literary culture break out of the mold of inherited rules and conventions and reinvent itself in order to remain relevant to the lives of its authors and readers in the age of consumer genomics, commercial TV, and social media? ” 49 Generosity’s attempt to preserve the cultural authority of the novel interestingly moves into the opposite direction of what Paul Dawson has identified as a major trend in contemporary fiction in a widely received article: “the return of omniscience,” 50 which Dawson marks as “one response by writers to the decline of literary authority.” 51 46 Ibid. Yet, given the fact that Powers displays 47 Heike Schäfer, “The Pursuit of Happiness 2.0: Consumer Genomics, Social Media, and the Promise of Literary Innovation in Richard Powers’s Novel Generosity (2009),” Ideas of Order: Narrative Patterns in the Novels of Richard Powers, eds. Antje Kley, Jan Kucharzewski (Heidelberg: Winter, 2012), 264. 48 Schäfer 263. 49 Schäfer 268. 50 See Paul Dawson, “The Return of Omniscience in Contemporary Fiction,” Narrative 17.2 (2009): 143-161. 51 Dawson 150. A LEXANDER S CHERR 136 a cautious attitude towards the making of premature narratives about both people’s genomes and their lives, one may already surmise that neither omniscience nor traditional realism are serious options for him as an author. Instead, Generosity puts the idea of “creative nonfiction” centre stage, which is also the topic of Russell’s writing class on the novel’s story level. One might suggest, then, that the very idea of creative nonfiction, with its “paradoxical orientation towards both fact and fiction,” 52 embodies the epistemological insecurity with which we presently stand in front of the genome as text. As Powers remarks at the end of his essay “The Book of Me”: “[T]he dream of molecular management notwithstanding, we are unthinkably far away from ever being able to control the story. The impenetrable texts will have their way with us, in the end.” 53 A general sense of insecurity regarding the making of narratives manifests itself in a range of aesthetic strategies in Generosity; their effects are best described as ‘metanarrative’ and ‘metafictional.’ Since Powers conceives of genomes as ‘texts’ that escape the control of individual authors, his novel adopts a style that could be called elusive or even ‘genomic’ in precisely this sense. 54 At the beginning of the novel, for example, the narrator is reluctant to prematurely ascribe any kind of identity to the as yet unnamed Russell: “I can’t see him well, at first. But that’s my fault, not his. I’m years away, in another country, and the El car is so full tonight that everyone’s near invisible. […] The blank page is patient, and meaning can wait. I watch until he solidifies” (3). Toon Staes is therefore right in observing that we are dealing with a narrator who self-consciously realizes that “this is a narrative beyond his absolute control.” 55 52 Schäfer 276. What is more, due to its metafictional mode of narration, the text constantly leaves the reader in doubt about which of the reported events have the status of the actual and which are merely possible or misapprehended by the narrator. Other than the documentaries, talk shows and online media referenced on the story level, all of which are quick to narrativize Thassa into the “Bliss Chick,” the narrator’s own stance on teleological trajectories is much more 53 Powers, “The Book of Me,” online. 54 While ‘metanarration’ and ‘metafiction’ are sometimes used synonymously, I follow the proposal to distinguish between the two concepts, as put forward by Birgit Neumann and Ansgar Nünning in their entry on “Metanarration and Metafiction” for the Handbook of Narratology, eds. Peter Hühn et al. (Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2014 [2009]), 344-352. The terminological distinction makes sense because metanarrative passages need not necessarily be metafictional or ‘anti-illusionistic,’ but can also support the production of an aesthetic illusion on the part of the reader. In the case of Powers’ novel, however, instances of metanarration are mostly used to problematize the representational accuracy of all life writing and thus metafictional in their effect. Narration is continuously presented in a critical light in Generosity. 55 Toon Staes, “The Fictionality Debate and the Complex Texts of Richard Powers and William T. Vollmann,” Neophilologus 98 (2014): 184. Genomic Life Writing and Genomic Fiction 137 ambiguous, as he even considers the very concept of ‘plot’ as “preposterous”: “He could never survive the responsibility of making something happen” (297). Accordingly, the aesthetics of realism are explicitly rejected by the narrator: “Realism - the whole threadbare patch job of consoling conventions - is like one of those painkillers that gets you addicted without helping anything. In reality, a million things happen all at once for no good reason, until some idiot texting on his cell plows into you on the expressway in northern Indiana” (297-298). In the light of the critique of literary realism issued in the novel itself, I would argue that Powers’ style, which “renders impossible any easy distinction between events that ‘actually happened’ and those relying on ‘creativity with the facts,’” embraces a cautious stance on life writing. In particular, it can be interpreted as a reaction to the assertive “tales from the genome,” whose reliability the fictional genomicist Kurton seems to promote as much as the marketing strategies of genotyping companies like 23andMe intend to make their customers believe. Hamner arrives at a similar conclusion in his reading of Generosity, arguing that “Powers is striving for a fiction that operates quite oppositely to dogma, a hybridized creative nonfiction in which metanarratival layers are not just aesthetic glosses but critical elements for making and then unmaking mythology.” 56 A careful attitude towards life writing is not only expressed with regard to the character of Thassa. In fact, the problem of writing (or ‘predicting’) a person’s life applies to Russell himself, as the writing instructor turns out to be the previously anonymous narrator of the novel at the end of the story. This twist in the novel’s design leaves ample room for interpretation, but it seems to make sense, in the light of the previous discussion, to attribute the following three functions to it: For one thing, the revelation that the narrator has been writing about himself in third person - and the self-distancing effect of this strategy - confirm how hesitant Russell is about subordinating any human life prematurely under a regime of narrative interpretation, even the one he should know best. Secondly, as Hamner astutely observes, “recognizing Russell as narrator makes the entire novel into a record of its own composition - rather like the human genome.” 57 56 Hamner 438. See also Schäfer 270, who offers a similar explanation for why Powers is suspicious of literary realism: “The transparency effects of realist writing are problematic […] because they allow omniscient narrators to push totalizing accounts of reality that conceal their ideological investment in certain metanarratives. This typically postmodern critique of realism is relevant for the novel’s critical appraisal of current scientific discourse because Kurton’s consumer genomics perpetuate the old metanarrative of human progress through unbridled scientific and technological invention without considering the human and environmental costs of its historical precedents.” Thus, the idea of the genome as a record of genetic information that has been rewritten again and again in the course of evolution also matches up with an explanation Russell gives his 57 Hamner 436. A LEXANDER S CHERR 138 students in the writing class: “All writing is rewriting” (37) and, in this sense, inherently recursive. Thirdly, the logic of recursion can be connected to Peter Brooks’ principle of the ‘anticipation of retrospection,’ upon which Powers reflects in his essay in GQ magazine. Accordingly, one might argue that Generosity, much more than linear narratives do, encourages a re-reading of the novel that allows us to experience Powers’ enigmatic - or even ‘genomic’ - text in a new light, once we have acquired the knowledge of its ending. The idea of recursion is highlighted symbolically, last but not least, by means of the Möbius strips that are inserted as glyphs between the individual sections of the novel. 58 4. Conclusion: Cultural, Generic and Literary Change in Powers’ Fiction Powers thus presents an understanding of life writing in his novel that defies the idea of an Archimedean vantage point for the telling of life narratives. The genome in itself cannot provide people with a stable sense of identity - it is rather one factor among many in the continual rewriting of human biographies. This essay has put forward a reading of Powers’ Generosity as a novel that diagnoses ‘cultural change,’ while actively engaging in ‘literary change.’ These two aspects must be seen as closely intertwined since the kind of cultural change the novel diagnoses - a modified information culture in which knowledge about the human genome is disseminated in edutainment shows and on the Internet - immediately affects the authority of the novel. I have included the aspect of ‘generic change’ in the previous discussion, as the emergence of new forms of genomic life writing testifies to “a significant epistemic shift in scientific practice” in the wake of the completion of the first human reference genome at the beginning of the new millennium. 59 58 See also Hamner 437. However, in order to preserve the cultural authority of the novel as a highly reflective form of life writing, Generosity moves into the opposite direction of the “tales from the genome” marketed by fictional genomicists like Kurton and actual genotyping companies like 23andMe. In terms of literary style, this orientation results in the form of ‘creative nonfiction,’ which renders a straightforward distinction between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ in the making of lives as problematic from the outset. With reference to Hubert Zapf’s triadic model of the functions of literary texts within wider cultural ecologies, one might therefore conclude that Powers’ Generosity adopts the function of a “culturalcritical metadiscourse” in its relation to the kind of life writing promoted by 59 Höpker 288. Genomic Life Writing and Genomic Fiction 139 some personal genomics and biotechnology companies. 60 Viewed in its entirety, Powers’ stance on the genome as the ‘book of life’ appears ambivalent. While the conceptualization of the genome as ‘text’ or ‘book’ is far from being uncontested among scientists, who have long begun to explore new metaphorical registers in their understanding of the genome (for example, by speaking of the ‘mapping’ of genes), Powers generally takes the metaphor seriously, both in his essay and his novel. In “The Book of Me,” he seems rather unanimous about the fact that holding the printout of a genome sequence in one’s hands inevitably provides one with an uncanny ‘anticipation of retrospection,’ no matter how much of the information can meaningfully be decoded at present. But Powers also strongly suggests that genomes are still largely “impenetrable” texts for us. Most importantly, “they are not by themselves stories,” especially to the extent that their interpretation is reliant upon pre-existing life narratives with which genetic data must be correlated in order to be rendered meaningful at all. When confronted with enigmatic or ‘genomic’ texts (in the widest sense), we may therefore wish to follow the advice with which Powers concludes his essay: “Get literate. Read wider. Read deeper. Read more variously, more critically, more suspiciously, more vicariously. Read in anticipation of retrospection. Page one is already being changed by all the pages still to come.” In particular, the novel questions the assertiveness with which these companies promise to ‘complete’ their customers’ life stories, rendering the writing of a life instead as a highly difficult - and even potentially violent - task. 61 60 Cf. Hubert Zapf, “Das Funktionsmodell der Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie: Imaginative Texte im Spannungsfeld von Dekonstruktion und Regeneration,” Funktionen von Literatur: Theoretische Grundlagen und Modellinterpretationen, eds. Marion Gymnich, Ansgar Nünning (Trier: WVT, 2005), 55-77. With regard to the function of the ‘cultural-critical metadiscourse,‘ see Zapf 68: “Hier spielt vor allem der Monopolanspruch zivilisationsbestimmender Realitäts- und Diskurssysteme eine wichtige Rolle, in denen einseitighierarchische Oppositionen wie Geist vs. Körper, Vernunft vs. Emotion, Eigenes vs. Anderes, Ordnung vs. Chaos, Kultur vs. Natur vorherrschen und die tiefgreifende Entfremdungseffekte im ‚biophilen,’ psychologisch-anthropologischen Grundhaushalt des Menschen hervorrufen. Diese Systeme werden auf eine Weise repräsentiert, dass sie zugleich dekonstruiert werden […].” 61 Powers, “The Book of Me,” online. A LEXANDER S CHERR 140 Works Cited 23andMe. www.23andme.com (last retrieved on March 2, 2016). Basseler, Michael, Ansgar Nünning, and Christine Schwanecke, eds. The Cultural Dynamics of Generic Change in Contemporary Fiction: Theoretical Frameworks, Genres and Model Interpretations. Trier: WVT, 2013a. 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Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Schäfer, Heike. “The Pursuit of Happiness 2.0: Consumer Genomics, Social Media, and the Promise of Literary Innovation in Richard Powers’s Novel Generosity (2009).” Ideas of Order: Narrative Patterns in the Novels of Richard Powers. Eds. Antje Kley, Jan Kucharzewski. Heidelberg: Winter, 2012, 263-284. Staes, Toon. “The Fictionality Debate and the Complex Texts of Richard Powers and William T. Vollmann.” Neophilologus 98 (2014): 177-192. Waugh, Patricia. “Science and Fiction in the 1990s.” British Fiction of the 1990s. Ed. Nick Bentley. London, New York: Routledge, 2005, 57-77. Zapf, Hubert. “Das Funktionsmodell der Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie: Imaginative Texte im Spannungsfeld von Dekonstruktion und Regeneration.” Funktionen von Literatur: Theoretische Grundlagen und Modellinterpretationen. Eds. Marion Gymnich, Ansgar Nünning. Trier: WVT, 2005, 55-77. III. Literature in Response to Cultural Change C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage: Richard Brome’s A Jovial Crew (1641/ 2) at the Dawn of the English Civil War 1. Introduction In the early modern period, the generic system and its values looked completely different from the one we are now familiar with; drama and theatre were immensely popular, to an extent that is difficult to grasp today. It seems pertinent to revisit this period in the context of discussing the changing relations between literature and culture from a historical perspective. Plays were so widely received that - when it comes to combining entertainment and information - they can arguably be compared to media formats and products of today, such as television or the internet. Theatre was the popular medium and institution in the seventeenth century, vividly bringing to life current anxieties, hopes, and desires; and it also served the dramatic enactments of political struggles, power shifts, and regime changes. 1 In this article, I would like to focus on a less well-known Caroline play that addresses changing power structures at the time of the English Civil War. Since discussions of early modern English drama tend to focus almost The potential impact of theatre on large crowds in London and the provinces is reflected in frequent attempts, by Puritan preachers and city magistrates, to suppress it. Playhouses were frequently closed during outbreaks of the plague, but also in times of political insecurity. 1 Literary historical works that have discussed (early modern) drama and politics in an intriguing manner include (parts of) books, e.g., Simon Sheperd’s and Peter Womack’s English Drama: A Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), and articles, e.g., David Scott Kastan’s “Performances and Playbooks: The Closing of the Theatres and the Politics,” Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England, eds. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), 167-184. Even though those works have perhaps not or only marginally been influenced by New Historicist concerns, the latter seem as relevant as ever. There is an ongoing trend to read plays but also other kinds of literary texts in their historical contexts and politically (cf. fn. 12-14). This trend has been informed by Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980), in which he analyses Renaissance literature in political terms and frames it as cultural product that resonates with its culture of origin. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 146 exclusively on Shakespeare, this is also intended as a contribution to broadening the literary canon of English Renaissance studies. 2 Richard Brome’s A Jovial Crew was penned around 1640, at a time of social crisis and instability and with a government in transition. The kinds of cultural change that I will zoom in on and that are imagined in the play concern shifts and transformations in at least three areas that can be considered parts of (Caroline) culture: firstly, politics and (state) philosophy; secondly, society and social power structures; as well as, thirdly, economics. My article is based on the assumption that the intricate relationships between literature and culture - in any of culture’s dimensions just mentioned - come especially clearly to the fore at times of cultural crisis and subsequent change. 3 In times of socio-political struggle, “drama itself becomes the site of […] [cultural] debate [; it] indicates cultural change and a new engagement of playwrights with the question of how good governance could be established.” With Brome’s comedy, my focus is on dramatic production at this time of sociopolitical change and instability. 4 2 Critics have become increasingly aware of this problem. At the same time, opening up the Renaissance canon seems to be a challenge. Noting that “Shakespeare has formed the pivot of the relationship between drama and culture for several centuries,“ Matthias Bauer and Angelika Zirker have still presented their scholarly audience with a volume in which eight out of twelve articles focus on the very playwright. See Matthias Bauer, Angelika Zirker, “Preface,” Drama and Cultural Change: Turning around Shakespeare, eds. Bauer and Zirker (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009), 1-4, 1. Richard Brome’s A Jovial Crew, or The Merry Beggars is such a play. It can be considered a site of social, political, and/ or economic debate which 3 The concept of the ‘turning point’ as framed by Ansgar Nünning and Kai Marcel Sicks is certainly related to this understanding of change; cf. Ansgar Nünning and Kai Marcel Sicks, “Turning Points as Metaphors and Mininarrations: Analysing Concepts of Change in Literature and Other Media,” Turning Points: Concepts and Narratives of Change in Literature and Other Media, eds. Ansgar Nünning and Kai Marcel Sicks [Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012], 1-28). While the socio-cultural changes and the changing mentalities of the English people during the reigns of James I and Charles I that led to the Civil War might be rightfully conceptualised as “cultural transformation,“ i.e., as retrospectively “constructed” processes (Nünning/ Sicks 2) that were to describe and explain people’s changing mind-sets, the change in the form of government can be framed as a historical turning point par excellence: with the execution of Charles I and the establishment of a commonwealth the turning point from one form of government to the other is actually and objectively given (even though, admittedly, Cromwell’s ‘reign’ qualitatively did not differ much from the previous monarch’s). 4 Bauer/ Zirker 3. See also Joerg O. Fichte, “The Appearance of the Commonwealth and the People in Tudor Drama,” Drama and Cultural Change: Turning around Shakespeare, eds. Matthias Bauer and Angelika Zirker (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009), 5-22, here, 22. For other forms and functions of drama and other literary genres as sites of cultural debate and discursive negotiation, see, e.g., Ingo Berensmeyer and Andrew Hadfield, “Mendacity in Early Modern Literature and Culture: An Introduction,” European Journal of English Studies 19/ 2 (2015): 131-147. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 147 deals with - then topical - questions of good government. Written around 1640, 5 it emerged when England found itself in a state of political turmoil and just before an imminent power shift: the nation was split over the politics of King Charles I and the English Civil War, the beheading of Charles, and the institution of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, were events that followed. 6 Using the term mediation, I would like to stress the importance of cultural artefacts, such as plays, written or performed, as instruments for sensemaking. They can give events, mind-sets, and power structures that occur in history a literary shape; they can creatively express them and/ or artistically process them. Artefacts like plays are able to select, emplot, contextualise, and remediate (parts of) factual worlds in fiction and, thus, mediate between individuals and their historical contexts and between the experience of individuals and groups of people. Richard Brome’s play engages with the different political opinions and varied viewpoints on government and administration which were part of the public debate at the time of the struggle between the king, the parliament, and other agents. As such, I argue, the play can be said to, firstly, mediate prevalent cultural concerns and conflicting ideas on politics, economics, and social hierarchies; secondly, it serves as a thought experiment, imagining alternative societies and different governments; and in so doing, it can be thirdly said to prefigure both alternative societies, such as commonwealths, and political change itself. 7 It is important to add, however, that plays, just like literature in general, not only process and remediate existing worlds and mind-sets; they also offer alternative options; they may serve as thought experiments, as an “imaginative exercise designed to determine what would happen if certain conditions were met.” 8 5 The publication history of A Jovial Crew also indicates how closely the play is involved in its historical context: it was first performed in 1641 or 1642, i.e., before the English Civil War. See Tiffany Stern, “Introduction,” A Jovial Crew, ed. Tiffany Stern (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). 1-68, 13. However, it was only in 1652, i.e., after the War, that the play was first printed. See Klaus Stierstorfer, “Richard Brome: A Joviall Crew, or the Merry Beggars,” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon Online, ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold (2009; https: www.kll-online.de; last retrieved 12 April 2015). In imagining, narrating, and per- 6 If not in consequence, at least in temporal sequence. For a historical interpretation of the events, see John Morrill, “The Causes and Course of the British Civil Wars,” The Cambridge Companion to Writing of the English Revolution, ed. N. H. Keeble (Cambridge: Cambridge Unversity Press, 2001), 13-31. 7 My use of remediation and mediation corresponds with Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney’s use in “Introduction: Cultural Memory and its Dynamics,” Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, ed. Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney (Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter, 2009), 1-11. They have built their theory upon Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999). 8 Catherine Z. Elgin, “The Laboratory of the Mind,” A Sense of the World: Essays on Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge, ed. John Gibson, Wolfgang Huemer, and Luca Pocci (New York: Routledge, 2009), 43-55. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 148 forming worlds and governments that differ from the real ones, plays might be even able to premediate future worlds and governments. 9 Using the term premediation, I would like to stress that artistic products, such as plays, which circulate in a given culture, provide categories for new experience and its representation. 10 If one studies A Jovial Crew in context and against the backdrop of the assumptions just made, the following questions arise: firstly, how does Brome relate to matters pertinent to the cultural context in which it arose; i.e., how does he emplot political, social, and economic questions; how does he deal with questions of government? Secondly, to what extent does Brome’s play function as a thought experiment and in which ways does it imagine alternative cultures? And thirdly, to what extent might A Jovial Crew even prefigure (some of) the political events that shaped the early modern society and its culture? Accordingly, the representations of thought experiments in plays may not be only indicative of desires and concerns given in a certain society, they may also anticipate this society’s future. They may prefigure the experience of cultural change, of new power structures, and future mind-sets. At this point, I had better concede that the contextual argument I will make is by no means uncontested. The pastoral romance that deals with gentry becoming beggars (and vice versa) has been discussed controversially before: some critics hold it is a play on politics, others say that if it is political, it is just incidentally so, while others, again, think it escapist and evasive of the current political situation. 11 If, however, with Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer, one assumes that literary - including dramatic - texts can always be read as forms of cultural self-perception and self-reflection, 12 9 See also Julie Sanders, who states that “with Parliament inactive, London theatres constituted alternative spaces and talking-shops for ideas. Julie Sanders, “Beggar’s Commonwealths and the Pre-Civil War Stage,” Modern Language Review 97.1 (2002): 1-14, 4. Brome’s A Jovial Crew, with its social conflicts and solutions, its gentry and beggars, and its reflections on kingships and commonwealths, presents a certain atmosphere of insecurity and instability. And even though contextual arguments are notoriously difficult to prove, it can be assumed that literary texts - especially as popular ones as seventeenth-century plays - are, indeed, ‘articula- 10 On the concept of premediation see Richard Grusin, “Premediation,” Criticism 46/ 1 (2004): 17-39 and Astrid Erll, “Remembering across Time, Space, and Cultures: Premediation, Remediation, and ‘The Indian Mutiny,’” Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, ed. Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney (Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter 2009), 109-138. 11 See Stern 13-16. 12 Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer, „Kulturwissenschaftliche Literaturwissenschaft: Disziplinäre Ansätze, theoretische Positionen und transdisziplinäre Perspektiven,“ Kulturwissenschaftliche Literaturwissenschaft: Disziplinäre Ansätze - Theoretische Positionen - Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven, ed. Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer (Tübingen: Narr, 2004), 9-29, 20. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 149 tions of a change,’ 13 widely perceived thought experiments that deliberate ongoing cultural transformations, which, by way of their storytelling, might even prefigure on stage what is about to happen outside the theatre: 14 a change in the form of government. 15 My analysis will focus in particular on the play’s aesthetic and formal aspects. Oscillating between different dramatic modes - narrativity and theatricality - and featuring stark thematic contrasts, the play’s aesthetics certainly reveal much of the position of drama and theatre within and towards its time of production and first reception. I am going to ask how the pastoral romance digests the cultural facts of its times (be they economic, political, and/ or social) and how it is indicative of these times and dimensions; and I am going to discuss the functions A Jovial Crew might have had for its contemporary audiences. Tracing the aesthetic modes between which the play oscillates, especially its heightened degrees of narrativity and theatricality, and its reversal of these modes, I will try to capture not only the play’s ambivalences but also the cultural circumstances which it reveals - and probably even prefigures. I will begin by examining A Jovial Crew’s story level (section 2.1). Here, I will ask in which ways Brome stages the differences and analogies between those classes in power and those not in power, and in which ways he conceptualises the world and society of a play which, as the prologue says, was produced (and first performed) in “sad and tragic days” (A Jovial Crew, ‘Prologue,’ l. 3). I will continue by studying the ways in which A Jovial Crew’s topics are presented and organised. I will, firstly, explore the ways in which Brome employs narrative to challenge both existing power relations and (maybe all too) idealistic narratives of change (section 2.2). Secondly, I will analyse the ways in which Brome theatrically configures and, possibly, prefigures regime change (section 2.3). In my conclusion (section 3), I will, on 13 See also Albrecht Koschorke, who understands literature, especially narrative literature, as a cultural practice that ‘articulates change’: Koschorke, Wahrheit und Erfindung: Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Erzähltheorie (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2012), 25. 14 According to Manfred Engel (whose thoughts parallel Grusin’s concept of premediation; see fn. 9), one can even go further: understanding literature as a substantial part of a culture, he argues that literature contributes to the construction of a culture’s semiotic systems, its mentalities, practices, and - maybe even - political organisation. Thus, it helps constituting, perpetuating, and transforming the very culture it is a constituent of. Manfred Engel, “Kulturwissenschaft/ en - Literaturwissenschaft als Kulturwissenschaft - kulturgeschichtliche Literaturwissenschaft,” KulturPoetik 1/ 1 (2001): 8-36, here, 21. 15 In this it seems to be similar to the Restoration plays David Roberts deals with in Restoration Plays and Players (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014). On the basis of “the genre of regime change fiction” (6), he discusses select plays, e.g., Dryden’s The Conquest of Grananda (1670/ 1), in relation to contemporary politics and as examples of “regime change theatre” (1-28). C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 150 the basis of my findings, reconsider the relation between A Jovial Crew as a literary work and the cultural context from which it emerged. 2. Between Theatricality and Narrativity - Dramatic Mediations of an Ambivalent Time Inquiring into the ways in which Brome mediates, remediates, or even premediates cultural change in the above-mentioned sense (i.e., cultural change as a complex of shifts and transformations in the realms of Caroline politics, economics, society and social power structures), one has to examine, first and foremost, the dramatic strategies that predominantly characterise his play. On its story level, A Jovial Crew is arguably characterised by stark contrasts and remarkable ambivalences on various levels: concerning the construction of individual characters, the play’s character constellation, plot, topics, and the ways in which all of these aspects are assessed within the characters’ world (and by recipients). Discursively, the play’s most conspicuous feature is its salient use of two generic modes which are often seen as contrasting and usually not considered together: ‘theatricality’ and ‘narrativity.’ 16 2.1 Sketching the Image of a Complex Society: Power Relations and the Entanglement of Classes in A Jovial Crew As a story and in its foregrounding of practices of narration, Brome’s play counters the existing form of government and its distribution of power; it imagines alternative systems and their possible benefits. At the same time, the play advertises no simplistic judgement of these narratively constructed alternatives: it also challenges and questions their benefits. In its theatricality and its meta-theatricality, A Jovial Crew self-referentially reflects upon Renaissance theatre as an institution of cultural mediation and revelation, which has the power to anticipate, visualise, and take part in processes of cultural and political change. With A Jovial Crew, Brome compares the beggars and gentry of the Caroline era by tracing parallels and contrasts. In doing so, he sketches a picture of a society in which nothing is as it first appears and in which links between seemingly different classes are highlighted to minimise the importance of experienced and imagined distinctions. The notion that all humans are equal 16 For a review on how these concepts have been dealt with separately and some theses on how they can be brought together, see Ansgar Nünning and Christine Schwanecke, “The Performative Power of Unreliable Narration and Focalisation in Drama and Theatre: Conceptualising the Specifity of Dramatic Unreliability,” Unreliable Narration and Trustworthitness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Vera Nünning (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 189-219. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 151 in both their merits and their faults as well as the stock figure of the beggar and his/ her entanglements with higher classes are stage matters that are not particularly novel: Richard Brome’s story of an old squire, Oldrents, and his relatives refers to at least two important dramatic traditions and combines them. First, links to beggar masques can be traced, such as Ben Jonson’s The Gypsies Metamorphosed (1621) or Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s Beggars’ Bush (1622); they, too, discuss ideas of alternative commonwealths by playfully drawing parallels between very different social ranks and by exploiting their perceived differences. This is combined with a second tradition of earlier plays; plays that decidedly reflect the idea of a commonwealth, such as Nicholas Udall’s morality Respublica (first staged in 1553) or John Bale’s history King Johan (possibly first staged in 1539), the Tudor plays which Joerg O. Fichte discusses so fruitfully. 17 Yet, in making use of these traditions, combining them, and staging them in a politically troubled period (it is even the last play to be staged before the theatres were shut down by order of Parliament in 1642), 18 the author of A Jovial Crew expressly draws attention to issues of class difference, equality, hypocrisy, and freedom. In his specific consideration of these matters, Brome actually uses his play to engage in contemporary political debate - and this on various levels. Martin Butler emphasises A Jovial Crew’s close historical proximity to major transformations in England’s culture - pertaining to the stage and the government; and, accordingly, he frames A Jovial Crew as a “truly national play written at a turning point in the history of the English stage and the English nation”. 19 Denys Van Renen’s argument, which pays particular attention to matters of space, goes in a similar direction. He holds the opinion that Brome’s representations of towns and town gentry are informed by current political power struggles. And he substantiates his assumption by showing that the playwright’s emplotments of spatial configurations and practices (also in other plays) serve to remediate European models of “internal colonialism,” 20 a colonialism which appears in an early modern colonial discourse, rooted in domestic issues, which references aspects of class and capital. Even though Brome himself can be understood to have consciously veiled the subversive potential of his play, 21 17 See Fichte 15-22. these scholars 18 See Denys Van Renen, “A ‘Birthright into a New World’: Representing the Town on Brome’s Stage,” Comparative Drama 45/ 2 (2011): 35-63, 58 f. 19 Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis, 1632-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984), 275. 20 Van Renen 35, 39-51, 54. 21 In his dedicatory preface to Thomas Stanley, Brome characterises A Jovial Crew as “harmless” and underlines its harmlessness by comparing it to a handicapped person, “limp[ing] […] with a wooden leg”; A Jovial Crew, ‘To the right noble […] Thomas Stanley, Esq.,’ l. 32, 37). C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 152 advocate and promote the notion of Brome being a “politically audacious” 22 playwright who is keen on “[dramatising] social dynamics”. 23 And they call attention to yet another quality of Brome that goes hand in hand with his plays’ politics: his particularity in terms of class perspective. As Matthew Steggle emphasises, “very few early modern writers represent servants from a position of first-hand experience; ” 24 but Brome does. And in dealing with national atmospheres, mind-sets, class conflicts, power hierarchies, and government, this informed take on both worlds, that of the gentry and that of the lower classes, and on these worlds’ conflicts comes prominently to the fore in Brome’s oeuvre. 25 Although one of Brome’s main heroes, Oldrents, belongs to the landed gentry, he is, in many ways, entangled with the world of beggars: he supports the beggars who live close to his estate; he regularly gives his steward Springlove some time off so he can live his preferred life as a free beggar; and he loses his own two daughters to beggardom. Rachel and Meriel are not willing to bear the restrictions of their household and the sadness of their father any longer; so they decide, together with their suitors, Vincent and Hilliard, to seek freedom and happiness elsewhere. They run away to live in the beggar commonwealth, a state which they romanticise and imagine as a pastoral idyll, which becomes palpable in a dispute between the girls and their - doubting - suitors: H ILLIARD Why, ladies, you have liberty enough […]. M ERIEL Yes, in our father’s rule and government […]. What’s that to the absolute freedom the very beggars have, to feast and revel here today and yonder tomorrow […]? There’s liberty! The birds of the air can take no more. (A Jovial Crew, 2.1.17-25) 26 What stands out in this dialogue is the narrative opposition between a current state (“the father’s rule and government”) and a future, longed-for state 22 Christina Paravano, “The Space of Identity and the Identity of Space in The City Wit by Richard Brome,” Sederi 21 (2011): 71-90, 71. 23 Ibid., 74. 24 Matthew Steggle, Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline Stage (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2004), 1. Brome was not only the pupil of Ben Jonson, but also his servant; the various evaluations by literary history which were caused by this fact are also sketched by Steggle, 2-5; as is the fact that economic want provided a frame for Brome’s life (cf. Steggle187 f.), who came “[p]oor […] into the world, and poor went out” (Alexander Brome; qtd. in Steggle188). 25 For a review - both comprehensive and up-to-date - of scholarly work on Brome’s oeuvre and its political implications, see Stern 13-16. 26 All text passages taken from A Jovial Crew are cited according to A Jovial Crew by Richard Brome, based on the Arden Early Modern Drama edition, ed. Tiffany Stern (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 153 (the lives of beggar crews). Since the space within the confines of this article does not suffice to detail the political complexities of the 1630s and early 1640s, and because of the ambiguity of Brome’s play, I would like to suggest two readings of A Jovial Crew and the dialogue above, which arguably stands metonymically for the whole play. As a father figure whose “rule and government” is perceived to be restrictive and absolutist (within his house), Oldrents might allegorically stand for Charles I and his Personal Rule, which shunned Parliament and, thus, was of a paternalistic, absolute quality 27 and which had been increasingly questioned and criticised since the late 1630s. 28 At the same time, Oldrents is characterised as a benevolent employer, as someone who is trusted by his long-serving loyal employees (cf. A Jovial Crew, 1.1.69-79); thus he can be understood as a contrast to the Caroline Personal Rule, “[whose] self-serving policies […] threatened […] the stability and loyalty of traditional […] communities of the kind depicted in the play.” 29 Yet, if one takes these two conflicting interpretations seriously, what, then, do Oldrents’ daughters compare and contrast? Wherein lies the opposition between the “father’s rule and government” and the beggar’s “liberty”? Do they promote an impairment of the tyrant’s, i.e., the father’s rule? Are they in favour of their being included in decision-making processes, which might be paralleled to an inclusion of Parliament in the governing of England and, consequently, to an (at least partial) modification of power relations? Is the world of the beggars comparable to those state philosophies which are in line with republican political thought? 30 27 See Sanders 5. Or does the beggar’s life that Rachel and Meriel imagine serve as a thought experiment, inviting audiences to compare and contrast two forms of government or two forms of existence? Is the girls’ celebrated liberty to be seen as a freedom from perceived parental 28 Cf. ibid. 4. 29 Ibid. 5. 30 In A Jovial Crew, the beggars can be said to be linked to the royal opposition, i.e., a prorepublican front. I thank Ingo Berensmeyer for pointing out the manifold, sometimes contradictory ways in which the beggar-imagery is used elsewhere: throughout literary history and also in the 17th century, the symbol of ‘the beggar’ was also often linked to the other side, i.e., in the form of the ‘beggar king’ or ‘the royal beggar.’ Both images, the ‘beggar commonwealth’ and the ‘beggar as king,’ have in common that they do not engage with the realities of actual beggars’ lives. Used as symbols, they “enable dramatists to practice a particular kind of social investigation.” (Sanders 1) In the first half of the 17th century and especially in “the highly specific context of Charles I’s nonparliamentary rule (1629-40),” however, the idea of ‘the beggar’s commonwealth’ is the image preferably used. Within its historical context, it can even be said to have “acquired particular force and impact” (ibid.; cf. also Rosemary Gaby, “Of Vagabonds and Commonwealths: Beggar’s Bush, A Jovial Crew, and The Sisters,” Studies in English Literature 34.2 [1994], 401-424). C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 154 restrictions that can be compared to the administrative burdens of Caroline England? All of these questions - and maybe even additional ones - are (at least partly) valid and, at the same time, competing with each other. Even though this conflicting polysemy might not be satisfactory to the recipients of the play, it may be exactly its strength. It invites the conclusion that A Jovial Crew does not attempt to provide definite solutions to current social and political, i.e. cultural, problems; rather, it “offer[s] its audience a skewed reflection of their own situation, part mirror, part inversion”. 31 Yet, be that as it may, with their stories, the girls certainly idealise this state of beggardom (cf. also A Jovial Crew, 2.1.196-205), of freedom that seems to be the hope of those who are, around 1640, discontented with their government (and maybe even in favour of a commonwealth). At the same time, when Meriel and Rachel actually experience this longed-for state, i.e. a beggar’s life, it falls short of any festive character and of the lightness of flying birds and their song. Dressed as beggars and living amongst them, they have difficulty sleeping in the flea-ridden straw; they are not very successful in begging for food; and, at one point, they are nearly raped. Yet, despite all the dangers to their lives and bodies, the sisters are not wholly without some of the ludic pleasures they had narratively anticipated before joining the beggars. Having lived among beggars for a while, real and counterfeit ones, the sisters, together with the beggars, rehearse a play called The Merry Beggars; a play within the play, a utopia to be performed in front of the girls’ father and other gentry, which features a state in which the beggars rule. By way of Meriel and Rachel’s narrative imagination and their playful disguise, Brome realises different forms of government. At the same time, he reveals their pitfalls. And he cautions against the idealisation of alternatives in which liberty and equality seem more easily realised, but which might entail economic and physical hazards. The oscillation between hopes of change, realisations of change, and their disproval, is repeated in the play’s second part - with the utopia, the play within the play, which is being prepared by the characters. At this point, however, the story takes some unexpected - and, in comparison to contemporary plot patterns, maybe even unlikely - turns: in their theatrical disguise, the ‘beggars’ Meriel and Rachel reveal their true identity and resume their old lives. In addition, the performance of the play is given up in favour of some surprising revelations about Oldrents’ and Springlove’s lives, which put the various entanglements between beggars and gentry presented so far on yet another level. And, finally, it is revealed that Oldrents, who has been 31 Sanders 6 f. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 155 praised throughout the play for his exceeding kindness towards the poor, 32 In establishing such a character constellation, Brome can be said to discuss not only Caroline changes in particular, but the general nature of cultural change in its social, economic, and political dimensions. Brome does not provide us with one definite, monolithic solution to asymmetric Caroline politics and power hierarchies. He does not draw the picture of an impeccable alternative form of society. Although he could have clearly favoured one form of society and government in his play over the others - e.g., by realising the utopia, by presenting us with a more definite, unambiguous plot development, or by being more finite and clear-cut in the play’s closure -, he chose not to mark one of the presented options as the best one. He provides recipients with different versions of society. He constructs a play full of ambiguity and polysemy. In consequence, he enables and maybe even invites the interpretation - at least in contemporary reception - that social progress seems to be a constant negotiation of better forms of life and a constant struggle between the classes; classes which turn out to be more closely and intimately related than they are at first presented (both literally and metaphorically, when it comes to the characters’ deeds and their desires). And, thus, Brome appears to question not only possible alternative societies and governments but also the nature (and maybe even possibility) of cultural change in general. has come by his estate through a case of fraud: his father had tricked another gentleman out of his fortune and, in consequence, exposed the latter and his offspring to a life of poverty. With this, not only questions of original sin but also of economic inequalities and power hierarchies are raised. It is also asked to what extent the gentry’s wealth depends on and exploits the poverty of others. Moral and ethical questions get even more complicated when Oldrents’ character itself becomes questionable: the son of the man who was deprived of his fortune by Oldrents’ father, and who is present at the scene, reveals to Oldrents that Springlove is not only Oldrents’ steward but also his son; an illegitimate son whom he had together with the beggar’s sister. The poor become rich at the expense of other rich people who then become poor; yet rich and poor are interrelated and have, like Oldrents and Springlove, their individual virtues and faults. 2.2 A Jovial Crew as a Counter-Narrative to Existing Governmental Distributions of Power and Idealistic Narratives of Change As the analysis of the plot has shown, A Jovial Crew constructs a world in which beggardom and gentry are entangled on various levels, and in which 32 “[Oldrents] keeps a guesthouse for all beggars, far and near, costs him a hundred a year […]” (A Jovial Crew, 4.1.78 f.; cf. also 1.1.140 f., 4.1.189-194). C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 156 social transgressions, unexpected narrative turns, 33 and fissures 34 Taking the relationship between literature and culture into the equation again, one can say, with Fritz Breithaupt, that storytelling begins in exactly such situations that allow for more than one version of the facts. in both play world and character development create situations in which alternative worlds and different, competing versions of society become thinkable. Against this backdrop, I will examine to what extent A Jovial Crew, also on its formal level, can be seen as a counter-narrative to existing power relations and to possibly all too optimistic fantasies of cultural change. 35 The concurring narratives are staged in A Jovial Crew in at least three ways: there is, firstly, narrative as ‘fantasy and fiction,’ as it is diegetically constructed The play itself and the stories within it function as a means of negotiating multiple versions of reality: the worlds created and questioned in the story of Oldrents and his family are presented and reflected from different angels; as are, in consequence, Caroline realities - as they were in 1641, before an imminent power shift, and as they might be after it. This is not only illustrated by the storyline that follows characters climbing down and up the social ladder (even though this is - admittedly - only a privilege of a certain class, the drama’s gentry), but also by the discursive means of showing parallels and contrasts of different narratives, i.e., versions of reality. 36 33 E.g., by first celebrating beggars’ lives in Rachel and Meriel’s verbalised fantasies and then reversing them, showing the poverty and hardship beggars are faced with; or by building up an opposition between a father’s rule and a seemingly less hierarchical distribution of power in a beggar crew only to show that there is also a head of the crew; or by showing how a utopian play is planned and how the performance begins only to, unexpectedly, be prematurely interrupted and left a fragment. in the dialogues of Rachel and Meriel. The two sisters, who suffer from their “father’s rule and government” (A Jovial Crew, 2.1.19), spin narratives of alternative forms of life, dream themselves into a beggars’ world, and imagine beggars as “[t]he only free men of a commonwealth […] that observe no law, | Obey no governor, use no religion | But what they draw from their own ancient custom” (A Jovial Crew, 2.1.198-201). In times in which social discontent smoulders, in which different forms of government and power distribution seem graspable, Brome presents sisters who - in the 34 With fissures, I am referring to the gaps between the different ontological levels on stage (the scenes behind the scenes) and to the inconsistencies in some characters; e.g., on the one hand, there is Oldrents’ kindness towards beggars; on the other hand, his fortune is built upon the deprivation of those who were made beggars by his father. One the one hand, Springlove is a servant to Oldrents; one the other hand, he is the king of the beggars and, thus, also rules over Oldrents’ daughters. 35 Fritz Breithaupt , Kultur der Ausrede (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), 12: “Eben hier […] beginnt Narration: dort, wo es mehr als eine Version eines Sachverhalts gibt.” 36 ‘Diegetic’ is used here in its original Greek meaning and refers to the act of ‘making a verbal utterance.’ Diegetic narrativisation concerns, thus, the (staged) act of storytelling. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 157 laboratories of their minds - tell each other of societies with different distributions of power; in particular of a society in which people do not have to live according to the will of a sovereign but are “free”. These people can live according to their customary religious beliefs and their own jurisdiction, the jurisdiction of a free society; yet, how this freedom should be realised or what it is supposed to look like is never specified or explained. Julie Sanders speculates that the freedom conceptualised in A Jovial Crew is a freedom “from the administrative burdens of life in Caroline England; ” 37 Secondly, there is the play’s quality that is reminiscent of a particular kind of narrative, the romance. Having been characterised as a pastoral romance burdens which were, at least to some extent, nourished by the king’s Personal Rule. 38 (and this justly so), A Jovial Crew draws heavily on characters, mood, and plot patterns of classical and medieval verse narratives. 39 In moving his drama close to a storytelling tradition that is dominated by a “persistent nostalgia for some other time […] or […] place,“ archetypal plot structures that “involve a series of adventures” and that are “characterised by idealization and wish-fulfillment,” 40 Brome draws on his audience’s knowledge of the wellknown genre of the romance (and modes of the romance, as realised in other plays 41 Yet the story does not end here: there is, thirdly, a narrative of instability as represented by the entire play. Whereas the stories diegetically told build up idyllic pastoral images and, thus, stand in contrast to extra-textual realities and the dominant intra-textual government (namely, Oldrents’ “rule”), the narrative actually presented by the playwright’s pastoral romance captures contemporary moods. The tale that A Jovial Crew in its entirety stages and that is displayed across various ontological levels (as verbalised fantasies, scenes behind the scenes, or a play within the play) visualises an atmosphere of instability and also different possibilities. ). Playing with the recipients’ expectations, which are likely to have entailed a happy or wish-fulfilling ending, the playwright points into the direction that the characters’ dreams of alternative societies and their quest to realise them might be, after all and against all odds (the girls’ dreams being idealistic fantasies), realisable; not only on the story level but, by implication, maybe also in real life. Thus, what can be actually seen by contemporary audiences is less revolutionary in its content than the things that are imagined and verbally pre- 37 Sanders 6. This can be substantiated, for instance, by a look upon Hilliard’s monologue in Act 4, in which he praises the beggars’ society as one that cannot give or take loans and is, accordingly, free of administrative processes (cf. A Jovial Crew, 4.2.105-112). 38 E.g., Stern 11. 39 Or their Renaissance counterparts, e.g., Spenser, Sidney or Shakespeare (As You Like It; The Tempest), who arguably also draw on this narrative tradition. 40 Barbara Fuchs, Romance (New York: Routledge, 2004), 6. 41 Compare fn. 39. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 158 sented by Meriel and Rachel. When the beggars’ community is shown as a hierarchical one, keen on appointing to Springlove the position of their “captain” or “king” (cf. A Jovial Crew, 1.1.492 f.), Meriel and Rachel’s utopian dream narratives are as quickly questioned as they are constructed - by way of the visible realities on stage (the respective realities of Oldrents, the beggars, or Springlove). Becoming beggars, Meriel and Rachel, in addition, subject themselves to the powers of another authority, namely, Springlove’s, who “command[s] | I’th’ beggars commonwealth” (A Jovial Crew, 2.1.315 f.; cf. also 1.1.490-494) and offers them guidance as their leader. In presenting not only Meriel and Rachel’s fantasies of liberty but also juxtaposing them to a commonwealth that seems to be built as a monarchy rather than a republic, the question might be raised - at least by today’s recipients - to what extent there really are alternatives to established systems and whether power within a society can be evenly distributed. And through the closure of the drama’s story, in which the original social order is restored, even more questions arise: if a systemic change based on the ideas of judicial and religious self-determination as outlined in Meriel’s fantasies, in which she describes beggars as “the only free men of a commonwealth […] that observe no law, | Obey no governor, use no religion | But what they draw from their own ancient custom” (A Jovial Crew, 2.1.198-201; emphasis mine), is actually possible, can it be permanent? And is it even desirable? Not so, by the looks of it. A change of government and a change in the distribution of power might be desirable; at the same time, actual changes, which have been narratively prefigured by the young gentry, obviously go together with unanticipated hardships. It is just 456 verses into their new beggar lives that every one of the gentlefolk has screamed in despair. But the notion of wishful thinking and disillusionment does not remain uncontested in Brome’s story of the sisters and their suitors either. As Springlove remarks to the young gentry: “[T]his is your birthright into a new world. And we all know […] that all come crying into the world, when the whole world of pleasures is before us. The world itself had ne’er been glorious had it not first been a confused chaos.” (A Jovial Crew, 3.1.36-41) Worlds and world orders have their origin in - natural or biblical - chaos; sustainable changes need sacrifices. Anticipating or sensing the imminent political change, Brome’s play narrates and negotiates alternative versions of society, presents the story of people changing class and forms of government, and has its characters reflect on the situation of change itself. The latter turns out, more often than not, less ideal than imagined and hoped for. Thus, the play’s medializations of change and (anticipatory) drafts of altered distributions of power within a society are presented in an ambivalent manner: situations and opinions are imagined, introduced, and then immediately contested; and then contested again. Ac- Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 159 cordingly, one can agree to disagree about the political intention of the play and its prefiguration of alternative governments and distributions of power, such as a liberal commonwealth. However, what is hard to disagree with, after an analysis of the concurring narratives in the play, is that the play seems to configure the political turmoil of a society in which different systems are imagined and in which civil war as well as a change of government is latent. 2.3 Theatre as an Institution of Mediation and Revelation: Theatrical Remediations and Premediations of Power Change Besides a salience in different versions of narrativity, Brome’s play displays a heightened degree of theatricality. Even though one has to bear in mind the cultural dependency and, thus, variability of what can be understood as theatrical or theatre-like, one can frame the notion as an aesthetic category 42 that, originally, goes back to practices of human beings on theatre stages. Despite the assumed mutability of theatricality’s cultural and historical emanations and the changing practices of production and reception of theatricality, the concept has, in its essence and in both its theatre and everyday forms, always been tied to at least three notions: embodiment, a purposeful exposure of what is embodied, and the deliberate (haptic, audio-visual) reception of these embodiments. 43 For the Renaissance, Barbara Hardy has also determined further qualities: she conceptualises theatricality as a psycho-social category, which entails affective dimensions, e.g., “emotion” and, in its amplified form, “passion,“ 44 and as a sensorial category, which pertains to the “visual” 45 In the light of these definitions, both some practices of Caroline culture and their representation or embodiment on stage can be considered particularly theatrical; especially when it comes to A Jovial Crew, which, as a dramatic text, pertains to both of these contemporary emanations of the ‘theatrical.’ Brome’s play, firstly, draws on the theatricality of Caroline culture, specifically the theatre-likeness of Caroline politics. Secondly, it heightens drama-specific features of theatricality. In consequence, Brome’s work disand heightened degrees of visuality as realised in the spectacle, for instance. In all definitions, an exorbitance or excess in both expression and experience - be they corporeal, affective, visual - are implied, which seems to make the hyperbolic and the excessive themselves qualities of theatricality. 42 See, e.g., Erika Fischer-Lichte, Performativität (Bielefeld: transcript, 2 2013), 27; cf. also Matthias Warstat, “Theatralität,” Metzler Lexikon Theatertheorie, eds. Erika Fischer-Lichte, Doris Kolesch and Matthias Warstat (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2005), 358-364, 260. 43 See Warstat 258. 44 Barbara Hardy, Shakespeare’s Storytellers: Dramatic Narration (London: Peter Owen, 1997), 26. 45 Hardy 28. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 160 plays - in addition to its enhanced narrativity - salient kinds of theatricality, which, when performed, must have appeared all the more striking; 46 they might even have triggered meta-referential reception and reflection. 47 In the following, I shall investigate three particularly illuminating ways in which A Jovial Crew draws on ‘theatre-likeness’ and the ‘theatrical’ to configure and possibly to prefigure socio-cultural change. Firstly, the dramatist uses the set design to reflect his (changing) society; secondly, Brome makes excessive use of a meta-theatrical form of mise en abyme, the play within the play; and thirdly, he not only combines, but also accumulates two forms of theatrical entertainment that make excessive use of the actors’ bodies: song and dance. Both the combination and accumulation of these theatrical forms counter any possible emergence of realist aesthetics and readings and disguise his play’s political thrust. Through Oldrents’ walls, the jovial crew of the title, that is, a group of beggars, are often heard singing. Even though they are not within Oldrents’ house or on the stage, they are a continuous presence (cf., e.g., A Jovial Crew, 1.1.348, 1.1.361). Repeated acts of ‘opening the scene’ (cf. A Jovial Crew, SD between 1.1.375 and 376, and between 2.2.178 and 179), which discover the “beggars […] in their postures,” (A Jovial Crew, 1.1.375-76) show them as - either latent or visible - presences on the stage. This theatrical opening can be said to foreshadow what the plot will reveal: that the gentry’s style of living is only possible at the cost of others, the beggars, who are a looming presence ‘behind the scenes’ of the theatre. Read allegorically, these openings visualise that the poor, even though ignored by the wealthy, are not only the (back- )ground, but also the backbone of monarchy and those who, within this form of government, occupy a privileged position. Secondly, if one goes on reading the gentry as supporters of monarchy and the beggars as a symbol of alternative versions of society and governments, the theatricalised act of ‘opening the scene’ makes visible that there is only a thin, easily removable line between the class and system now in power and possible new figurations of class and politics - to those in power maybe threateningly so. The act of opening the scene thus not only stages theatre’s potential of showing alternative worlds and, with it, the institution’s potential to cause 46 Scholars have argued that, with A Jovial Crew, “Brome responds to current affairs theatrically rather than politically” (Michel Bitot; qtd. in Stern 16), following the lines of argument that consider the play a-political (cf. Section 1). What is neglected, though, is the acknowledgement that ‘current affairs’ nevertheless seem graspable. Accordingly, quite the reverse is true: the fact that Caroline political realities are dealt with theatrically does not mean that they are not present in the play. 47 On the processes of a meta-referentially informed reception of art, see Werner Wolf, “Metareference across Media: The Concept, its Transmedial Potentials and Problems, Main Forms and Functions,” Metareference across Media: Theory and Case Studies, ed. Werner Wolf (Amsterdam/ New York: Rodopi, 2009), 1-85. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 161 revolts that aim at social change. What is more, the performance of changing scenes eerily foreshadows - and maybe prefigures by implication - what even before the play’s publication in 1652 will have become a reality in the spectacle of a king’s beheading, which in at least two ways can be linked to theatre. The heightened visual theatricality of a historical regime change from monarchy to commonwealth, firstly, took place in front of the Banqueting House, the building in which the court had enjoyed masques and other theatrical entertainments; secondly, the brutal spectacle of 1649 was performed upon a scaffold, i.e. a kind of stage, for all (classes) to see; thirdly, the act of the beheading and its quality lend themselves to a theatrum mundi metaphor: they were about to be compared, in another literary genre, to a spectacular, theatrical act. 48 Coming back to A Jovial Crew’s staging of different societies and forms of government, I would like to point out that, upon the play’s performance, the beggars’ scene, which is behind the stage and at the same time on the stage, is not only the expression of a time which thinks of itself in theatrical terms. It might also self-reflectively characterise theatre as an institution whose agents, e.g. authors and actors, are proud of not only inviting, but also staging and embodying thought experiments. Theatre, in consequence, becomes visible as an institution that mediates (possibilities of) political change by means of staging them. In other words, Brome’s play is part of its culture’s theatricality and, at the same time, shows an awareness of this as well as of theatre’s potential to concretely realise the topical but latent ‘what if’ scenarios at the end of the Caroline era. With its insertions of various kinds of mise en abyme, A Jovial Crew even goes beyond the figuration of national instability as epitomised in the scenery and its theatrical foregrounding. Brome’s play also deals with economic issues and stages the attempt to prefigure a commonwealth as a government operating on the principle of sharing (as a kind of proto-socialism), which, by providing a living for all people, prevents the downfall of a society in which wealth is not equally distributed. When the young gentry put on their beggars’ apparel, they do not only put on an ‘act’ within a performed play, they also experience it (despite its shortcomings) as affectively rewarding. Vincent, sceptic at first, has been convinced by the beggars’ life (A Jovial Crew, 4.2.96) and Hilliard praises a philosophy of giving away possessions: 48 Cf. Andrew Marvell’s “An Horatian Ode: Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland (1650- 52),” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. B, eds. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York/ London: W.W. Norton, 9 2012), 1806-1811. The ode was written in honour of Oliver Cromwell and describes Charles I as a worthy opponent, as a “royal actor” (Marvell 9 2012 [1650-52]: v. 53; emphasis mine) and his execution as a “memorable scene” (ibid.: v. 58; emphasis mine). This evaluation of Charles I’s execution can be, of course, compared to other high-profile public executions, which were staged and perceived as similarly theatrical. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 162 We have no fear of lessening our estates; Nor any grudge with us, without taxation, To lend or give, upon command, the whole Strength of our wealth for public benefit; While some that are held rich in their abundance - Which is their misery, indeed, - will see Rather a general ruin upon all Than give a scruple to prevent the fall. (A Jovial Crew, 4.2.105-112) The combinations of song and dance, which are even accumulated in the course of the play, highlight theatrical modes of embodied and audio-visual practice. By means of an excess of these theatrical expressions, the show of ‘happiness’ is added to the young folks’ acts of ‘acting as beggars’ and their coming to see not only the pitfalls for the individual but also the potential benefits of sharing for society. Geared towards the entertainment of audiences, the music and lyrics of the songs that invoke the pleasures of beggardom (cf. e.g. 1.1.499-518, 2.2.179-194) seem not only to be employed for their own sake, for the characters, or for the audience’s pleasure. More importantly, A Jovial Crew stages and embodies the beggars’ commonwealth as a utopia in the sense of a ‘good place’ or ‘happy place’ in which there is sunshine, birdsong, food, and happiness in abundance; a place in which people, even the aged, cannot but sing and dance (4.2.171-175). The utopian happiness, which embodied song and dance are to mediate, is witnessed, recognised, and voiced even by the audiences on stage, for instance by Oldrents, who exclaims “how merry they are! ” (A Jovial Crew, 2.2.195) The mise en abyme just outlined, to which Brome adds song and dance and to which the notion of a good or happy place is connected, is complemented by yet another mise en abyme. This second mise en abyme, firstly, thematises changing circumstances and, secondly, casts a different light on possible utopian commonwealths. With The Merry Beggars, A Jovial Crew’s real and imagined beggars intend to perform a utopian play within the play. As the beggar and writer Scribble outlines in a summary, he intends to stage “a commonwealth: Utopia, | with all her branches and consistencies” (A Jovial Crew, 4.2.199-200). It is to be based on the common consent of all people, who will have been “appease[d] and reconcile[d]” by law and divine action. And the story of the establishment of this utopian commonwealth goes like this: after the creation of a peaceful co-existence between different, previously competing social agents (cf. 4.2.230-31), the utopian harmony is shaken by war, personified by a soldier. The soldier, who threatens and destroys utopia, will be overpowered by a beggar in the end; and all will be brought to a safe haven, an even better ‘utopia,’ the “Beggar’s Hall.” (A Jovial Crew, 4.2.239) By repeatedly realising mise en abymes in his play, which variously take the form Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 163 of disguise-acts, mini-performances of song and dance, or a play within a play, Brome stages diegetic transformations of power in a truly ‘theatrical’ fashion, that is, in a hyperbolic, excessive manner. This overabundance and overemphasis of social transformations within the play does not only draw attention to the on-stage changes themselves; it even points beyond them, communicating an awareness of theatre’s potential to not only visualise cultural change, but also to prefigure, to premediate it, to make its audiences think about it, and maybe even trigger it - this time, outside the theatre. But even these meta-theatrical and political statements the play seems to toy with are undermined; even here and yet again, the play remains ambivalent. The telling name of the state Scribble wants to stage, ‘utopia,’ implies that the beggar-writer knows that his commonwealth is not only a good place but also a non-place. In the theatrical representation of utopia that the beggar characters would like to stage in their play (within the play) this utopia, this commonwealth, in which all people live in freedom, could be actually realised - at least within the play’s world. However, the realisation of the play, the actualisation of utopia on stage (and thus its cultural prefiguration) is not fully realised. The play within a play begins with Oldrents’ story - as a summary of what the audience has already seen and as a revelation of how the old man, at the expense of other people, who have become beggars, has come to be landed gentry. Before the actual utopia is constructed, the play is stopped by Oldrents - by a representative of the gentry, of those who are economically well-off, of those who are in (relative) power. Even though Brome’s play reveals social injustices and indicates the knowledge that theatre has the potential to prefigure alternative worlds, for instance, to realise a utopian commonwealth on stage, A Jovial Crew never actually does this: the play within the play is stopped; and at the end of the play, Oldrents’ children have left the beggar state. In other words, the play indicates to its (contemporary) audiences its potential as an institution thematising and possibly triggering transformations as well as the extratheatrical, real-life possibility of changes in (contemporary) society - without actually realising or prefiguring these transformations. It certainly remains disputable whether this is owed to a kind of (self-)censorship of the theatrepractitioner or whether the playwright expresses his uncertainty regarding the value of change, or criticises those in favour of an all too euphemistic sketch of alternative governments and societies. What has become clear, however, is that - with its different kinds of ‘theatricality’ - A Jovial Crew does not only play with theatre’s role as an institution of cultural mediation and revelation; it also implicitly reflects about its possible power in configuring (i.e., showing) and prefiguring (i.e., proleptically configuring or even triggering) latent cultural and social change. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 164 3. A Jovial Crew as a Drama Penned at a Time of Change and as a Drama Mediating and Prefiguring This Change To conclude, I would like to reconsider my introductory thoughts. After all, if one aims at writing literary history and trying to tease out its specific relation to the history of the culture within which it emerges, one has to ask oneself as meticulously as possible what quality this specific relation might have and which forms it might take. 49 In this, the play, which stages various individual and collective transformations, can be said to remediate its time’s political and social instabilities and an atmosphere of latent change. Playing with different aesthetic modes and topics and then taking them back, A Jovial Crew informs its first audiences about, or helps them to envision, the problems at the heart of the current system; it also invites them to imagine and acknowledge alternative ways of power distributions. These alternatives - and the possible changes towards them - are, however, always problematised: they are subject to constant narrative and ludic negotiation. Accordingly and on the basis of the results of my analysis of A Jovial Crew’s plot and form, I would like to attempt to specify the relations between Richard Brome’s pastoral romance and the culture it emerged from. With its aesthetics that oscillate between narration and theatricalisation, with its strategies of indicating political latencies, half-realising or realising them only to, finally, reverse (some of) the changes made in class and power systems, the play can be said to capture the mood of its time; a time in which different versions of society and forms of government seem possible; a time that is dominated by political debate; and a time of competing opinions on how England is to be ruled. In addition to reflecting culture as politics, as (prevalent and alternative) states and regimes, A Jovial Crew also considers contemporary theatrical culture and its institutions of literary production - and, possibly, power production. With its utopian narratives and their theatrical staging, it highlights theatre’s cultural function as not only an institution of literature and entertainment, but also of information and political investigation. It stages drama and the institution in which it is realised, the theatre, as mediating instances of potential change and, as such, makes latent ambivalences, possibilities, and indeterminacies visible, which otherwise could not (yet) be seen. It points to hidden moods that are there, but which have been contained and not (yet) become obvious (and maybe never will). It stages competing thoughts that have not (yet) been realised and that have not (yet) resulted in 49 Cf. Herbert Grabes, “Literaturgeschichte/ Kulturgeschichte: Gemeinsamkeiten, Unterschiede und Perspektiven,” Kulturwissenschaftliche Literaturwissenschaft: Disziplinäre Ansätze - Theoretische Positionen - Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven, eds. Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2004), 129-146, here, esp. 129-135. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 165 perceptible consequences (and maybe never will). It thematises latent cultural and political teleologies that have not (yet) been put into action (and maybe never will). From the play’s bold sketches of utopia in the sense of a ‘good place,’ it can be deduced that playwrights such as Brome knew that they could go beyond the mediation of the status quo, the remediation of current debates, and the imagination of alternative worlds; they could actually prefigure, that is, premediate - and possibly even trigger - social and political transformation (and A Jovial Crew, in retrospect, can be said to have done this eerily, when one considers the ‘peripeteial’ event of Charles I’s beheading). At the same time, Brome’s play does not go through with realising alternatives and reverses the changes it has introduced immediately. In doing so, the theatre performs its cultural role as a site of negotiation and as a point of crystallisation: no matter whether the thoughts, actions, and moods conveyed in the theatre will be culturally realised (or half-realised) and become historical truth or not, Brome’s play shows that theatre can serve as a point at which the latent, the invisible, the possible (thoughts, moods, teleologies, and actions) can become adumbrated, if not materially graspable for historical and, as we can see now, even future audiences. In other words, Brome’s pastoral romance helps literary institutions, such as the theatre, to ‘flex their muscles’ to those in power; but, by reversing changes made and by toning politics down in favour of an exuberance in ‘harmless’ singing and dancing, the pastoral romance refrains from instrumentalising its powers in times of political instability and at the dawn of a war. A Jovial Crew has, thus, a very complex, ambivalent relation to its time and culture: on the one hand, it expresses the real and imagined cultural uncertainty that revolves around potential (and latent) power shifts as well as around potential (and latent) future forms of govenment; on the other hand, Brome’s play is indicative of the knowledge which historical agents share about theatre: its potential to discuss and bring about change. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 166 Works Cited Bauer, Matthias, and Angelika Zirker. “Preface.” Drama and Cultural Change: Turning around Shakespeare. Eds. Matthias Bauer, Angelika Zirker. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009. 1-4. Berensmeyer, Ingo, and Andrew Hadfield. “Mendacity in Early Modern Literature and Culture: An Introduction.” European Journal of English Studies 19.2 (2015): 131- 147. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Breithaupt, Fritz. Kultur der Ausrede. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011. Brome, Richard. A Jovial Crew. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Elgin, Catherine Z. “The Laboratory of the Mind.” A Sense of the World: Essays on Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge. Eds. John Gibson, Wolfgang Huemer, Luca Pocci. New York: Routledge, 2009. 43-55. Butler, Martin. Theatre and Crisis, 1632-1642. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984. Engel, Manfred. “Kulturwissenschaft/ en - Literaturwissenschaft als Kulturwissenschaft - kulturgeschichtliche Literaturwissenschaft.” KulturPoetik 1.1 (2001): 8-36. Erll, Astrid. “Remembering across Time, Space, and Cultures: Premediation, Remediation, and ‘The Indian Mutiny’.” Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory. Eds. Astrid Erll, Ann Rigney. Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter 2009. 109- 138. Erll, Astrid, and Ann Rigney. “Introduction: Cultural Memory and its Dynamics.” Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory. Eds. Astrid Erll, Ann Rigney. Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter, 2009. 1-11. Fichte, Joerg O. “The Appearance of the Commonwealth and the People in Tudor Drama.” Drama and Cultural Change: Turning around Shakespeare. Eds. Matthias Bauer, Angelika Zirker. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009. 5-22. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. Performativität. Bielefeld: transcript, 2 2013. Fuchs, Barbara. Romance. New York: Routledge, 2004. Gaby, Rosemary. “Of Vagabonds and Commonwealths: Beggar’s Bush, A Jovial Crew, and The Sisters.” Studies in English Literature 34.2 (1994): 401-424. Grabes, Herbert. “Literaturgeschichte/ Kulturgeschichte: Gemeinsamkeiten, Unterschiede und Perspektiven.” Kulturwissenschaftliche Literaturwissenschaft: Disziplinäre Ansätze - Theoretische Positionen - Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven. Eds. Ansgar Nünning, Roy Sommer. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2004. 129-146. Gumbrecht, Hans U. Stimmungen lesen: Über eine verdeckte Wirklichkeit der Literatur. München: Hanser, 2011. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980. Grusin, Richard. “Premediation.” Criticism 46.1 (2004): 17-39. Hardy, Barbara. Shakespeare’s Storytellers: Dramatic Narration. London: Peter Owen, 1997. Kastan, David Scott. “Performances and Playbooks: The Closing of the Theatres and the Politics.” Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England. Eds. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. 167-184. Koschorke, Albrecht. Wahrheit und Erfindung: Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Erzähltheorie. Frankfurt/ Main: Fischer, 2012. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 167 Marvell, Andrew. “An Horatian Ode: Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. B. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York/ London: W.W. Norton, 9 2012, 1806-1811. Nünning, Ansgar, and Christine Schwanecke. “The Performative Power of Unreliable Narration and Focalisation in Drama and Theatre: Conceptualising the Specifity of Dramatic Unreliability.” Unreliable Narration and Trustworthitness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Ed. Vera Nünning. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. 189-219. Nünning, Ansgar, and Kai Marcel Sicks. “Turning Points as Metaphors and Mininarrations: Analysing Concepts of Change in Literature and Other Media.” Turning Points: Concepts and Narratives of Change in Literature and Other Media. Eds. Ansgar Nünning, Kai Marcel Sicks. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012. 1-28. Nünning, Ansgar, and Roy Sommer. “Kulturwissenschaftliche Literaturwissenschaft: Disziplinäre Ansätze, theoretische Positionen und trasndisziplinäre Perspektiven.” Kulturwissenschaftliche Literaturwissenschaft: Disziplinäre Ansätze - Theoretische Positionen - Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven. Eds. Ansgar Nünning, Roy Sommer. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2004. 9-29. Paravano, Christina. “The Space of Identity and the Identity of Space in The City Wit by Richard Brome.” Sederi 21 (2011): 71-90. Pfister, Manfred. “Die Frühe Neuzeit: Von Morus bis Milton.” Englische Literaturgeschichte. Ed. Hans U. Seeber. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 3 1999. 43-148. Roberts, David. Restoration Plays and Players: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014. Sanders, Julie. “Beggar’s Commonwealths and the Pre-Civil War Stage: Suckling’s The Goblins, Brome’s A Jovial Crew, and Shirley’s The Sisters.” Modern Language Review 97.1 (2002): 1-14. Sheperd, Simon, and Peter Womack. English Drama: A Cultural History. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Steggle, Matthew. Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline Stage. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2004. Stern, Tiffany. “Introduction.” A Jovial Crew. Ed. Tiffany Stern. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 1-68. Stierstorfer, Klaus. “Richard Brome: A Joviall Crew, or the Merry Beggars.” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon Online. Ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 3 2009. https: www.kll-online.de (last retrieved 12 April 2015). Van Renen, Denys. “A ‘Birthright into a New World’: Representing the Town on Brome’s Stage.” Comparative Drama 45.2 (2011): 35-63. Warstat, Matthias. “Theatralität.” Metzler Lexikon Theatertheorie. Eds. Erika Fischer- Lichte, Doris Kolesch, Matthias Warstat. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2005. 358-364. Wolf, Werner. “Metareference across Media: The Concept, its Transmedial Potentials and Problems, Main Forms and Functions.” Metareference across Media: Theory and Case Studies. Ed. Werner Wolf. Amsterdam/ New York: Rodopi, 2009. 1-85. I NGO B ERENSMEYER “The musique concrète of civilization”: Responding to Technological and Cultural Change in Postwar British Literature They came quite suddenly out of the wood onto the wide expanse of grass near the drive. The great scene, the familiar scene, was there again before them, lit by a very yellow and almost vanished sun, the sky fading to a greenish blue. From here they looked a little down upon the lake and could see, intensely tinted and very still, the reflection in it of the farther slope and the house, clear and pearly grey in the revealing light, its detail sharply defined, starting into nearness. Beyond it on the pastureland, against a pallid line at the horizon, the trees took the declining sun, and one oak tree, its leaves already turning yellow, seemed to be on fire. 1 In this scene from Iris Murdoch’s novel The Bell from 1958, the reader encounters an over-emphatic description of a “very yellow” sunset, a description that is itself “intensely tinted and very still.” Set in the peaceful and placid grounds of Imber Court, a religious lay community in the late 1950s, the scene prepares a semi-embrace between the novel’s homosexual characters, Michael and Toby. Yet before this transgression of the moral code can happen, the autumn idyll is disturbed by yet another experience, described in rather heavy-handed style: Then as they neared the lake another sound was heard. Michael could not at first think what it was; then he recognized it as the rising crescendo of a jet engine. From a tiny mutter the noise rose in an instant to a great tearing roar that ripped the heavens apart. They looked up. Gleaming like angels, four jet planes had appeared and roared from nowhere to the zenith of the sky above Imber. They were flying in formation, and at this point still perfectly together turned suddenly upward and climbed in line quite vertically into the sky, turned with an almost leisurely movement onto their backs and roared down again, looping the loop with such precision that they seemed to be tied together by invisible wires. Then they began to climb again, standing upon their tails, absolutely straight up above the watchers’ heads. Still roaring together they reached a distant peak and then peeled off like a flower, each one to a different point of the compass. In another second they had gone, leaving behind their four trails of silver vapour and a shattering subsiding roar. Then there was complete silence. It had all happened very quickly. 1 Iris Murdoch, The Bell (1958; London: Vintage, 2004), 130-31. I NGO B ERENSMEYER 170 Michael found himself open-mouthed, head back and heart thumping. The noise and speed and beauty of the things had made him for a moment almost unconscious. Toby looked at him, equally dazed and excited. Michael looked down and found that he had fastened both his hands onto the boy’s bare arm. Laughing they drew apart. What has happened in this passage, which is just as “enchanting and slightly absurd” as the singing of a madrigal that the characters overhear immediately before it? In this rhythmic but rather slow dance of prose, the markedly different speeds of human, technological and literary agencies are uneasily intertwined. The connection between the two characters is mediated by their witnessing a technological spectacle, a modern miracle even, that evokes a physical sensation similar to religious or indeed sexual ecstasy - “head back and heart thumping,” “almost unconscious” - and that is described in the register of the sublime: “a great tearing roar,” “shattering,” “gleaming like angels.” This is a Miltonic ‘war in heaven,’ but its description is also interspersed with the discourse of the beautiful: “noise, speed and beauty.” The romantic, perhaps Turneresque (“rail, steam and speed”) echoes in Murdoch’s prose express a fascination with technology that is about to replace, or has already unseated, traditional forms of the numinous or sacred, literally splitting the sky and human ears with supersonic, superhuman possibilities, and thus breaking apart the boundaries of the human life-world as previously known. 2 The sheer noise of the jets interrupts human conversation; it is an emblem of technology transcending the scale of humanity - a key topic in the postwar world. It inspires awe and admiration but is also potentially destructive. These are by far not the only jet planes in postwar British literature. Jets and other technological innovations such as jukeboxes and TV sets not only stimulated Miltonic survivals in the otherwise overly familiar form of the novel; in fact, as I am going to demonstrate, they also challenged established modes of writing in what was then sometimes referred to as the ‘Jet Age.’ 3 My concern is not so much with a particular theory of literature and cultural change, but with a mid-twentieth-century constellation or configuration: a period in which traditional forms of literature (understood as imaginative works of fiction, as novels, plays and poetry) became both attracted to 2 The aerial display in The Bell may have been inspired by “a display at Giddington, Oxford’s airfield, which had fascinated” Murdoch, as well as by her residence, in the late 1950s, close to “the big airfield at Upper Heyford, leased to the USAF and very noisy”: Peter J. Conradi, Iris Murdoch: A Life (London: HarperCollins, 2001), 410-11. 3 The term ‘jet age’ was first used in the US in the late 1950s, e.g. in Jet Age Planning: A Report of Progress and Developments as of July 1957 (Washington, DC: United States Civil Aeronautics Administration, 1958). Later, it came to be used more widely to describe phenomena of modernity, e.g. in Hugh Trevor, Jet-Age Japan (London: Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1970). “The musique concrète of civilization“ 171 and challenged, or perhaps surpassed and superseded, by new technologies, new forms of mass communication and mass entertainment, and new forms of social interaction. Literary responses to technological change can perhaps be understood in terms of inertia, commonly defined as “an object’s tendency to resist any change in its motion.” 4 Scholars of modernist literature are very familiar with such developments, for instance when they examine the competition between narrative literature and photography, and the anxieties of writers like Henry James (as in his preface to the Golden Bowl, 1909) about the potential superiority of photography over narrative prose, or when they study the arrival of the wireless or the relationship between the novel and cinema, as in the striking passages in Henry Green’s 1929 novel Living that try to describe the effect of “picturegoing” in words that leave conventional requirements of grammar and syntax behind in order to capture a new grammar of experience. Without judging this ‘literary inertia’ as something to be deplored or praised in relation to social and cultural changes driven by new technologies, I wish to observe the different temporalities, the different magnitudes of velocity with which literature (in my case, particularly the novel) responds to technological change in the postwar era, especially in the late 1950s. 5 In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), a plane writes letters in the sky out of white smoke - a reminder that war technology was quickly used for advertising in a commercial consumer society. 6 While new media such as photography, radio and cinema, and new technologies such as cars and airplanes, are wellestablished topics in modernist studies, this is arguably less the case with studies of the postwar period in Britain: the Forties, Fifties and Sixties, in which we witness the advent of jet planes, television, and rock ‘n’ roll. These new technologies or new uses of older technologies - remembering Friedrich Kittler’s quip that electrified music is an “abuse of army equipment” 7 4 Giles Sparrow, Physics in Minutes (London: Quercus, 2014), 12. - challenge traditional definitions of communication, social behaviour, and cultural 5 See, for instance, Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); J. Hillis Miller, Illustration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Reaktion, 1992); Stuart Burrows, A Familiar Strangeness: American Fiction and the Language of Photography, 1839-1945 (Athens, GA/ London: University of Georgia Press, 2008); Andrew Shail, The Cinema and the Origins of Literary Modernism (New York: Routledge, 2012). 6 Modernist writers’ fascination for aviation is well-documented; see Valentine Cunningham, British Writers of the Thirties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 186-87, 460. 7 Mißbrauch von Heeresgerät: Friedrich Kittler, Grammophon Film Typewriter (Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 1986), 149; English trans. as Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 96. Kittler quotes this phrase from Hasso von Wedel, Die Propagandatruppen der deutschen Wehrmacht (Neckargmünd: Vowinckel, 1962), 12. I NGO B ERENSMEYER 172 self-understandings in a changing world. How they are adopted in literature, both on the level of form as well as content, is the topic of this essay. * The postwar period is generally marked by an optimistic belief in technology and technocratic solutions to social problems. It is the age of urban planning, suburban consumerism and increasing affluence, jet propulsion, amplified music and television. Technology is experienced as empowering, as beautiful, and as a tool in human control, as one can see in an advertisement by the British Iron and Steel Federation from 1957. In this image, a sleek silver jet plane is being held in what is probably a female hand, like a toy or an expensive piece of jewellery against a cosmic background showing Saturn and other planets, with the earth barely discernible at the bottom of the image but nonetheless providing a firm and safe footing to this enterprise (fig. 1). Fig. 1: “The shape of steel to come,” The Listener, January 17, 1957, 106. “The musique concrète of civilization“ 173 In this vision of “The shape of steel to come,” science fiction imagery transforms the jet plane into a safe vehicle for interstellar travel. The advertisement’s text stresses the qualities of steel as a product securing “Britain’s scientific progress,” looking “confidently towards a great future” and to such achievements as breaking “the ‘heat barrier’” and building “new plant [sic] for atomic power stations.” 8 Here, then, we see a fascination with control, with cybernetics and the ability of the human kybernetes to gently steer a plane capable of supersonic flight, as dramatised in David Lean’s film The Sound Barrier (1952), scripted by Terence Rattigan, in which a former fighter pilot in postwar England becomes a test pilot for a newly developed jet plane called the “Prometheus.” Here, too, the mythic dimensions of the natural ‘barrier’ broken by human ingenuity and engineering are emphasised, as they are in the image accompanying the British Steel ad. This image might be read as a reinterpretation, indeed an inversion, of Michelangelo’s image of the creation of humanity, where the Creator’s finger touches Adam’s to give him life. In the advertisement image, the human (and strikingly feminine) hand gently lifts the airplane to cross the boundary of planetary space and to transport it upwards into the ‘heavens’ of interstellar space. In the late 1960s, this combination of phallic technology with (pubescent) femininity will have become part of the image repertoire of pop culture, as in the cover art of the eponymous album by the English supergroup Blind Faith. 9 It is not surprising, given its prominence in the socio-cultural imaginary of the Fifties, that the jet plane also features in numerous literary texts randomly picked from the late Fifties - not as a necessary plot device that propels the narrative forward, but for the most part as an accidental or ornamental element, fulfilling an almost decorative or (paradoxically) retardational function, but nevertheless serving as a symbol of modernity and a harbinger of the future. As we have seen, in Iris Murdoch’s The Bell, the jet plane is a superhuman presence that evokes an ecstatic but also potentially destructive, “shattering” experience. It is a curious moment in the novel, which otherwise rarely refers to modern technology, and then only in an instrumental manner (e.g. the members of the community discuss whether to buy a mechanical cultivator for their vegetable garden). And its appearance leaves behind “complete silence,” a silence pointing to the possibility that conventional 8 For historical surveys of British postwar optimism, see Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London: Abacus, 2005); Peter Hennessy, Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties (London: Allen Lane, 2006). 9 I owe this reference to Tore Rye Andersen (Aarhus). The image, easy to find online, could by then be understood as an ironic comment on the decline of British aerospace industry, first and foremost the de Havilland Aircraft Company, which had pioneered the passenger jet service in the early 1950s but became defunct in 1964. I NGO B ERENSMEYER 174 literary language may not be able to represent this ultramodern phenomenon adequately. What kind of agency, in a Latourian sense, does a jet plane have in such texts? As in The Sound Barrier, technology is a source of fascination, providing a limit-experience of a physical and spiritual nature: to break the sound barrier is to break the boundaries of the human life-world, its ne plus ultra. It is certainly no accident then that in his Mythologies, Roland Barthes singles out the “jet-man” (l’homme-jet) as a new type of hero, one who no longer has an experience of speed or adventure but undergoes a “condition” of motionlessness, one in which the myth of the aviator “loses all humanism” but “effects a kind of anthropological compromise between humans and Martians”. 10 When he wrote this, Barthes could not yet have watched Howard Hughes’s film Jet Pilot starring John Wayne and Janet Leigh (1957), but it would probably have done little to change his assessment of the jet pilot as a posthuman “reified hero” characterized by “pure passivity”. 11 As a footnote to this, even a rather staid detective novel such as Agatha Christie’s 4: 50 from Paddington (1957), better known for its murder on a train, contains a reference to jet planes. In the novel’s penultimate chapter, Christie’s characters self-consciously reflect on their being “rather an anachronism” In contrast to the classic adventurer, the “jet-man” is no longer himself an active agent but a mere tool, a function of the machine itself. 12 “Oh, of course,” said Miss Marple, “there’s noise everywhere, isn’t there? Even in St Mary Mead. We’re now quite close to an airfield, you know, and really the way those jet planes fly over! Most frightening. Two panes in my little greenhouse broken the other day. Going through the sound barrier, or so I understand, though what it means I never have known.” in the modern postwar world (the novel also contains a few scathing remarks - uttered, as it turns out, by the murderer - about such modern innovations as the NHS): 13 The obliging Bryan never gets to explain what the sound barrier is because the dénouement is near and the murderer about to be revealed. Here the reference to the jet plane seems to have an ornamental function. For the historical reader, it was probably intended to work as a sign of modernity, in order to connect the pre-war ‘Golden Age’ of detective fiction to the realities of postwar Britain. But also in this case, breaking the sound barrier is to go beyond human understanding and communication. The speed of these developments and their accompanying cultural changes pose a challenge to the usually more sedate pace of literature, exert- 10 Roland Barthes, Mythologies (London: Vintage, 2009), 81, 83. 11 Ibid., 83. 12 Agatha Christie, 4: 50 from Paddington (New York: Harper, 2011), 340. 13 Ibid. “The musique concrète of civilization“ 175 ing pressure on established habits of reading, notions of cultural value, and related ideas of belonging and social class - a problem that Daniel Hartley has referred to as the “torsion of the old” by the arrival of the new. 14 This general observation exceeds the discussion of jets in particular, as is evident, for example, in Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy (1957), a book that is often regarded as the birth document of cultural studies in Britain. Hoggart, a student of F.R. Leavis’s, laments the decline of working-class cultural standards when he describes teenagers gathering around the juke-box in a suburban milk bar, listening to prerecorded American music rather than, for instance, engaging in live singing. It is open to debate what is worse for Hoggart - the fact that no one sings anymore, or that the music they listen to comes from the US. 15 “Sensation without commitment” is Hoggart’s judgement on these new, “shiny” and insipid forms of entertainment. Mass culture and pop culture have arrived in Britain, as have cybernetic entertainment machines that interact with - and constitute - audiences: put some money into the jukebox and choose the record you think you want to listen to. (It is astonishing that in German literature, the jukebox is more an object of nostalgia, with Peter Handke’s Versuch über die Jukebox published as late as 1990.) 16 I have already passed uncounted hours half-hypnotised by the jiggling and noisy images. Sometimes I wonder if I am going out of my mind. We have been told that the worst is over after about four years, but long before that my outlook will have A similar argument is made about television in J.B. Priestley’s essay “Televiewing,” in which he recounts his own experience in front of a TV set. Priestley’s description of passivity and stupor resembles that of the jet pilot as diagnosed by Roland Barthes at the same moment: 14 See his essay in the present volume. 15 In Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), the “sweet hot jazz” and the “nasal voices” of popular crooners are among Lolita’s “beloved things”: “The Lord knows how many nickels I fed to the gorgeous music boxes that came with every meal we had! ”, exclaims Humbert Humbert in some exasperation (Vladimir Nabokov, Novels 1955-1962, New York: Library of America, 1996, 137-38). Thanks to Jed Esty for reminding me of this passage. See Barbara Wyllie, “Resonances of Popular Music in Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada,” in: Lisa Zunshine, ed., Nabokov at the Limits: Redrawing Critical Boundaries (New York/ London: Garland, 1999), 43-68. - Even before jukeboxes became widespread after World War II, Horkheimer and Adorno deplored the consequences of mass culture in standardizing and homogenizing music as a form of “psychotechnique, a procedure for manipulating human beings” (Horkheimer/ Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, trans. Edmund Jephcott, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002, 133). 16 Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working Class Life with Special Reference to Publications and Entertainments (1957; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), 202-205; see Stefan Collini, “Richard Hoggart: Literary Criticism and Cultural Decline in Twentieth- Century Britain,” Richard Hoggart and Cultural Studies, ed. Sue Owen (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 33-56. I NGO B ERENSMEYER 176 been so completely changed that I shall be a different person. I shall probably be removed to an old man’s home. Let us hope these places are equipped with good TV sets. 17 Technological optimism and cultural pessimism are coupled in many leftleaning arguments from the period. They were united with the right in condemning such modern phenomena as rock’n’roll, which a psychiatrist of the time compared to “the hysterical dancing mania which occurred in Europe in the fourteenth century” and certain US evangelical groups handling poisonous snakes. 18 In contrast, Thom Gunn’s 1957 poem about the voice of Elvis Presley “unreeling from a corner box” is much less depressed about popular culture, pronouncing it almost irrelevant whether Elvis’s comportment is a “stance” or a “pose.” 19 17 J.B. Priestley, “Televiewing” (1957), Essays of Five Decades (London: Heinemann, 1969), 232-236, 232. The TV industry at the time also addressed “the harm that wrong viewing can do,” meaning by this, however, visual problems of the “correct viewing distance” and “reflection” on the screen; Natasha Kroll, “Designing a Room for Television,” Radio Times, 8 March 1957, 57. Rather than isolating themselves from their own class, as Hoggart observes, Gunn’s collective of listeners express their experience in the first person plural: “We keep ourselves in touch with a mere dime” (l. 9) as Elvis “turns revolt into a style” (l. 10). As a literary response to rock music and popular culture, Gunn’s poem constitutes a more optimistic vision compared to the older generation, represented here by Hoggart and Priestley, and at times can even sound celebratory when compared to the discussions about rock’n’roll in the popular press - especially when the first regular tele- 18 William Sargant, Battle for the Mind. A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-Washing (Melbourne/ London/ Toronto: Heinemann, 1957), 120; cf. plates 22 and 23, n.p. for the visual comparison between spiritual ecstasy and “the recent craze for ‘Rock and Roll’.” It should be noted that a similar ‘culture war’ was waged earlier about the deleterious effects of jazz (which is more likely the music Hoggart had in mind when writing Uses of Literacy). In a marriage advice book from the early 1950s, for example, Leonora Eyles expresses her disapproval of dancing to jazz music in strongly racialised terms: “the dancing and its accompany [sic] music that have come to us from the jungle, the be-bop and such-like, are not fit for the British temperament. These dances are often accompanied by drugging and in some cities bring people of different races (not nations, that is all to the good) too intimately and too provocatively together: the rhythms of the jungle dances, the throbbing drums, the repetitive tunes or the langorous [sic] swaying may be all very well in the jungles of Africa and the West Indies [...]But this is all too strong meat of [sic] the young people of our cold, grey land; their pulse-rate, their blood pressure can’t stand it”; Leonora Eyles, Sex for the Engaged (London: Robert Hale, 1952), 35-36. 19 Thom Gunn, “Elvis Presley,” The Sense of Movement (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), 31, l. 2, 14. “The musique concrète of civilization“ 177 vision show to feature rock’n’roll music and dancing, Six-Five Special, launched in February 1957. 20 How does postwar British literature respond to the challenges of manmachine interfaces, cybernetic control mechanisms, and other new technologies? If a book is “a machine to think with,” as I.A. Richards held already in the 1920s, 21 and can hence be described as a kind of interface in its own right, how did British writers of the 1950s and 1960s envisage the future of this traditional interface in connection with emerging new media, new cultural techniques and new technologies? 22 It is a challenge taken up most obviously and directly in the (rather marginal) experimental fiction of this period, and definitely more in the 1960s than in the 1950s: think only of B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates (1969), a novel with 27 unbound sections that can be read in any order chosen by the reader (apart from the first and last chapter, which are specified); in this case, the boundaries of the traditional book are being transcended in the direction of a literary juke-box, emphasizing the nature of the novel as an interface. Nonlinear forms of narrative, such as the cut-up technique of Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs, are also used in the work of J.G. Ballard, especially in his The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), a sequence of short narrative segments that trace the mental breakdown or psychosis of the protagonist, Traven, who begins to experience the world as a vast continuum of geometric correspondences, making sense of random events such as the Kennedy assas- What is the impact of these cultural changes on the level of literary form? 20 Controversy raged in the letters pages of the Radio Times. Consider, for example, what this viewer from Penarth, Glamorgan, had to say on 22 March 1957, 58: “Before making any comment in respect of Six-Five Special, I wish to make it quite clear that I am not a prude. I have daughters, sons, and grandsons, and could not care less if they engage in any amusement in moderation. But I have looked in at one or two of these shows, and feel thoroughly disgusted to think that the powers that be give time to exhibitions such as these. I cannot imagine that any decent-minded girl would permit herself to be pulled around in such a way, even to the extent of allowing herself to be thrown at times over the shoulders of the males taking part.” Responding to an earlier broadcast, a reader from London asked himself “[h]ow any sane person [...] can find pleasure in cavorting and jerking about in a raucous cacophony of jungle noises, in a manner which proves conclusively that the usual decent inhibitions have been swamped by sensual and emotional strain” (4 January 1957, 7). 21 I.A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism (1924; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960), 1. 22 The modern meaning of the ‘interface’ arises in this period in electronics and computer technology as “an apparatus designed to connect two scientific instruments, devices, etc., so that they can be operated jointly” (OED, “interface, n.”, 2.b, first citation 1966) and in a figurative meaning as “a means or place of interaction between two systems, organizations, etc.” (2.a). For the latter meaning, the OED’s first citation is from Marshall McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy (1962). It is surprising to see the metaphorical usage emerge before the technical. I NGO B ERENSMEYER 178 sination or the accidental death of his wife in a gruesome car crash by overlaying them with a psychotic system of order. Although his later novels are more conventionally structured, Ballard’s unique way of combining modern technology, social satire and surrealism in his fiction constitutes one of the most impressive achievements of postwar British literature when it comes to responding to challenges of modern technological change. In Crash (1973), the car, an emblem of technological progress and mobility, becomes a site of carnage and mayhem, a symbol of the imminent breakdown of so-called Western civilization - a breakdown that was widely feared and expected during the Oil Crisis of the early seventies. In the media history of literature, these examples are more than merely another turn of the screw of postmodernist self-reflection, but paradigmatic markers of the way in which literature responds to technology and redraws its own boundaries as a medium of communication or as what Jürgen Link has called a ‘reintegrating interdiscourse.’ 23 In his science fiction story “The Sound-Sweep” (1960), J.G. Ballard envisages a culture in which classical music has been replaced by “ultrasonic music” that transcends the range of human hearing, making opera singers obsolete. “Ultrasonic music [...] provided a direct neural link between the sound stream and the auditory lobes, generating an apparently sourceless sensation of harmony, rhythm, cadence and melody uncontaminated by the noise and vibration of audible music.” 24 A place of strange echoes and festering silences, overhung by a gloomy miasma of a million compacted sounds, it remained remote and haunted, the grave-yard of countless private babels. In contrast to the silence of this new music, the world of the story is filled by the relentless noise of everyday urban life: “a frenzied hypermanic babel of jostling horns, shrilling tyres, plunging brakes and engines” (41) that has to be removed from walls and surfaces with a kind of vacuum cleaner, the sonovac. In a key moment of the story, the mute sonovac operator Mangon and the ex-opera singer Madame Gioconda drive out to the “sonic dumps” in which the sound-sweeps’ collections are stored: The first of the sonic dumps appeared two or three hundred yards away on their right. This was reserved for aircraft sounds swept from the city’s streets and municipal buildings, and was a tightly packed collection of sound-absorbent baffles covering several acres. [...] Only the top two or three feet were visible above the dunes, but the charged air hit Mangon like a hammer, a pounding niagara of airliners blaring down the glideway, the piercing whistle of jets jockeying at take-off, 23 Jürgen Link, “Literaturanalyse als Interdiskursanalyse,” Diskurstheorien und Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Jürgen Fohrmann and Harro Müller (Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), 284-307. 24 J.G. Ballard, “The Sound-Sweep,” The Four-Dimensional Nightmare (London: Gollancz, 1963), 41-79, 48. “The musique concrète of civilization“ 179 the ceaseless mind-sapping roar that hangs like a vast umbrella over any metropolitan complex. (61-62) Ballard’s narrator goes on to describe this “unbroken phonic high” in terms that echo but intensify the sublimity associated with the sound of jet turbines in the passage from Murdoch’s The Bell quoted at the beginning of this essay: it is invisible but nonetheless as tangible and menacing as an enormous black thundercloud. Occasionally, when super-saturation was reached after one of the summer holiday periods, the sonic pressure fields would split and discharge, venting back into the stockades a nightmarish cataract of noise, raining on to the sound-sweeps not only the howling of cats and dogs, but the multi-lunged tumult of cars, express trains, fairgrounds and aircraft, the cacophonic musique concrète of civilization. (62) Ballard’s story may remind its readers that the musical avantgarde of the postwar era embraced electronics, noise and cacophony in previously - literally - unheard ways, moving beyond traditional concepts of beauty or even humanity in its search for radically new forms of artistic expression. 25 In the way it relates the human media of the singing or speaking voice to the superor post-human sounds and noises of “cars, express trains, fairgrounds and aircraft” (62), Ballard’s story is alive to the changing relationship between human beings and modern technology that transcends human capacities of rational understanding and control. 26 My next two literary ‘probes’ from the late 1950s extend this problematic to the making of fiction itself. Inspired by typically postwar styles of thought, in particular behaviourism and cybernetics, Muriel Spark’s first novel, The Comforters, and N.F. Simpson’s first play, A Resounding Tinkle (both from 1957) decentre traditional notions of literary authorship and envisage new modes of writing that not only thematise modern topics but also use new techniques based on the model of the feedback loop popularised in cybernetics. In Spark’s novel, interaction between characters and the author-narrator of the novel lead to interesting moments of metalepsis in which the main character hears the tapping of the author’s typewriter. In Simpson’s absurd ‘comedy of the abstract’, authors are given audience feedback data to improve the effectiveness of their writing. What Iris Murdoch in The Bell and Richard Hoggart in The Uses of Literacy hint at - that ‘man’ in the postwar world may no longer be the measure of all things, that established values and forms of living together have come under immense pressure - is perhaps most fully developed in “The Sound-Sweep”. 25 On “The Sound-Sweep,” see Simon Sellars, “Stereoscopic Urbanism: J.G. Ballard and the Built Environment,” Architectural Design 79.5 (2009): 88-91. I would like to thank Sonja Schillings for drawing my attention to this story. 26 Without invoking the nuclear bomb, arguably the defining invention of this era; see the essay by Sonja Schillings in this volume. I NGO B ERENSMEYER 180 A highly unusual and daring first novel, The Comforters breaks with the postwar realist consensus in narrative fiction, taking inspiration from the French nouveau roman in its disruption of mimetic illusion and point of view - described by Michael Gardiner as “a destruction of myths of depth and of cinematic ideologies of perception” 27 and an experiment of literary address that questions and subverts the norms of social realism in the novel, if not “the fundamental intellectual principles of British consensus” 28 based on empiricism and logical positivism. Spark’s experiments with perspective and metafiction in The Comforters culminate in those scenes in which the female protagonist, the artist Caroline Rose, becomes aware of an authorial presence telling her story. Thus, as Gardiner explains, “the writing of scenes is linked to the writing done in scenes, complicating perspective by turning perspective itself into narrative.” 29 The area of Caroline’s mind which is composing the novel becomes separated from the area which is participating in it, so that, hallucinated, she believes she is observant of, observed by, and in some degree under the control of, an unknown second person. In fact she is in the relation to herself of a fictitious character to a story-teller. Evelyn Waugh’s description of these scenes in his review of the novel is particularly perceptive: 30 The disembodied story-teller’s voice, however, is accompanied by the mundane sound of a typewriter; it is “a voice that is quite certainly not numinous”. 31 This de-romanticized authorial presence is not the artist as a Tolkienesque ‘subcreator’ of a fictional world but rather as a craftswoman whose fictional creations can gain the ability to stand their own ground, as Caroline Rose does when she tells her boyfriend, Laurence Manders, “I won’t be involved in this fictional plot if I can help it. In fact, I’d like to spoil it. If I had my way I’d hold up the action of the novel. It’s a duty. [...] I intend to stand aside and see if the novel has any real form apart from this artificial plot. I happen to be a Christian.” 32 This is not the place to discuss the religious dimension of The Comforters in any detail. Like Caroline in the novel, Spark had recently - in 1954 - converted to Catholicism, and the topic of the relationship between the free will 27 Michael Gardiner, “Body and State in Spark’s Early Fiction,” The Edinburgh Companion to Muriel Spark, ed. Michael Gardiner and Willey Maley (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 27-39, 29. 28 Gardiner, “Body” 28. 29 Ibid. 29. 30 Evelyn Waugh, “Something Fresh: The Comforters,” Spectator 22 February 1957, 256; cit. in Martin Stannard, Muriel Spark: The Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009), 179. 31 Paddy Lyons, “Muriel Spark’s Break with Romanticism,” Edinburgh Companion, ed. Gardiner and Maley, 85-97, 87. 32 Muriel Spark, The Comforters (1957; London: Virago, 2009), 93. “The musique concrète of civilization“ 181 of human beings and the will of God is clearly mapped onto Caroline’s hallucinatory experience with ‘her’ author in the novel. More importantly in this context, The Comforters is an indirect critique of what Waugh derisively termed “the Amis-Wain-Braine” school 33 of social realism; this is discernible in her choice of protagonists, her focus on an aspiring woman artist, and above all in her experiments with narrative voice and the novel form, all of which are in stark contrast to the prevailing realism in literature of the mid- 1950s. In the choice of a woman protagonist, an intellectual interested in “Form in the Modern Novel,” 34 and in its genre-bending mixture of “detective story, crime, social satire, adventure, violence, psychological novel, young love, domestic tale, gothic novel,” 35 The Comforters is a highly unusual work. Manuscripts reveal that Spark already at an early stage in the novel’s conception emphasised the metafictional aspects of confronting a character with her place in a fictional plot, of “[t]rying to make a plot out of a life | Giving our lives a plot | Plotting our lives,” 36 and she repeatedly refers to Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty in her notes: “that it is forever impossible in the nature of things to determine the position and velocity of an electron at the same time for by the very act of observing its position is changed.” 37 The interference between the observer (in this case, the ‘author’) and the observed (in this case, the character) becomes audible in the novel as the sound of the mechanical typewriter: “Caroline hears typewriter tapping. ‘They are changing us merely by observing us. They can never know what we are really like [...] or what we were doing before they started observing.[’] Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty.” 38 Observation and its impact on the observed, the feedback loop between an audience and a performer or producer of literature along behaviourist and cybernetic lines is also a topic in N.F. Simpson’s play A Resounding Tinkle, a piece of absurdist comedy about a suburban couple and two comedians that 33 Evelyn Waugh cited in Douglas Lane Patey, The Life of Evelyn Waugh. A Critical Biography (Oxford/ Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), 321. The reference is of course to Kingsley Amis, John Wain, and John Braine, all writers typically identified as ‘Angry Young Men’ in the 1950s. 34 Spark, Comforters, 47. 35 Manuscripts of The Comforters, Muriel Spark Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, box 13.6, 26. 36 Muriel Spark Collection, box 13.7, Notebook 1, 15, underlining changed to italics. 37 Ibid., 38. 38 Ibid., 39. The Heisenberg reference is not included in the finished novel, but Heisenberg’s theory is briefly explained on the previous page of the notes (38): “Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty states that it is forever impossible in the nature of things to determine the position and velocity of an electron at the same time: for by the very act of observing its position is changed.” On metafiction in The Comforters (and in general), see Patricia Waugh, Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction (London: Methuen, 1984), 55, 121; on metafiction and the uncertainty principle, 3. I NGO B ERENSMEYER 182 turns into a self-reflexive “comedy of the abstract” 39 about the nature of comedy and drama. At the start of Act One, Scene 2, the ‘author’ appears on stage to tell the audience about the mutual relationship between actors and audience: “We are all spectators of one another, mutual witnesses of each other’s discomfiture” (30). 40 The couple, Mr and Mrs Paradock, and the comedians discuss the theory of laughter by Henri Bergson; since Bergson argues that the human imitation of a mechanic automatism is a source of laughter, Mr Paradock, with the help of the comedians, is transformed into a ‘comptometer,’ an early form of electronic computer. Because the comedians argue that machines are a source of comedy, imitating a typewriter would not be enough in this respect: “Typewriters don’t make out too good comedy-wise, I guess,” says the second comedian, whereupon Mr Paradock asserts that he wants “to be made up to look like an electronic computer. I want to raise a laugh.” However, as the first comedian explains, “[i]t’s no good looking like an electronic computer. You’ve got to be an electronic computer” (34, emphasis original). The comedian then fumbles in Mr Paradock’s pocket and pulls out a “three-point plug attached to a length of flex” (SD, 35). Plugged in and switched on, Mr Paradock turns into an electrified version of Lucky in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: he begins to sputter a rapid sequence of words, numbers, and calculations in a nonsensical combination before he short-circuits and has to be unplugged again: “Paraparaparallelogrammatical. Eighteen men on a dead man’s chest at compound interest is not what it’s for for four in the morning when the square on the hypotenuse is worth two in the circle two in the circle two in the circle two in the circle ...” (35) Before the argument between Paradock and the comedians about who is to blame for this failure can properly get going, Mrs Paradock saves the situation by suggesting: “I expect you’d all like some coffee after that” (36). Shortly after this, a technician appears who tells the audience about new techniques of recording audience responses and matching these to the writing of theatrical texts, with the aim of building up “in microfilm a library 39 N.F. Simpson, A Resounding Tinkle (London: Faber and Faber, 1958), 33. Subsequent quotations are referenced in parentheses in the text. 40 On Simpson’s comedy, see Gordon Collier, “Norman Frederick Simpson. A Resounding Tinkle (1957),” Das zeitgenössische englische Drama. Einführung, Interpretation, Dokumentation. ed. Klaus-Dieter Fehse and Norbert H. Platz (Frankfurt/ Main: Fischer Athenäum, 1975), 25-42; Hans-Jürgen Diller, “N.F. Simpsons A Resounding Tinkle als philosophische Satire,” Die Neueren Sprachen 16 (1967): 357-361; Peter Paul Schnierer, “Absurdität und Komik: N.F. Simpson, A Resounding Tinkle (1958),” Modernes englisches Drama und Theater seit 1945: eine Einführung (Tübingen: Narr, 1997), 38-43. See also my brief summary in Ingo Berensmeyer, “Simpson, Norman Frederick: A Resounding Tinkle,” Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon, addenda 2014, online. Why academics in Germany seem to have been so much more interested in Simpson than those in England or anywhere else in the world is an open question that cannot be explored further in this essay. “The musique concrète of civilization“ 183 which will embody the case histories in terms of audience reaction of a sufficiently large and representative number of productions of all kinds to do away with the need for inspired guesswork on the part of author or producer” (37-38) to ensure “maximum response” and “optimum spontaneity” (37) - even taking into account different types of audience such as “viscerotonic endomorphs” and “cerebrotonic ectomorphs” (28). 41 The scientific jargon used here is typical of constitutional psychology and also of the behaviourism developed by B.F. Skinner. Its approach to classification and control can also be detected in major social trends in postwar Britain (e.g. nationalisation of major industries, urban planning, and the NHS). When cybernetic mechanisms of audience feedback are built into the writing of plays, as envisaged in A Resounding Tinkle; when the noise of the author’s typewriter becomes audible to the characters in Muriel Spark’s The Comforters, these are indications of more than merely formal playfulness or experimentalism in drama and the novel; they are indications of the culture, ‘Stimmung’ or - better - ‘structure of feeling’ of the 1950s and its literature, which responds to the pressure of other media and other forms of entertainment in a manner that stresses the ambivalence about the connections between technological advances and social progress. Far from merely criticising, embracing or trying to accommodate new technologies, these texts reflect the technological conditions of modernity as a configuration for new forms of writing. Such forms can border on the grotesque or absurd, as they do in Ballard, Spark and Simpson, or they can be treated with greater seriousness, as is the case in Murdoch’s The Bell. They can also be tinged with nostalgia and critique, as they are in Hoggart and Priestley, certainly in Christie. It might be productive to think about these differences in tone and mood in the light of generational patterns, 42 as well as in terms of periodization (late modernist or postmodernist); to do so, however, would exceed the boundaries of this essay. All of the examples discussed here attest to the strong presence and pressure of new technologies on literature in form as well as content in the late 1950s. The texts respond to these developments in distinct but relatable ways, condemning or embracing what Ballard in “The Sound- Sweep” called “the musique concrète of civilization,” 43 41 These terms were not invented by Simpson but refer to the “somatotypes” as defined by the American psychologist William Herbert Sheldon in his Atlas of Men: A Guide for Somatotyping the Adult Male at All Ages (New York: Harper, 1954). not merely ‘sounding out’ cultural change in trying to distinguish music from sound, information 42 The authors discussed in this essay represent three generations: the older ones are Christie (born in 1890) and Priestley (1894); then come Hoggart and Spark (both 1918) and Murdoch and Simpson (both 1919). A younger postwar generation is represented by Ballard, born in 1930. 43 Ballard, “The Sound-Sweep,” 62. I NGO B ERENSMEYER 184 from noise, and the human voice from the “hypermanic babel,” 44 but also shaping change as active participants in cultural processes. 44 Ballard, “The Sound-Sweep,” 41. “The musique concrète of civilization“ 185 Works Cited Ballard, J.G. “The Sound-Sweep.” (1960) The Four-Dimensional Nightmare. London: Victor Gollancz, 1963. ---. The Atrocity Exhibition. (1970) London: Flamingo, 2002. ---. Crash. (1973) London: Fourth Estate, 2008. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. (1957) Trans. Annette Lavers. London: Vintage, 2009. Berensmeyer, Ingo. “Simpson, Norman Frederick: A Resounding Tinkle.” Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon. Addenda 2014. Online. Burrows, Stuart. A Familiar Strangeness: American Fiction and the Language of Photography, 1839-1945. Athens, GA/ London: University of Georgia Press, 2008. Christie, Agatha. 4.50 from Paddington. (1957) New York: Harper, 2011. Collier, Gordon. “Norman Frederick Simpson. A Resounding Tinkle (1957).” Das zeitgenössische englische Drama. Einführung, Interpretation, Dokumentation. Ed. Klaus- Dieter Fehse, Norbert H. Platz. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Athenäum, 1975. 25-42. Collini, Stefan. “Richard Hoggart: Literary Criticism and Cultural Decline in Twentieth-Century Britain.” Richard Hoggart and Cultural Studies. Ed. Sue Owen. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 33-56. Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. London: HarperCollins, 2001. Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. Cunningham, Valentine. British Writers of the Thirties. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988. Diller, Hans-Jürgen. “N.F. Simpsons A Resounding Tinkle als philosophische Satire.” Die Neueren Sprachen 16 (1967): 357-361. Eyles, Leonora. Sex for the Engaged. London: Robert Hale, 1952. Fothergill, C. Z. “Echoes of A Resounding Tinkle. N.F. Simpson Reconsidered.” Modern Drama 16 (1973): 299-306. Gardiner, Michael/ Maley, Willey, eds. The Edinburgh Companion to Muriel Spark. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2010. Gardiner, Michael. “Body and State in Spark’s Early Fiction.” Gardiner/ Maley 2010, 27-39. Green, Henry. Loving, Living, Party Going. London: Penguin, 1993. Gunn, Thom. “Elvis Presley.” The Sense of Movement. London: Faber and Faber, 1957. 31. Handke, Peter. Versuch über die Jukebox. Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp, 1990. Hennessy Peter. Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties. London: Allen Lane, 2006. Hoggart, Richard. The Uses of Literacy. Aspects of Working-Class Life with Special Reference to Publications and Entertainments. (1957) Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. Horkheimer, Max/ Adorno, Theodor W. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002. James, Henry. The Golden Bowl. (1904) Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985. Jet Age Planning: A Report of Progress and Developments as of July 1957. Progress Report No. 2. 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S ONJA S CHILLINGS Hulga Sees Through to Nothing: Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Anxiety Great literature - or literature that is in the process of being canonized as “great literature” - is conventionally characterized as reaching beyond time and space. Especially the notion of timelessness is a particularly important topic of debate in interpretations of the work of Flannery O’Connor, as it is often directly associated with her orthodox Catholic viewpoint. This perspective, a traditional argument in O’Connor studies goes, allows O’Connor to ground her fiction in a metaphysical truth regime destined to outlast any historically specific situation. 1 In response, secular critics in O’Connor studies have responded by historicizing O’Connor’s work, suggesting that her work is as historically situated as that of any other author in any other given historical period. Interestingly, these critics usually base their arguments on O’Connor’s understanding of secular institutions such as the creative writing program or the welfare state, 2 In this essay, I propose that the metaphysical dimension of O’Connor’s work itself can be “secularized” in the sense of a synthesis between what is usually read as “religious” and “secular” in her fiction. I make this claim on the basis of two observations. First, both the secular and religious discourses that O’Connor engaged with in her fiction were institutionally bound discourses; second, all of these institutions taken together responded to a massive cultural change that came with the conclusion of the Second World War. but do not necessarily dispute that the metaphysical elements of O’Connor’s work remain firmly Catholic. 1 See e.g. Robert H. Brinkmeyer, The Art and Vision of Flannery O’Connor (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP, 1989), Jordan Cofer, The Gospel According to Flannery O’Connor: Examining the Role of The Bible in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), Anthony DiRenzo, American Gargoyles: Flannery O’Connor and the Medieval Grotesque (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1993), John Hawkes, “Flannery O’Connor’s Devil,” Sewanee Review 70 (1962): 395-407, Henry McDonald, “The Moral Meaning of Flannery O’Connor,” Modern Age 24: 3 (1980): 273-282, Joyce Carol Oates, “The Visionary Art of Flannery O’Connor,” Flannery O’Connor, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1986), 43-53. 2 See e.g. John Lance Bacon, Flannery O’Connor and Cold War Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008), Susan Edmunds, Grotesque Relations: Modernist Domestic Fiction and the U.S. Welfare State (Oxford,: Oxford UP, 2008), Michael Kreyling, ed., New Essays on Wise Blood (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2009). S ONJA S CHILLINGS 188 It is in the context of the institutional history of the 1950s that secular and religious references in O’Connor’s work can be brought together, and can be seen in direct dialogue with the aesthetic choices made in her fiction - they can even be synthesized as fundamental perspectives on the world and the human being as such, since all of the relevant institutions of the time respond to a shared need for fundamental categorical revision, and engage in a mostly constructive dialogue with each other. In order to elaborate on this claim, I will discuss one of O’Connor’s most famous and most frequently discussed short stories, “Good Country People” of 1955, showing how the possibility of ideological synthesis is explored here. I will then move on to historicize the context of O’Connor’s writing in the greater cultural context of the United States after 1945, including a discussion of the Catholic Church as an international institution strongly invested in a dialogue with emerging secular international institutions. This dialogue was mainly grounded in a shared development of human dignity as a category that emerged to shape Western culture in the post-Holocaust atomic age. 1. An Interpretation of “Good Country People” The short story “Good Country People” features a comparatively wellknown plot. The protagonist is a one-legged woman called Joy Hopewell who had her first name legally changed to Hulga. Hulga is drawn as an isolated, hostile and frustrated figure. She is thirty-two years old, an atheist, and has a PhD in philosophy. Due to a heart condition, she is forced to live not as an aspiring university lecturer but as a dependent of her mother, the owner of an isolated farm in the rural South. A travelling Bible salesman comes to her mother’s house, presents himself as a simple country boy, and claims to have the same heart condition as Hulga. Hulga is drawn to him because she assumes they are both doomed, and that he therefore understands her outlook on life better than anyone else could. She attempts to seduce him, and imagines “that she took his remorse in hand and changed it into a deeper understanding of life. She took all of his shame away and turned it into something useful.” 3 3 Flannery O’Connor, “Good Country People,” The Complete Stories, ed. Robert Giroux (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 284. All references to the short story “Good Country People” in this essay refer to this edition, and are hereafter abbreviated as GCP. This expectation of Hulga’s never materializes; the tables are turned. The Bible salesman manipulates Hulga into entering a trap. He is not a Bible salesman after all, but a cruel imposter. He leads her onto a remote barn loft, steals her leg and her glasses, and leaves her stranded and trapped, her naivety cruelly mocked and her prostheses stolen as two of many trophies in a morbid collection whose purpose remains unexplained. Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Anxiety 189 Like virtually all of O’Connor’s stories, “Good Country People” is a grotesque in the sense that its moral remains elusive, and that the narrative does not eventually collapse into an unambiguously tragic or comic, or in any significant sense formulaic, mode. Any interpretation of such a grotesque therefore has to reach beyond the plot of the story, and has to look for meaning in the metaphysical considerations that may make the story’s structure meaningful. In O’Connor studies, this story is conventionally interpreted as a tale of poetic justice, featuring the righteous divine punishment of a protagonist who is not only an atheist, but also claims to be a nihilist who exhibits a particularly secular arrogance. 4 O’Connor creates plausibility for such a reading by drawing links between the two characters of Hulga and the Bible salesman such as the different but related qualities of their belief in nothing, references to their respective fathers, and their corresponding usage of self-given names as enabling devices - devices that the Bible salesman indeed puts to use much more skillfully than Hulga, thus indicating his superiority in these matters (GCP 275, 291). Also, the Bible salesman’s robbery is made significant because Hulga’s wooden leg constitutes the central “loaded” element of the story that all characters gravitate around and articulate a perspective on. The leg is also directly linked to Hulga’s essence as a character. Having the leg on her body keeps her radically aloof and in control, but as soon as the leg is detached from her body, Hulga surrenders to the Bible salesman. In this sense, as O’Connor herself emphasizes, For this, she is punished by literary devil and Christian author. 5 Yet there are two elements of the story that render such a reading somewhat superficial, and these are the elements I want to focus on in this essay. The first is the role of Hulga’s heart condition in the composition of the story; the second is a term in the story that is just as loaded as the wooden leg. This loaded element is the term “nothing.” I suggest that the significance of the heart condition and that of the term “nothing” together can be read with benefit against the larger relationship of the cultural reality of the “Age of Anxiety.” there is great significance to the leg as an element of the story, and since it is stolen, one might indeed find plausibility in the reading that she is now bereft of the principles that characterized her, and ripe for a divine act of grace. 6 4 This view corresponds with O’Connor’s own retrospective interpretation of the story. See Flannery O’Connor, “Writing Short Stories,” Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 98-99. 5 Flannery O’Connor, “Writing Short Stories,” 99. 6 Ralph Ellison, “Society, Morality, and the Novel,” Going to the Territory (New York: Vintage, 1987), 272. S ONJA S CHILLINGS 190 The heart condition operates differently in “Good Country People” (1955) than it does in other O’Connor stories that feature a protagonist with a heart condition, such as “A Late Encounter with the Enemy” (1953) or “A View of the Woods” (1957). These other stories both end with the protagonist having a stroke that coincides with the shattering of an unsustainable world view. In contrast, “Good Country People” forgoes this potential of the heart condition in the story’s conclusion. In this story, the heart condition is exclusively used to contextualize the story’s setting. It constitutes a shadow of doom that informs family life on the farm in unspoken but still acutely perceptible ways. To Hulga, the heart condition is one of the most basic “categories of Being, like Space and Time.” 7 On a structural level, the heart condition achieves three things. First, it traps Hulga in this life rather than any other; it is the sole reason why she is not a happy lecturer but an embittered dependent, surrounded by people with whom she cannot meaningfully communicate. Second, the heart condition renders her death a constant possibility for characters and reader alike; it raises a reader expectation that is materialized in the other two stories, but not here. In “Good Country People,“ something more interesting happens: Hulga is a character who is expected to die, and she is aware of this expectation. The heart condition inscribes Hulga as consciously entrapped in her narrative universe as well as in her likely fictional function long before the Bible salesman comes along: because of the heart condition, she is entrapped by her existential knowledge of certain death, and the problem of a possibly futile life and perspective. Third, only this shared, conscious anticipation of death makes Hulga assume that she can communicate with the Bible salesman in the first place, and despite their many social and personal differences - she, the grown-up, atheist daughter of a landowner who has “a number of degrees” (GCP 288), he, the young, uneducated and impoverished fundamentalist. As a feature of Hulga’s individual life, the heart condition is characterized as a threat that is vast, vague and unchangeable, invisible but always existentially present, a central factor that shapes the narrative universe and the constellations found therein. In this vein, we have to understand the Bible salesman’s theft of the leg (which results in her being stranded helplessly on a barn loft) not as the central turning point of the story, but merely as a logical consequence of the story’s exposition: as a trap within a trap. If we want to understand the scene’s significance, we have to leave the Bible salesman’s actions aside for a moment, and focus on what we know of Hulga as a philosopher (GCP 276) whom the reader expects to die due to the clues provided by the story, and who is characterized by her struggle with the awareness that she is expected to 7 Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light. American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 1994), xx. Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Anxiety 191 die. This awareness of, and struggle with, the larger trap only causes her to step into the smaller trap. In “Good Country People,“ Hulga is constantly treated like someone who is almost already dead, and this social death is indeed directly linked to her leg. Her mother Mrs. Hopewell cherishes the memory of her daughter as a child in a state of quiet mourning, and it is the loss of her leg - accidentally shot off, as we come to understand, by Hulga’s father who was divorced by her mother as a consequence (GCP 274) - which marks this point of death for the mother. Mrs. Freeman, the farm manager, is fascinated by Hulga as an example of morbid decay because of the leg (GCP 275). The Bible salesman, in this context, appears almost like a grave robber. Hulga reacts to these objectifying constructions with the stomping over-emphasis of her living existence, combined with an ever-increasing abstraction of thought (GCP 275-6). However, Hulga as a character does not merely react to her condition and the perspectives of the characters around her; she has good reasons of her own for wanting to enter the barn loft, this trap within the trap. This is where we come to the second loaded element of the story, namely the term “nothing.” All of the characters in the story formulate a perspective on nothingness. 8 These perspectives on nothingness correspond directly to these characters’ different usages of language. The Bible salesman, who has always believed in nothing, speaks not to communicate but only to gain entry and to influence people; Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, for whom nothing is perfect, use redundancy in language to manage relationships and to circumvent any given elephant in the room. All three characters manipulate language elegantly and effectively, and use language only to secure and maintain a position, or to achieve a specific aim. Throughout the story, all three characters skillfully surf on the surface of language. This is a dimension which is emphasized as central in the very first passages of the story (GCP 271) as well as in the final paragraph, when the fiction of “good country peo- Hulga claims: “I don’t have illusions. I’m one of those people who see through to nothing” (GCP 287). The manipulative, abusive Bible salesman’s parting words to Hulga are: “I been believing in nothing ever since I was born! ” (GCP 291) Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, Hulga’s mother and her mother’s farm manager, safely contain any given elephant in the room with the words: “Nothing is perfect” (GCP 272). 8 Whenever I discuss “nothing” as a philosophical concept in this essay, I will use the term “nothingness.” This term was established as generally referring to philosophical conversations about “nothing” in the wake of the English translation of Sartre’s L’Être et le néant as Being and Nothingness. My use of “nothingness” only serves the purpose of better readability, and does not reflect any assumption that O’Connor herself directly alluded to Sartre’s book. The first translation of L’Être et le néant to English was published in 1956, a year after the publication of “Good Country People.” It is not likely that O’Connor encountered this work before its translation to English. S ONJA S CHILLINGS 192 ple” is used once more to draw attention to the alleged goodness, dullness, and simplicity of those three supporting characters who are in fact neither good, dull nor simple, but instead just do not use language to express their inner lives (GCP 272, 291). Hulga alone speaks for different reasons. She wants to penetrate the surface, she wants to see through to nothing. She tries to speak honestly to all of the other characters, and is constantly frustrated by her inability to communicate with other characters via language. This does not necessarily mean that she demands a certain standard of intellectual sophistication from them, but it means that she views language to serve as an entry point for knowledge, and wants it to be used accordingly (GCP 283). What is interesting about Hulga’s perspective on nothingness is that in her case, the context and usage of the term “nothing” are quite specific, and philosophical in a more literal sense. Martin Heidegger’s lecture “What is Metaphysics? ” is quoted in the text, and defines Hulga’s usage of the term. She generally alludes to the lecture at various times in the story when formulating her own perspective (GCP 275, 283-284, 287, 289). As her mother discovers, Hulga has underlined a passage of the lecture in a book: Science, on the other hand, has to assert its soberness and seriousness afresh and declare that it is concerned solely with what-is. Nothing - how can it be for science anything but a horror and a phantasm? If science is right, then one thing stands firm: science wishes to know nothing of nothing. Such is after all the strictly scientific approach to Nothing. We know it by wishing to know nothing of Nothing. 9 In the lecture originally entitled “Was ist Metaphysik? ” (1929), this passage is part of the introductory remarks, followed by the observation that, paradoxically, whenever science seeks to evoke or formulate its own positivist nature, it still requires the acknowledgement or even usage of nothingness as an implicit but perspective-defining reference point. 10 Heidegger’s explicit observation of this paradox, which is not quoted in O’Connor, nevertheless underlies the three supporting characters’ responses to categorical nothingness, as the strong affective reaction of Hulga’s mother to the Heidegger passage as an “evil incantation in gibberish” already indicates (GCP 277). Like Heidegger’s scientists, the characters who use language only for tactical and strategic ends wish to know nothing of language’s ability to make “contact with mystery.” 11 In “What is Metaphysics? ” Heidegger suggests that reason - or scientific language geared toward frictionless communication - will not tell us the 9 Martin Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics? ” quoted in GCP 277. 10 Martin Heidegger, “Was ist Metaphysik? ” Wegmarken, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2013), 106. 11 Flannery O’Connor, “On Her Own Work,” Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, eds. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 112. Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Anxiety 193 most relevant things about the nature and proper place of the human being in the world. In order to arrive at a better understanding of the human being, he argues, one has to consider the affective dimension, the moods, and above all the sensation of anxiety, as resources to understand how human beings are existentially situated in the world. What is special about being human according to Heidegger is the situatedness in nothingness; nothingness roughly refers to everything that radically transcends our capacity to reason. Heidegger argues that it is this groundedness in nothingness, rather than the groundedness in reason or even language, that makes us human in the first place. This groundedness in nothingness explicitly renders our own unknowability our greatest resource for knowledge. In science - and this is the characterization of science in the passage underlined by Hulga - we look at the world with prefabricated core assumptions about the world’s nature. But metaphysics in Heidegger’s sense means to go beyond these limitations of thought, and to probe the very core assumptions made by science, with the anticipated result that the nature of both world and human being will emerge as radically unpredictable and essentially unknowable. This lecture is directly associated with Hulga’s “nihilist” thought, yet she is not a character whose dramatic development culminates in a shattering of her nihilism. Indeed, her worldview cannot be shattered precisely because Hulga as a Heideggerian actively seeks to broaden her perspective via affective experience. This direct parallel of Hulga’s character to Heidegger’s take on nothingness works so well in the story because O’Connor can show and develop some aspects of the argument in the character of Hulga that Heidegger can only tell, or state as given, within the conventions of logical argument. For example, Heidegger enumerates some of the moods which indicate the presence of nothingness to us, and which make it experienceable as nothingness in the first place. He lists conditions of negation, annihilation, antagonism, rebuke, failure, privation, prohibition and corresponding feelings like anxiety, boredom, frustration, anger, sadness and bitterness. This mix of conditions and feelings is what Hulga, the entrapped philosopher, is informed by in the story from the start. She is the one who, in Heidegger’s view, is perfectly equipped to recognize the nature of nothingness. Because the relevant moods inform her completely, she cannot possibly avoid her conscious situatedness in nothingness. Hulga’s stated vocation, which is directly informed by this existential entrapment, is formulated as an open question: she wants to carve greatness from ugliness, understanding from remorse, and significance from shame; her preferred self-comparison is with Vulcan in his capacity as a “sweating” blacksmith and forger of divine things (GCP 275). In her dealings with the Bible salesman, she starts out with what she is capable of understanding (and therefore, of teaching) but does not necessarily have a particular vision of the S ONJA S CHILLINGS 194 “useful” outcome of their relationship. She primarily wants to seduce the Bible salesman in order to arrive at a “deeper understanding of life” primarily for him, but also for herself. The tables are turned, at first, by his taking her shame away instead of her removal of his. When Hulga surrenders to the Bible salesman by allowing him to detach her wooden leg, “her brain seemed to have stopped thinking altogether and to be about some other function that it was not very good at” (GCP 289). The formulation here indicates that Hulga, the philosopher, still remains within the fold of teacher and student, but has now taken the place of the student. At first, “the power [unleashed by kissing] went at once to the brain” (GCP 285), but is soon overwhelmed - for example, she does not notice him taking her glasses even though her mind allegedly “never stopped or lost itself for a second to her feelings” (GCP 287). Eventually, when she “surrender[s] to him completely,” [i]t was like losing her own life and finding it again, miraculously, in his” (GCP 289). Hulga is cruelly rebuked when she attempts to read this brief joyful experience normatively (or, as Heidegger might say, scientifically), but her underlying vocation as a philosopher in the spirit of Heidegger is confirmed. Through those few moments of seduction before the situation disintegrates, Hulga comes face to face with the trusting exposure and surrender which Heidegger associates with the understanding of being in the world that complements the understanding of nothingness in the world. Heidegger associates the understanding of being with the notion of joy, which is Hulga’s own abandoned name; as Justin Albert Harrison formulates, “joy [in Heidegger] always arises alongside or in juxtaposition to anxiety or Dasein’s existence in relation to the nothing. […] [A]ngst is overcome by an attunement of joy as one abides in meditative thought and ‘releasement’ towards being.” 12 Harrison helpfully suggests that Heideggerian joy specifically deviates from “scientific” understandings of the earth which alienate the human being from the earth by opening up, instead, the possibility of human “rootedness” in the earth. 13 12 Justin Albert Harrison, Joy as Attunement and End in the Philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Henri Bergson, A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Chicago, IL: Loyola University Chicago, 2010), 165. This, in turn, resonates directly with the framing of the barnhouse scene via two parallelized scenes of Hulga gazing at the rural landscape (GCP 287, 291), and the conclusion of the story with Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman who are busy “digging up onions” and specifically removing “evil-smelling” ones from the earth (GCP 291). It is in this way that Joy-Hulga’s two names are reunited within the story, and allow 13 Ibid., 167. Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Anxiety 195 the confrontation with the Bible salesman to complete, rather than to disintegrate, her existing philosophical perspective. The construction of Hulga’s heart condition is subtly referenced to assist this Heideggerian framing of the barn loft scene. Her heart is shown to work particularly strongly after the Bible salesman’s treachery and departure. When Hulga gazes at the landscape a second time, she not only pays attention to the outside, but face is “almost purple” with blood flow, which, in the story’s final reference to Hulga, finds a variation as “her churning face” and is thus explicitly associated with a mood in Heidegger’s sense (GCP 290-291). By the end of the story, not much has changed on the surface of the narrative universe. Everything that is characteristic of the characters in the beginning remains just so. The Bible salesman keeps roaming the land, Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman keep working the land, and Hulga remains isolated above and away from them. The final description of Hulga’s face records the only actual character development of the story. At the outset, her “constant outrage had obliterated every expression from her face” (GCP 273). In notable contrast, the change into a “churning” face indicates that Hulga has become moved rather than remaining static, that she is now open - to an act of grace, perhaps, but more likely from within the construction of the story, to a full recognition of the relationship between being and nothingness. Joy, in this sense, refers to a philosophical category which can be re-integrated into Hulga in the same way that mystery as the primary element of human existence can be integrated into the tradition of reason in Heidegger: the acknowledgement of mystery does not mean the abandonment of reason, nor the denial of suffering, but simply points to an unspoken, fleeting and wondrous underlying dimension of humanity that requires both the acceptance of death as inevitable and life as inexhaustible. Likewise, the experience of Joy does not undo Hulga. At various points of this essay, I have drawn attention to a pattern in the structure of the story: a trap is embedded in a trap, a given name is embedded in a chosen name, the disability of a lost limb is embedded in a disabling heart condition, science is embedded in nothingness. As a result of the reading of nothingness proposed here, one could add to this list that philosophy 14 14 This means both Christian and existentialist philosophy. Though not explicitly discussed in this essay, the short story also features direct references to theological considerations of the soul. In particular, Nicolas Malebranche, who complicated the notion of the classic body-soul-dualism, is referenced in the story (GCP 276). This reference has not been extensively discussed here because it is much less structurally defining than the Heidegger reference. is embedded in literature, and it is in this sense that I propose to read the story as responsive to a particular moment of cultural change. It is indeed this context which makes such a framing not just plausi- S ONJA S CHILLINGS 196 ble, but almost inevitable, for a writer such as O’Connor who develops a consciously orthodox perspective to (late) modernist writing from within the doctrines of Catholic Church. This careful construction of interlaced concepts in the story corresponds with O’Connor’s larger perspective on “nihilism” in the institutional landscape of her time, and corresponds quite neatly with responses of the Catholic Church to the fundamental categorical reconstructions that characterize the postwar period. 2. Postwar International Institutions and Cultural Change In the aftermath of two World Wars, the Holocaust, and the caesura of the atom bomb as a new defining feature of human reality, the postwar period witnesses a fundamental reconsideration of all categories of being in the United States. American discourse of this time is characterized by paradoxes, not the least of which is the question of goodness and virtue in the American national character that, according to a number of commentators, had been “Hitlerize[d]” by mass warfare and especially by the decision to drop not one but two atom bombs on largely civilian targets. 15 World War I, the Depression, World War II and Korea, the Cold War, the threat of the atom, our discovery of the reality of treason, and now Egypt and Hungary make us aware that reality, which during Dickens’s time seemed fairly stable, has broken loose from its old historical base, and the Age of Anxiety is truly more than a poetic conceit. […] In fact, there is no stability anywhere and there will not be for many years to come, and progress now insistently asserts its tragic side; the evil now stares out of the bright sunlight. A language of absolute destabilization was almost universally resorted to in the United States. In 1957, O’Connor’s contemporary Ralph Ellison summarizes: 16 Regarding the atom bomb specifically, the cultural historian Paul Boyer emphasizes that “[i]t was surprising to note how quickly contemporary observers [between 1945 and 1950] understood that a profoundly unsettling new cultural factor had been introduced - that the bomb had transformed not only military strategy and international relations, but the fundamental ground of culture and consciousness.” 17 In other words, traditional categories of conceptualizing the human being were fundamentally under review in the American postwar period. A general cultural sense emerged that there must be something more important, more central to the human being than the capacity to reason if the capacity to 15 Dieter Georgi quoted in Lee-Anne Broadhead, “Our Day in Their Shadow: Critical Remembrance, Feminist Science and the Women of the Manhattan Project,” Peace and Conflict Studies 15: 2 (2009): 45. 16 Ellison 1987, 272. 17 Boyer 1994, xxi. Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Anxiety 197 reason could unleash mass destruction - including the potential future destruction of the United States on similarly “rational” grounds. 18 At the same time, as Ellison’s comment in particular indicates, this necessity to find different grounds for the value of every individual human life was grounded in a general sense of alienation and anxiety, and it is this condition which Flannery O’Connor means when she speaks of “nihilism” in 1955: “[I]f you live today you breathe in nihilism. In or out of the Church, it’s the gas you breathe. If I hadn’t had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest [sic] logical positivist you ever saw right now.” 19 In this comment, O’Connor emphasizes as central the distinction between what Heidegger calls “science” and her own perspective, and directly embeds it into a political context of responding to the cultural changes of the World Wars. 20 In the emerging human rights regime after the Second World War, “human dignity” was legally defined as the human privilege not to be rendered an object. The emerging consensus definitions of human dignity in the twentieth century relied on originally Christian categories which were, in part, directly distilled into secular form in emerging international legal bodies. Her discussion of the Church in this short quote is interesting in its seeming ambiguity. On the one hand, the Church is informed by nihilism since nihilism, to O’Connor, is an overarching element of the contemporary human condition; on the other hand, the Church develops perspectives that lead even beyond its own nihilism. It is illuminating to consider the grounds for these perspectives which defy both “nihilism” and “positivism.” 21 18 William L. Laurence, Dawn over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 287. In the postwar period, religious speech and category was thus not the prerogative of explicitly religious commentators, but ran through all central institutional debates of the time. Human dignity was the term around which the most important philosophical questions of the time revolved: in the context of national debates on the American Way of Life, in the international debate on human rights, or in the metaphysical debate dominated by existentialism in the United States of the time, the notion of human dignity refers to an 19 Flannery O’Connor, “To A. 22 August 1955,” The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), 97. 20 For example, a discussion of totalitarianism and the Holocaust directly leads up to the passage quoted here, as is still discernible in the use of the term “gas” which alludes to the Nazi concentration camps. Also note, in the context of this paper, the interesting parallel between the “evil-smelling onion” that is uprooted in “Good Country People” and the choice to characterize logical positivism (science, in Heidegger’s terms) as “stinky.” 21 Edward Peters, Torture: Expanded Edition (Philadelphia, PA: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 148-155. S ONJA S CHILLINGS 198 important categorical enlargement in how to understand the human being in view of radically changed circumstances. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that these conversations on human dignity did not just capitalize on religious discourse and mine it for suitable categories, but that the Catholic Church in particular was itself a major institutional platform for these debates, and furthermore stood in active dialogue with secular institutional bodies. Today, the Catholic Church is routinely acknowledged as an important institutional contributor to the emergence of human dignity as an overarching postwar concept to counterbalance the existential cultural destabilization that O’Connor describes as nihilism. 22 Critics such as Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito have suggested that this newly emerging understanding of dignity in the twentieth century did not, in fact, do much to counterbalance the atrocities of the twentieth century, but that the concept in fact reproduced a legal and biopolitical detachment of the legal categories of “human” and “person,” whereby the protected legal “person” that was endowed with dignity became more abstracted from actual human life than ever. 23 In the passages cited above, Boyer, Ellison and O’Connor all speak of the 1950s as a time that suddenly experiences an unprecedented new condition of reality which makes it virtually impossible for writers not to address the metaphysical dimension of human reality. The inclusion of this larger cultural context adds a significant dimension to O’Connor’s preoccupation with literature’s ability to make “contact with mystery,” and her claim that literature itself was capable of embodying this mystery for readers. However, a different interpretation of these historical developments is possible when literary fiction like O’Connor’s, rather than legal discourse alone, is drawn on for analytical contemplation. 24 22 See e.g. F. Russell Hittinger, “An Adequate Anthropology: Social Aspects of Imago Dei in Catholic Theology,” Imago Dei: Human Dignity in Ecumenical Perspective, ed. Thomas Albert Howard (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2013), 39-78, Christopher McCrudden, “In Pursuit of Human Dignity: An Introduction to Current Debates,” Understanding Human Dignity, ed. Christopher McCrudden (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013), 1-58, Michael Rosen, “Dignity Past and Present,” Dignity, Rank, and Rights, eds. Jeremy Waldron and Meir Dan-Cohen (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2012), 79-98. It is a particularly interesting aside that Thomas Aquinas is one of the most prominent names referenced in Catholic dignity discourses of the twentieth century, given Flannery O’Connor’s great and enduring admiration of his perspective. Following 23 Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (New York, NY: Zone Books, 1999), 67-71, Roberto Esposito, Person und menschliches Leben (Zürich: diaphanes, 2010). 24 Flannery O’Connor, “On Her Own Work,“ 107-118, Flannery O’Connor, “The Teaching of Literature,” Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, eds. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 121-134. Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Anxiety 199 this reasoning, human dignity should not merely be understood as equivalent to classic forms of agency (as Agamben and Esposito suggest), but instead as a notion that may precede traditional institutional characterizations of human agency - a notion that, by virtue of deliberately not being defined, 25 opens up a space to make contact with mystery without having to step outside of institutions to do so. Especially in the short story as a form that allowed writers virtually complete aesthetic control, it becomes an important idea that human life is capable of developing in ways that are unpredictable and may not be accessible to reason 26 because characters express something more fundamentally human than reason. Instead of a definition, the short story is capable of lending formal expression to the human mystery that finds a parallel formal expression in the institutional language of dignity - where, indeed, the understanding of human dignity as a “non-interpreted thesis” 27 It is precisely this latent cultural acknowledgement of human unknowability in the American postwar period that lent secular and religious discourses, philosophical and legal discourses, as well as institutional and literary discourses, a common metaphysical ground which had not previously existed. It is in this sense that O’Connor’s obsessive insistence on the depiction of human mystery is very timely, and her use of interlaced concepts as demostrated in “Good Country People” helps illuminate fundamental institutional re-visions (in the most literal sense) of her time. achieves a similar effect. In short, such a cultural climate rendered a sharp differentiation between religion and secularism, Catholicism and existentialism, philosophy and literature impossible to sustain; instead, this climate invited these conversations to emerge as intertwined elements of shared metaphysical questions. As 25 This becomes particularly evident in the often-quoted characterization of twentiethcentury human dignity as a “non-interpreted thesis.” See e.g. Christopher McCrudden, “In Pursuit of Human Dignity: An Introduction to Current Debates,” Understanding Human Dignity, ed. Christopher McCrudden (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013), 7. 26 In literary criticism, this development is often linked to the claim that mid-twentieth century literature tends to shift from a “drama of characters” to a “drama of situations” which foregrounds negotiations of the metaphysical dimension of a plot. See Hazel Barnes, The Literature of Possibility: A Study in Humanistic Existentialism (Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1959), 9-11. Such “existentialist” literature in the wider sense invites a sophisticated and increasingly professionalized mode of interpretation which coincides with writers’ own increasing institutional professionalization, a notion that is particularly important for O’Connor who was trained in the context of Creative Writing programs and remained faithful to the methods offered here. See e.g. McGurl 2009 and Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation,” Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag (London: Penguin, 1966), 3-14. 27 Christopher McCrudden, “In Pursuit of Human Dignity: An Introduction to Current Debates,” Understanding Human Dignity, ed. Christopher McCrudden (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013), 7. S ONJA S CHILLINGS 200 interpreters, it is necessary to acknowledge the historical fact of categorical revision in this period not only in the consideration of literary works that respond to disorientation by deviating from ‘classic’ forms of storytelling 28 In conclusion, Hulga’s survival and indeterminate philosophical politics by the end of the story - does she become a better secular philosopher, or does she become a Christian? - can be considered together by acknowledging the close proximity of these solutions in their shared rejection of “nihilism.” The Bible salesman can be a Christian devil as well as a secular manifestation of the banality of evil; what is important about him is that he does not value life but collects dead things, whereas Hulga arrives both at a greater understanding of the mystery of interpersonal relationships and the potentially joyful, enduring presence of the world - not despite, but through, her willingness to descend deeper into the trap that the story’s structure has laid out for her from the start. but also and perhaps especially in the work of writers like O’Connor who emphasize their own embeddedness in an institutional context of meaningmaking - an institution which explicitly absorbed the discourse of dignity in order to counterbalance “nihilism.” 28 See, for example, the essay by Ingo Berensmeyer in this volume; see also W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994): 11-34. Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Anxiety 201 Works Cited Agamben, Giorgio. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New York, NY: Zone Books, 1999. Bacon, John Lance. Flannery O’Connor and Cold War Culture. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UP, 2008. Barnes, Hazel. The Literature of Possibility: A Study in Humanistic Existentialism. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1959. Boyer, Paul. By the Bomb’s Early Light. American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 1994. Brinkmeyer, Robert H., Jr. The Art and Vision of Flannery O’Connor. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP, 1989. Broadhead, Lee-Anne. “Our Day in Their Shadow: Critical Remembrance, Feminist Science and the Women of the Manhattan Project.” Peace and Conflict Studies 15: 2 (2009): 38-60. Cofer, Jordan. The Gospel According to Flannery O’Connor: Examining the Role of The Bible in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction. New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2014. Edmunds, Susan. Grotesque Relations: Modernist Domestic Fiction and the U.S. Welfare State. Oxford, GB: Oxford UP, 2008. Ellison, Ralph. “Society, Morality, and the Novel.” In: Going to the Territory, by Ralph Ellison. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1987. 239-274. DiRenzo, Anthony. American Gargoyles: Flannery O’Connor and the Medieval Grotesque. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1993. Esposito, Roberto. Person und menschliches Leben. Zürich, CH: diaphanes, 2010. Harrison, Justin Albert. Joy as Attunement and End in the Philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Henri Bergson. A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Chicago, IL: Loyola University Chicago, 2010. Hawkes, John. “Flannery O’Connor’s Devil.” Sewanee Review 70 (1962): 395-407. Heidegger, Martin.“Was ist Metaphysik? ” Wegmarken. Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt am Main, DE: Klostermann, 2013. 103-122. Hittinger, F. Russell. “An Adequate Anthropology: Social Aspects of Imago Dei in Catholic Theology.” Imago Dei: Human Dignity in Ecumenical Perspective. Ed. Thomas Albert Howard. Washington, DC: Catholic U of America P, 2013. 39-78. Kreyling, Michael, ed. New Essays on Wise Blood. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UP, 1995. Laurence, William L. Dawn over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947. McCrudden, Christopher. “In Pursuit of Human Dignity: An Introduction to Current Debates.” Understanding Human Dignity. Ed. Christopher McCrudden. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013. 1-58. McDonald, Henry. “The Moral Meaning of Flannery O’Connor.” Modern Age 24: 3 (1980): 273-282. McGurl, Mark. The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2009. Mitchell, W.J.T. Picture Theory. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P, 1994. S ONJA S CHILLINGS 202 Oates, Joyce Carol. “The Visionary Art of Flannery O’Connor.” Flannery O’Connor. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York, NY: Chelsea House, 1986. 43-53. O’Connor, Flannery. “A Late Encounter with the Enemy.” Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Stories. Ed. Robert Giroux. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. 134-144. ---. “Good Country People.” Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Stories. Ed. Robert Giroux. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. 271-291. ---. “A View of the Woods.” Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Stories. Ed. Robert Giroux. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. 335-356. ---. “Writing Short Stories.” Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Eds. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. 87-106. ---. “On Her Own Work.” Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Eds. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. 107-118. ---. “The Teaching of Literature.” Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Eds. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. 121-134. ---. “To A. 22 August 1955.” The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor. Ed. Sally Fitzgerald. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979. 97-99. Peters, Edward. Torture: Expanded Edition. Philadelphia, PA: U of Pennsylvania P, 1999. Rosen, Michael. “Dignity Past and Present.” Dignity, Rank, and Rights. Eds. Jeremy Waldron and Meir Dan-Cohen. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. 79-98. Sontag, Susan. “Against Interpretation.” Against Interpretation and Other Essays. London, GB: Penguin, 1966. 3-14. MARIA LÖSCHNIGG ‘Nifty shades of green’: The Merits and Limits of Ecopoetry 1. Introduction In the late 1990s, Axel Goodbody diagnosed a lack of interest in environmental literature, especially on the side of German literary criticism. 1 If recognized at all, eco-literature was largely regarded as didactic, activist and documentary. The view that eco-literature was rather less satisfactory from an aesthetic point of view was supported by an almost exclusive focus on content in early eco-critical approaches. 2 1 See Axel Goodbody, ed., Literatur und Ökologie (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998), 13. See also J. Scott Bryson, who laments that environmental poetry in particular, while being a recognizable trend from the 1990s onwards, “was garnering almost no critical notice”: “Introduction,” Ecopoetry. A Critical Introduction, ed. J. Scott Bryson (Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 2002), 1. However, and here I fully agree with Hubert Zapf’s model of literature as an element of a cultural ecology, it is the specificity of literary texts which determines, to a large extent, their unique cultural function. Thus, literature unfolds its main potential with regard to cultural transformations not only on a thematic or referential level, but also as an effect of “the specific structures and functions of literary textuality as it has evolved in relation to and competition with other forms of tex- 2 See for instance Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, eds., The Ecocritical Reader. Landmarks in Literary Ecology (Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1996). The danger of limiting the critical scope of ecocriticism to a thematic exploration of nature writing and the literature of wilderness has also been pointed out among others by Karla Armbruster and Kathleen R. Wallace, eds., Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism (Charlottesville, VA: U of Virginia P, 2001), 7. See also Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer, eds., Natur - Kultur - Text. Beiträge zu Ökologie und Literaturwissenschaft (Heidelberg: Winter, 2005), 17-18. crumble crumble oil and bumble liars churn and exxon valdez tumbles roadkill carcasses pile higher, mired, find reboot won’t do as tons of sewage carry pesticides, estrogen, prozac, pcbs into the kitchen stinks 1 MARIA LÖSCHNIGG 204 tuality in the course of cultural evolution.” 3 According to Zapf, literature “acts like an ecological principle or an ecological energy within the larger system of cultural discourses.” 4 On the one hand literature appears as a sensorium and imaginative sounding board for hidden problems, deficits and imbalances of the larger culture, as a form of textuality which critically balances and symbolically articulates what is marginalized, neglected, repressed or excluded by dominant historical power structures, systems of discourse, and forms of life, but what is nevertheless of vital importance to an adequately complex account of humanity’s existence within the fundamental culture-nature-relationship. On the other hand, by breaking up closed circuits of dogmatic world views and exclusionary truth-claims in favour of plural perspectives, multiple meanings and dynamic interrelationships, literature becomes a site of a constant, creative renewal of language, perception, communication, and imagination. (Emphasis in the original) This function largely shows itself in two different ways: 5 The lines quoted at the beginning of this essay, taken from the poem Sybil Unrest, achieve their powerful effect not primarily by means of the factual information which they contain. Rather, they do so through their radical defamiliarization of well-worn phrases, quotations, collocations and clichés, foregrounding and bringing to mind issues which have become ossified by habit and adaptation. Poems such as Sybil Unrest make visible the deficiencies of content-oriented approaches to ecopoetry, as it is obviously the poetic rather than the referential function which defines the strong environmental and political impact of this text. Indeed, the ludic element which characterizes Larissa Lai and Rita Wong’s poetic dialogue is not restricted to the text but spills over to the recipient, who is called upon to create and re-create meaning from the poem’s polysemic elements. The effect of the reader’s active involvement in a complex interplay of word formation, sound effects, verbal associations, intertextual allusions and the shuffling of syntactic units, is one of revelation and shock as the poem uncovers and turns inside out what is normally hidden under the cover of a smoothly functioning verbal rhetoric. In the passage cited above, a suicidal obsession with automobiles is emphasized through an infernal scenario, like the seething cauldron of the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. At the same time, one finds references to actual environmental catastrophes such as the Exxon Valdez Disaster of 1989. In this connection, the glib transformation of kitchen sinks to “kitchen stinks” carries with it an olfactory reminder of an omnipresent pollution. 3 Hubert Zapf, “The State of Ecocriticism and the Function of Literature as Cultural Ecology,” Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies. Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocroticism, eds. Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006), 55. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 56. ‘Nifty shades of green’ 205 In this article I shall focus on the specific cultural functions of eco-poetry, i.e. poetry which explicitly takes up environmental concerns, and demonstrate how these functions result from the very form of these poetic texts rather than from their contents. It is thus the literariness of eco-poetry as such which stands in the centre of my analysis. In order to render the relation between literature and political, cultural, and social contexts concrete, I shall concentrate on a topical environmental site: the Athabasca Tar Sands in Canada’s northern Alberta. Exploitation of the vast oil resources there and its environmental impact has provoked a great deal of critique in twenty-firstcentury Canadian poetry. I shall first briefly discuss two poems which deal with the consequences of unrestrained consumerism and neo-liberal policies in a more general manner, before discussing explicit renderings of the oil sands and of the environmentally detrimental extraction of petroleum in the area. 6 My approach to these texts, as mentioned above, is largely based on Hubert Zapf’s understanding of literature as an ecological force, and my aim is to provide a functional model for environmental poetry, thereby acknowledging the specific reconfigurative potential of lyric genres as opposed to dramatic or narrative text types. Also drawing on the reader-response model recently proposed by Eva Koopman and Frank Hakemulder (2015), I shall finally raise questions as to the limits of literature as cultural ecology, i.e. as a regenerating factor within the ‘cultural biotope.’ 2. The Rise of Eco-Poetry in Canada: Creating Semiotopes During the years when most of the poems here discussed were written, ecological concern in Canada often crystallized around the policies of former prime minister Stephen Harper. According to an article in the Vancouver Observer, Harper risked transforming Canada into “an international environmental pariah.” 7 More cynically, Rick Smith in The Toronto Star noted that Harper was “the best thing to happen to the environmental issue in Canada. Ever.” 8 6 For an extensive factual discussion of this site of ecological crisis see Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands. Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent (Vancouver, Toronto, Berkeley: Greystone Books, 2010). Indeed, Harper’s aggressively ambitious policies clearly prioritised 7 Bell Warren (2015). “Stephen Harper Coninues to Make Canada an International Pariah.” Vancouver Observer. Online: http: / / www.vancouverobserver.com/ opinion/ stephen-harper-continues-his-path-transforming-canada-international-pariah [March 10, 2015]. 8 Rick Smith (2014). “Stephen Harper: The Environment’s best Friend.” The Toronto Star. Online: http: / / www.thestar.com/ opinion/ commentary/ 2014/ 07/ 31/ stephen_harper_the_env ironments_best_friend.html [November 12, 2014]. MARIA LÖSCHNIGG 206 economy over ecology, which raised much awareness of environmental issues in Canada, also causing shifts in political and cultural sensibilities. While scientists and environmental organizations expressed their concern in various ways, including statistically based reports or an open letter signed by 800 scientists, 9 Canadian authors used other forms of expression to make these developments visible and create alternate imaginaries. Margaret Atwood with her Maddaddam Trilogy (2003-2013) of dystopian novels is doubtlessly the most prominent example in Canadian letters of a writer speaking out against the cultural, social and environmental effects of neoliberal policies and exploitative consumerism. However, it is in particular within poetry that environmental concerns have been addressed, providing the most pointed examples across the literary genres for Zapf’s view of literary texts as “imaginary biotopes.” 10 Examples of such poetry are Di Brandt’s collection Now You Care (2003), Larissa Lai and Rita Wong’s Sybil Unrest (2004), Dionne Brand’s long poem Inventory (2006), various poems from Karen Solie’s collection Pigeon (2009), and the poems collected in the 2009 anthology Regreen: New Canadian Ecological Poetry. With Nancy Holmes’s Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems, another noteworthy anthology appeared in the same year. It assembles about 300 poems which focus on the precarious relationship between nature and civilization. Without doubt, the growing importance of ecoliterature has come to be recognized by literary criticism - a fact which is also reflected by the award of the prestigious CBC Poetry Prize to David Martin and his poem “Tar Swan” in 2014. Before, the “disproportionate imbalance” between the prominence of eco-literature on the one hand, and the sparseness of critical responses on the other, was still lamented by Simon Estok in 2009. 11 As I have pointed out elsewhere, one of the reasons for the lack of relevant criticism especially in Canada may be “the long-standing dominance of the wilderness as a Canadian cultural paradigm and the emphasis on a hostile nature in Canadian literature and criticism.” 12 9 Emily Chung: http: / / www.cbc.ca/ news/ technology/ foreign-scientists-call-on-stephen -harper-to-restore-science-funding-freedom-1.2806571 [March 10, 2015]. While in literature this “awareness of the fragility of nature and the necessity of ecological themes” is now visible in manifold ways, a desirable cross-fertilization between liter- 10 Hubert Zapf, Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie: Zur kulturellen Funktion imaginativer Texte an Beispielen des amerikanischen Romans (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2002), 48. 11 Simon C. Estok, “Discourses of Nation, National Ecopoetics, and Ecocriticism in the face of the US: Canada and Korea as Case Studies,” Comparative American Studies 7.2 (2009): 85. 12 Maria Löschnigg, “‘NAFTA we worship you’: Conservationism and the Critique of Economic Liberalism in Twenty-First Century Canadian Poetry,” Zeitschrift für Kanada- Studien 34 (2014): 33. ‘Nifty shades of green’ 207 ary studies and environmental studies within a larger cultural framework is only slowly beginning to catch up. The task of eco-criticism as outlined in this paper is to show not only how eco-poems function as barometers indicating shifts in the cultural and political climate; it is also to explore their function as essential factors of transformation, which is not only a material process but also and even more so a mental one. In this supposition of the basic functions of literature within the larger framework of cultural and political discourses I largely follow Lawrence Buell’s ideas as articulated in his seminal study The Environmental Imagination: If, as environmental philosophers contend, western metaphysics and ethics need revision before we can address today’s environmental problems, then environmental crisis involves a crisis of the imagination the amelioration of which depends on finding better ways of imagining nature and humanity’s relation to it. 13 Along the same lines, the editors of Regreen argue that the poems collected in their anthology remind us to think not simply of the biosphere, but also of the semiosphere, of the world of signification in which we live. It is difficult to care about things we do not see, or that do not signify for us. Clearly, one of the imperatives of environmental activism must be to broaden fields of signification, expand horizons of significance so that creatures, places, and biodiversity matter in increasingly urgent ways. 14 Considering the increasing tendency of Western societies to confuse cultural standardization and economic globalisation with progress, it is essential to pay attention to cultural manifestations that operate outside the conventionalized discourse of ‘innovation’ and ‘development.’ The techniques used by eco-poetry undermine the pragmatism and one-dimensionality as well as the exclusionary and repressive tendencies of such discourses, and of cultural, social and political practices based on such norms. In the past two decades, the environmental crisis, which affects all parts of the world and which radically questions the notion of a dichotomy between culture and nature, has become one of the most pressing issues of contemporary societies. By focussing on a specific site of crisis and on imaginative responses to this crisis, I shall delineate the relationship between a cultural climate dominated by doctrines of the free market on the one hand, and the potential created by imaginative renderings of the cultural deficits inherent in monopolizing policies on the other. In fact, a closer look at these poems will show that their range of signification by far exceeds the immediate concern with Alberta’s 13 Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard UP, 1995), 2. 14 Adam Dickinson (2009). “Introduction: ‘The Astronauts,’” Regreen: New Ecological Poetry, ed. A. D. and Madhur Anand (Sudbury: Your Scrivener Press, 2009), 15. MARIA LÖSCHNIGG 208 Oil Sands. The essential questions at stake in my analysis of poetic texts are, in what way do these Canadian poems address and counter the prevailing “dominant cultural reality system” 15 We may ask, at this point, whether we are not already flooded with and perhaps numbed by innumerable media reports on environmental damage and by scientifically based scenarios of future catastrophes. Is it really necessary, therefore, to also have poetry which deals with these matters? Indeed it is, I should say, since literature functions not only “as a sensorium for the deficits of the larger system of cultural discourses,” of twenty-first-century Canada, and through which poetic means do they constitute an indispensable complement to other critical discourses taking up the same cultural deficits? 16 but also constitutes a unique regenerative force: “Literary works of art,” in Zapf’s words, “are two things at the same time: they are laboratories of human self-exploration, in which, as it were, basic assumptions of prevailing systems of interpretation are ‘tested’ in the medium of simulated life processes; and they are imaginative biotopes in which the dimensions and energies of life neglected by these systems find symbolic space to develop and express themselves.” 17 3. The Rhetoric of Canadian Ecopoems Literature is thus an indispensable factor in the sensitive biotope of cultural ecology and as such it is important for our ‘environmental ethics,’ and thus perhaps (and in the long run) even for our physical survival on earth. Sybil Unrest is a “fit of glossolalia,” as Sophie Mayer puts it in her review of Larissa Lai and Rita Wong’s volume. 18 The poem exposes the effects of economic globalisation and of an unrestrained capitalism through a radical ludism and an ‘explosion’ of language into multiple meanings. The entanglements of economic, ecological and ethical issues are compressed into neologisms like “global swarming,” (9) “sadomarketism,” (11) “polyglot postwhore girls,” (66) “homoerratic foreflay” (15) and “continental shrift,” (21) or are foregrounded by intertextual punning as in “lend me your tears,” (7) “love’s leper’s lost,” (14) “all the world’s a page,” (65) “a womb with a view,” (62) “in cod we trust” (34) and “the bleak small inherit the dearth.” (9) These polysemic words and word clusters are further charged with meaning through their subtle integration into the whole text, as for example in the following lines: 15 Zapf 2006, 63. 16 Ibid. 49 17 Ibid. 61. 18 “Review: Sybil Unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita Wong,” Chroma, January 31. Online: http: / / chromajournal.blogspot.co.at/ 2009/ 01/ review-sybil-unrest-by-larissa-laiand.html. [October 12, 2012] ‘Nifty shades of green’ 209 bird markets flew over the google mast mushed and bushed trampled by the swoosh in corporate predictability iconomic bust (13) In the first two lines, we may find an allusion, although strongly defamiliarized, to Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The sociocritical implications of the novel will thus automatically inform our reading of “bird markets” that fly “over the google mast.” The verbs “mushed,” “bushed,” and “trampled” all denote aggressive acts and can be linked to “bird market” and to the agent of these violent acts, namely “the swoosh,” i.e. the logo (“iconomic bust” [my emphasis]) of NIKE sports, which metonymically stands for all globalized corporations, while the “google mast” denotes the globalization of information. Simultaneously, the actual meaning of the word ‘swoosh’ implies the sweeping away of local businesses by the global market. If we translate “iconomic bust” as ‘economic failure,’ the word ‘predictability’ may well refer to the fact that infinite growth is impossible. Like Larissa Lai and Rita Wong, Karen Solie also addresses general issues of economic expansion at the cost of environmental, social and cultural concerns. In the four poems entitled “Four Factories” however, she is more specific as to the location of the business ventures she addresses, as each of the poems deals with an identifiable Canadian mega-factory in Alberta: one with a concentration of oil refineries east of Edmonton, referred to as “Refinery Row,” one with Frito-Lay, a gigantic Potato Chip Factory at the east end of Taber, one with an enormous Cement Plant in Kananaskis Country near Calgary, and the last with Alberta Beef, located in Calgary. Apart from their metonymic function of representing profit-oriented business enterprises in general, all four of these mega-plants have been embroiled in some minor or major scandal concerning ecological or humanitarian issues. Solie’s poems are serious in tone, largely refraining from the playfulness of Sybil Unrest; instead they create a more strongly documentary impact. However, the documentary level is soon abandoned when these mega-factory-sites become symbols of capitalism and exploitation, making it clear that they could be substituted by almost any other corporation: At the nominal limits of Edmonton, refineries wreathed in their emissions, huge and lit up as headquarters or the lead planet in a system, as the past with its machinery exposed - filters, compressors, conveyers, you name it - basement upon basement upon basement. Around them gather opportune spinoffs, low-slung by-product support outfits named in functional MARIA LÖSCHNIGG 210 shorthand. Altec, Softcom, Norcan, Cancore, subsidiaries crawling onto the farmland. Employees are legion, transient, and union, turning what happened before we existed into something we can use, a capacity day and night. As we sleep, they build our future. Which, as the signs say, belongs to all of us, is now. 19 In these four poems, Solie creates thought-provoking effects by means of concentration (brought forth mainly by repetition and asyndetic lists), but also through powerful similes which foreground the threatening immensity of these plants. The increasing accumulation of spin-offs evokes, in Solie’s poetic language, the image of a malignant growth which slowly infects the whole body and whose dangerous nature is stressed acoustically by an aggregation of voiceless velar plosives in their names (Altec, Softcom, Norcan, Cancore). However, Solie also works with irony when, in the concluding lines of the poem, she unmasks society’s blindness to the commodification not only of the physical environment but also of social values themselves, or when she builds up misleading expectations by using the jargon of the tourist brochure as in the “Frito-Lay” poem: “Worth leaving the highway for. Gorgeous / at sunset, really outstanding, / the potato chip factory at the east end / of Taber, which is a kind of town” (19). Apart from irony’s most obvious function of expressing the opposite of what is actually said, it is above all its “intimacy with the dominant discourses it contests” 20 With Mari-Lou Rowley’s 100-line poem “In the Tar Sands, Going Down” the focus shifts directly to the Athabasca Oil Sands. The poem offers intriguingly multivalent views of this afflicted region. “In the Tar Sands” is first of all characterized by a strikingly appellative quality which draws the reader into the text’s apocalyptic envisioning of place. This is achieved mainly by the communicative structure of the poem. Using phrases such as “Hey luscious baby,” or just “hey baby” which is here placed in the foreground. In other words, it is the ironic appropriation of the language of consumerism which works towards undermining exactly such jargon. Solie’s poems oscillate between documentary detail and poetic defamiliarization; they offer alternative ways of seeing and comprehending the fragile interconnection between economic, environmental and social interests through the evocation of strong images and threatening analogies and the exposure of deceptive surfaces. 21 19 Karen Solie, Pigeon (Toronto: Anansi, 2009), 19. , the lyric persona explicitly and in a very informal and colloquial manner addresses an unspecified, but tangible ad- 20 Linda Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge. The Theory and Politics of Irony (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 15. 21 Mari-Lou Rowley, “In the Tar Sands,” Regreen. New Canadian Ecological Poetry, eds. Madhur Anand and Adam Dickinson (Sudbury: Your Scrivener Press, 2009), 63; 65. ‘Nifty shades of green’ 211 dressee. The frequent use of imperatives and of collective phrases (‘we,’ ‘let’s’) further enhances the conative dimension of the text, which, in fact, is one of the distinctive features of ecopoetry setting it off from earlier nature poetry. 22 Hey what’s that smell, sound, taste? […] Only two of us fondling under leaves mottled and falling under a sky mortally dazed under clouds weeping acid leaching moisture out of the trope trop troposphere. (ll. 20; ll. 27-33) Look up! look way up, nothing but haze and holes. Look down! bitumen bite in the neck arms thighs of Earth a boreal blistering, boiling soil and smoke-slathered sky. (ll. 34-40) In the lines quoted above, any sense of the romantic that may be evoked by the depiction of two lovers is brutally undermined through images of decay, drastically rendered through the vision of an anthropomorphized biosphere that “weeps acid / […] / Out of the trope trop troposphere.” What we have here, in fact, is the acoustic creation of a ‘semiosphere,’ as the sounds of the poem onomatopoeically reinforce the semantics, bleak and threatening. The global impact of impending environmental catastrophes is implied through the parallel between earth and sky, both showing signs of damage. These signs affect the reader mainly through the poet’s use of sound effects, in particular the correlative use of plosives and sibilants. As we learn from another passage in the poem (ll. 61-62), the personified earth shows “pock marks the size of countries” when viewed from outer space. Its body parts are listed asyndetically and without punctuation, which greatly speeds up the text. This syntactic acceleration in turn renders the impression of the speeding up of destructive economic processes. Ecocriticism, as Zapf suggests, should provide “innovational perspectives that transcend the one-dimensionality of the homo oeconomicus.” 23 22 See J. Scott Bryson, The West Side of Any Mountain. Place, Space and Ecopoetry (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2005), 3: “While ecopoems are indeed simply the latest in a long line of nature poetry, they also are in some ways a new type of poem, a new movement in poetry, one that seeks to stir readers to action in new ways.” It is therefore essential to look at “the process of aesthetic transformation” (55) in order 23 Zapf 2006, 49. MARIA LÖSCHNIGG 212 to render visible the specific ecocritical function of poetry in contrast to other texts taking up environmental issues. Thus, for example, the monopolizing worldviews and “exclusionary truth-claims” (56) of neoliberalist discourse are subverted and broken up by their aesthetic refraction in literary texts. The evocation of a dream future with “pipelines across continents and so many new / cars, jobs, cans of Dream Whip” (l. 11-12) is deflated and questioned through irony (“dream rivers of oil,” l. 14) and through the de-familiarization of well-known commercials: “oh white white teeth. / Pearly Whites, the adman grins, / for a smile you can sink your teeth into” (ll. 17-19). These lines disrupt the glossy surfaces we are offered daily by introducing a superordinate voice describing the “adman’s” smile as a grin, and the image evoked is that of a predator and its prey. Considering the context of the whole poem, this suggests that the earth itself is a victim into whose soil the teeth sink. Generally, the poem employs several isotopies which foreground the inextricable link between cultural, political and social factors in a condensed way. Thus, we can see, for example, a cluster of words and phrases referring to the cosmetics industry. This cluster is used as a source domain for metaphors while at the same time suggesting the link between a contemporary obsession with perfect beauty and the exploitation of the environment. The “brazil-waxed forests” of line 15 may serve as an example. While ‘brazilian waxing’ is a cosmetic method of removing body hair by the roots, the phrase also refers, in the context of the poem, to the disappearance of boreal forests as a consequence of oil mining and also to the detrimental effects on the globe’s oxygen balance caused by the dwindling of tropical rainforests (as indicated by “trope trop troposphere” of line 33). As this example shows, environmental poems which aim at capturing ecological catastrophes may attribute a pivotal role not only to the process of defamiliarization but also to that of familiarization. Thus the average twenty-first-century woman may not be able to picture the clearing of rainforests; however, the implied analogy with a familiar cosmetic treatment may make the actual referent of the image more comprehensible. 24 Irony is another device through which Rowley emphasizes the ignorance of authorities and of the proponents of economic expansion in the face of environmental crisis. In her poem, irony becomes “an important strategy of oppositional rhetoric” 25 not only because it is a “‘weighted’ mode of discourse in the sense that it is asymmetrical, unbalanced in favour of the silent and unsaid,” 26 24 So far, this essential function of environmental literature has been widely ignored by ecocriticism and I owe it to a discussion with Michael Basseler in May 2015 that I have become more strongly aware of this aspect. but also due to its judgemental attitude, which is responsible 25 Hutcheon 1994, 11-12. 26 Ibid. 37. ‘Nifty shades of green’ 213 for what Linda Hutcheon refers to as the ‘edge’ or the ‘sting’ of irony. According to her, it is this evaluative quality which distinguishes irony as a rhetorical device from other figures of speech. 27 In Rowley’s poem, it is mainly this quality which produces the text’s polemical verve, as the following lines show: Let’s wade in the tailing ponds slather our bodies with sludge and sand, light a cigarette, keep the motor running roll over like fish in the Athabasca bloated bellies toward a dazed sky. (ll. 82-86) The derisive tone of these lines results both from a ridiculing of those who actually engage in the activities suggested and from the feigned detachment of the speaker. At the same time, the aggressive subtext inherent in ironic criticism is here mitigated and made more palatable by the use of a collective speaker. In sum, however, the poem adopts a rather fatalistic attitude, conveyed in the lines above, by the provocative yoking together of pleasure and death. All the activities suggested by the numerous collective imperatives which punctuate the poem are revealed to be self-destructive and thus terminated. The bleak equation of ecocide and suicide which determines the last stanza of the poem could be read as expressing resignation, were it not for the anchoring of the ‘until’-lines in an unspecified point in the future: Until rivers dwindle to tears until wells gush blood [...] until raw and singed as the forestless bird as the fishless rivers as the speechless politicians as the songless, barren face of the earth we go down we go down. (ll. 90-91; ll. 94-100) “Mari-Lou Rowley,” as Madhur Anand (23) observes, “writes of the necessity of imagining a future based on the past but acknowledges its inherent difficulty.” This is rendered, in the following lines, by her use of language: “make me perfect, past / tense and release, past / learning from mistakes / pastpresent, future-perfect / oh perfector of defects / in flesh, water, air.” (ll. 4-9) Not only are different time-levels meaningfully and ambiguously connected, we also find, as so often in the poem, subtle deflections of meaning created by a counterpuntal use of poetic devices. Here, for example, in “flesh, water, 27 Cf. ibid. 15, 10. MARIA LÖSCHNIGG 214 air,” the evocation of the phonologically corresponding ‘fresh’ again results in a multiplication and concentration of meaning. Connections between past, present and future are also established poetically in David Martin’s “Tar Swan.” The six stanzas of the poem were inspired by a tour Martin took in 2010 of the historic Bitamount oil sands site north of Fort Murray, located on the Athabasca River in Alberta. The poem deals with the beginnings of oil mining in Alberta in the 1920s, then a smallscale enterprise driven by pioneers like Robert Fitzsimmons, who may also be seen as the speaker in Martin’s poem. 28 The poem offers scenarios of the conflict between the human and the natural and is informed by “the ambivalence of extending sympathy to both parties” (ibid.). Most of the oil pioneers had no idea about the future gigantic dimensions of oil mining in the area. While “Tar Swan” “acknowledges the human roots in the enterprise” (ibid.) it also foregrounds the devastating and increasingly uncontrollable consequences of profit-oriented expansion. As in Larissa Lai and Rita Wong’s poem, complexity is created through intertextuality, as for example in the following lines from the third stanza: Threshing bitumen is the Devil’s Handkerchief followed by a question of Sympathy. Suckers agog, exposed by boreal thugs who conjure a terrible prophesy, stringing out Dionysian muck to smear on highway blacktop. Finally, by sleight of hand, they sluice foaming shades from the body as the stage manager skins his take. (stanza III, ll. 6-14) Othello’s handkerchief, perhaps the emblem of betrayal in English literature, is evoked in this tightly knit text, which not only alludes to destruction but also brings up the question of who is to blame - a question which ‘the Devil’ Iago so cunningly evades. The image of the stage manager, while again drawing on Shakespeare’s villain, apparently denotes those politicians and business tycoons responsible for the coming real of a ‘terrible / prophesy.’ In addition, the stage metaphor highlights the role of those who direct all this and ‘skin their take.’ Also, the analogy to the stage addresses the fact that what has been put up here can also be dismantled again, thus implicitly refuting the notion of a point of no return. The ‘tar swan’ of the title becomes a leitmotif in the poem, as does the black egg which the swan heralds “along slipshod / Athabasca” (stanza I, l. 28 See Dylan Schoenmakers, “Poet Profile: David Martin”; http: / / ifoa.org/ 2014/ by-ifoaauthors/ poet-profile-david-martin [31 March 2015]. ‘Nifty shades of green’ 215 10-11) and which appears in the first, fifth and sixth stanzas. 29 While in stanza four the speaker “submit[s] Nature’s Supreme Gift to Industry,” (l. 11) an act rhetorically foregrounded by a frightening list of oilmining facilities (see ll. 2-10), the last two stanzas, as mentioned above, feature a dream scenario. In this surreal vision, the speaker is haunted by a monster which he desperately tries to fight and which bears a striking resemblance to the equipment used for oil extraction. Even though first “nothing would cripple / the monster” (stanza V, ll. 7-8) the speaker, in the end, manages to retrieve an egg from the defeated beast, an egg which is still black, covered in tar, and which materializes as the most powerful symbol in the whole poem when in the last stanza children demand from the speaker to give back the egg (see l. 9). However, in his nightmarish vision, the speaker and possibly also the Athabasca region are beyond rescue. The persona of the oil pioneer Fitzsimmons is confronted with his own suicidal participation in Already in the title the conflict between nature (as represented by the swan) and human interests (tar) is introduced. The choice of the swan as a metonymic representative of nature conveys a number of additional associations, including those of beauty and death - the latter evoked in particular in the last stanza, where the swan’s song is used to imply the fate of the speaker himself, who in the dream scenario depicted in the last two stanzas compares himself to “a swan that sinks / into song” (stanza VI, ll. 5-6). In the first stanza, however, the bird is used to create empathy, and to focus on one specific site of suffering. By using “cygnet,” “cob” and “pen” to denote the swan family, a closer analogy is created between the animal sphere and that of humans. Again we have a case here, of the poetic text’s familiarizing effect, as with the suffering of the swan baby drowning in oil, Martin finds an image which makes the ungraspable immensity of the consequences of aggressive oil-mining communicable. In a similar way, the synaesthetic description of sobs “skip-dripp[ing]” from the swan baby’s “sockets” (stanza I, ll. 5-6) creates a strong emotional impact because it manages to translate an analogically encoded sensation, that of pain, into a digital code und thus makes suffering graspable in a manner difficult to convey by factual description. This effect is further enhanced by the reference to the “doodle-buggers / and orange worms” that “will soon mine his blistered lore” (ll. 7-9). The choice of words for the vermin and the explicit localization of the region they will infest enhances the emotional impact of the poem. The use of the word ‘mine’ in this context, which evokes associations with the oil industry, rather encourages the reader to reflect on causal connections between the mining of the boreal soil and the bird’s suffering. 29 The title may also include a reference to the Tar Baby in the Uncle Remus story, and the derivational meaning of ‘a complicated situation which only gets worse the more one engages with it.’ MARIA LÖSCHNIGG 216 the increasingly uncontrollable mechanisms of business expansion when “wheels turn” (l. 6) and pull him “into [the] undercarriage” (l. 14). When the economic wheel of fortune has reached its climax, a downward movement will inevitably follow, as the poem suggests. Even though the last two stanzas envision but a dream, the implication that this nightmare of the oil pioneer may have become true in the meantime, that the whole oil enterprise has run out of control, leaves a lasting and thought-provoking impact on the reader. 4. Poetry and Cultural Change The cultural significance of the poems I have discussed can be described in terms of the triadic model devised by Zapf. First, they function as “cultural critical metadiscourse” by representing and foregrounding cultural and social deficits; secondly, they also function as “imaginative counter-discourse” as they draw attention to aspects usually marginalized “in the dominant culture reality system.” 30 Examples would be the foregrounding of the swan baby or the speaker’s dream-vision in David Martin’s poem. Finally these tar sands poems function as “reintegrative interdiscourse” (65; emphases in the original) - not only due to the juxtaposition and meaningful fusion of conflicting elements, ideas and aspects, but also because, as a whole, these poems can be regarded as symbolic manifestations of creativity and regeneration. While Zapf’s triadic model provides a general basis for the functional description of eco-literature, I would like to expand it by proposing generically defined differentiations. While it is of the utmost importance to define the functions of eco-literature, it is equally necessary to explain how these functions are achieved and which functional potential each literary genre can offer. Even though there are criteria which apply to literature in general, many literary devices are genre-specific, fulfilling specific tasks in the cultural ‘semiotope.’ The following table assembles a list of rhetorical functions as they can be observed in the eco-poems I have introduced and which render the transformative potential of this genre in the context of cultural ecology comprehensible. Rhetorical functions in eco-poetry: 1. Strong appellative impact - reader is directly addressed and called upon to (re)act; brought forth, for example, by ► explicit addressees; ► collective speakers; 30 Zapf 2006, 62-63. ► imperatives. ‘Nifty shades of green’ 217 2. De-familiarizing devices - open up ossified and automatized patterns of thinking; have a re-configurative effect on cognitive processing; brought forth, for example by ► neologisms; ► unusual collocations; ► juxtaposition of seemingly disparate and/ or incompatible concepts; ► surreal elements - lead to aesthetic distance. 3. Familiarizing devices - make extreme scenarios of crisis graspable; create empathy; help to visualize and comprehend abstract concepts; brought forth, for example, by ► imagery (symbols, anthropomorphizing and synaesthetic metaphors, personifications, metonymies…); ► narrowing down of focus (from global to local; from collective to individual); ► intertextuality - creating analogies between the familiar and the strange 4. Polyvalence - the creation of multiple meanings counters unilinear patterns of viewing and evaluating the world; brought forth, for example by ► ambiguity - implication of various meanings which cannot be fused into one single meaning (denotative ambiguity, ambiguous connotation etc.); ► irony - “the making or inferring of meaning in addition to what and different from what is stated, together with an attitude towards both the said and the unsaid”; 31 ► intertextuality - multiplication and variation of voices and cultural codes; expansion of semantic signification. 5. Rhythmic, phonological and syntactic devices - translate semantic structures into acoustic correlatives and thus double and intensify meaning; brought forth, for example, by ► compressed syntactic structures; ► accumulation of stresses; ► onomatopoeia. In sum, by means of such devices, which distinguish literary texts from pragmatic and expository discourses, these eco-poems function as ferment within a cultural climate characterized by standardization and homogeneity, leading to an ongoing process of cultural recycling and regeneration as sug- 31 Hutcheon 1994, 11. MARIA LÖSCHNIGG 218 gested by a model of literature as an element of cultural ecology. However, even if we agree that poetry, as this table of transformative strategies suggests, has a particularly high potential to serve as a motor for cultural change we must pose the question: Who reads poetry? “Various scholars,” as Eva Koopman and Frank Hakemulder begin their 2015 article on reader responses, “have made claims about literature’s potential to evoke empathy and selfreflection, which would eventually lead to more pro-social behaviour.” “But is it indeed the case,” they continue, “that a seemingly idle pass-time activity like literary reading can do all that? ” 32 Koopman and Hakemulder, whose aim was to find out if, to what extent, and by what means literature could bring forth change, real-world empathy and pro-social behaviour, base their empirical studies on the three categories of narrativity, fictionality and foregrounding. Narrativity, according to this study, leads to role-taking, which in turn generates affective empathy. The second factor, fictionality, contributes to aesthetic distance, i.e. “an attitude of detachment, allowing contemplation to take place” (101). While readers consume factual texts to “update their world-knowledge,” fictional texts encourage “an imaginative construction of hypothetical events and scenarios” (88). Like role-taking, aesthetic distance leads to affective empathy, but also simultaneously increases cognitive empathy, i.e. reflection and self-awareness. Foregrounding, which leads to defamiliarization, however, can be seen as the most important factor with regard to self-reflection. In this context, Koopman and Hakemulder refer to an experiment carried out by Willie Van Peer, Jèmeljan Hakemulder and Sonia Zyngier, who “found higher cognitive reflection in response to a poetic sentence when it contained more deviating linguistic features (‘foregrounding’).” 33 32 Eva Maria Koopman and Frank Hakemulder, “Effects of Literature on Empathy and Self-Reflection: A Theoretical-Empirical Framework,” Journal of Literary Theory 9.1 (2015): 79-111, 79. While a lot of the empirical data presented in Koopman and Hakemulder’s article must indeed be seen as a valuable contribution to the definition of literature and its social, political and cultural function, the multi-factor model also raises essential questions concerning the limits of reader response approaches. With its division of the impact of literary reading into ‘stimulus,’ ‘reading experience’ and ‘after effects,’ this model runs the risk of persuading us to see direct and immediate cause and effect relations between reading a story or a poem and their impact on real life behaviour. Such an approach to ecopoetry would result in just the kind of countable superficiality these poems claim to counter, apart from the fact that such effects cannot be measured in the first place. Too many factors play a role here, apart from 33 Koopman and Hakemulder 94. See also Willie van Peer, Jèmeljan Hakemulder and Sonia Zyngier, “Lines on Feeling: Foregrounding, Aesthetics and Meaning,” Language and Literature 16 (2007): 197-213. ‘Nifty shades of green’ 219 the fact that many effects are manifested in much too implicit and indirect a manner. The merits of poetry thus lie somewhat paradoxically in its limits. Poetry represents an element of a cultural ecology because of its difference from other, more factual, documentary, informative, pragmatic and/ or expository discourses, i.e. due to the fact that it offers alternative symbolic significations, because it either presents the familiar in an unfamiliar shape or makes the unfamiliar and incomprehensible, familiar and graspable. Since reading literature (and poetry in particular) is not a mass phenomenon confirming, as mass phenomena usually do, popular tastes and trends, ecopoetry is powerful not because it is best-selling, like Fifty Shades of Grey, but rather because it offers ‘nifty shades of green.’ These may not be seen by many, but they may keep the cultural biotope, or rather, ‘semiotope,’ as diversified and alive as possible. Thus, coming back to environmental issues, the many counter-discursive voices which challenge the one-dimensional and rationalizing discourse of political power and economic growth will not, as I see it, lead to ecological protest on a large scale. Neither will they stop oil mining in northern Alberta - at least not in the near future. 34 Rather, these poems, in symbiosis with other critical discourses such as scientific reports, documentary films, protest letters, fiction, drama, travelogues etc. will help prepare a mental climate that will be - as it has been before - the creative basis for transformation and regeneration. 34 One may be tempted, though, to see Justin Trudeau’s surprise victory in October 2015 as a sign that such a mental change has indeed taken place in Canada. Concerning the Tar Sands, Trudeau has at least claimed that he wanted to “include climate concerns.” (See Brian Palmer (2015). “Is Justin Trudeau Canada’s Climate Savior? ” Online: https: / / www.nrdc.org/ onearth/ justin-trudeau-canadas-climate-savior [March 22, 2016]. MARIA LÖSCHNIGG 220 Works Cited Primary: Anand, Madhur and Adam Dickinson, ed. Regreen. New Canadian Ecological Poetry. Sudbury: Your Scrivener Press, 2009. Brand, Dionne. Inventory. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2006. Brandt, Di. Now You Care. Toronto: Coach House Press, 2003. Holmes, Nancy, ed. Open Wide a Wilderness. Canadian Nature Poems. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009. Lai, Larissa, and Rita Wong. Sybil Unrest. Burnaby: Line Books, 2008 (2004). Martin, David. “Tar Swan.” http: / / www.cbc.ca/ books/ canadawrites/ 2014/ 09/ 2014-cbc-poetry-prize-tar-swan-by-david-martin.html. [March 10. 2015] Solie, Karen (2009). Pigeon. Toronto: Anansi, 2014. Secondary: Anand, Madhur. “Introduction: ‘Gap Dynamics.’” Regreen: New Ecological Poetry. Ed. M.A. and Adam Dickinson. Sudbury: Your Scrivener Press, 2009. 19-28. Armbruster, Karla, and Kathleen R. Wallace, eds. Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism. Charlottesville, VA: U of Virginia P, 2001. Bryson, J. Scott. The West Side of Any Mountain. Place, Space and Ecopoetry. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2005. ---, ed. Ecopoetry. A Critical Introduction. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2002. Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard UP, 1995. Chung, Emily: http: / / www.cbc.ca/ news/ technology/ foreign-scientists-call-onstephen-harper-to-restore-science-funding-freedom-1.2806571 [March 10, 2015]. Dickinson, Adam. “Introduction: ‘The Astronauts.’” In: Regreen: New Ecological Poetry. Ed. Anand Madhur and A.D. Sudbury: Your Scrivener Press, 2009. 9-18. Estok, Simon C. “Discourses of Nation, National Ecopoetics, and Ecocriticism in the face of the US: Canada and Korea as Case Studies.” Comparative American Studies 7.2 (2009): 85-97. Gersdorf, Catrin, and Sylvia Mayer. “Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Defining the Subject of Ecocriticism - an Introduction.” In: Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies. Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism. Ed. C.G. and S.M. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2006. 9-21. Gersdorf, Catrin, and Sylvia Mayer, eds. Natur - Kultur - Text. Beiträge zu Ökologie und Literaturwissenschaft. Heidelberg: Winter, 2005. Glotfelty, Cheryl, and Harold Fromm, eds. The Ecocriticism Reader. Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens, Ga.: U of Georgia P, 1996. Goodbody, Axel, ed. Literatur und Ökologie. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. Hutcheon, Linda. Irony’s Edge. The Theory and Politics of Irony. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. ‘Nifty shades of green’ 221 Koopman, Eva Maria, and Frank Hakemulder. “Effects of Literature on Empathy and Self-Reflection: A Theoretical-Empirical Framework.” Journal of Literary Theory 9.1(2015): 79-111. Löschnigg, Maria. “‘NAFTA we worship you’: Conservationism and the Critique of Economic Liberalism in Twenty-First Century Canadian Poetry.” Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien 34 (2014): 28-45. Mayer, Sophie. “Review: Sybil Unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita Wong.” Chroma, January 31 (2009). Online: http: / / chromajournal.blogspot.co.at/ 2009/ 01/ review-sybilunrest-by-larissa-lai-and.html. [October 12, 2012]. Nikiforuk, Andrew. Tar Sands. Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent. Vancouver, Toronto, Berkeley: Greystone Books, 2010. Palmer, Brian (2015). “Is Justin Trudeau Canada’s Climate Savior? ” Online: https: / / www.nrdc.org/ onearth/ justin-trudeau-canadas-climate-savior [March 22, 2016]. Schoenmakers, Dylan. “Poet Profile: David Martin.” Online: http: / / ifoa.org/ 2014/ byifoa-authors/ poet-profile-david-martin [31 March 2015]. Smith, Rick (2014). “Stephen Harper: The Environment’s best Friend.” The Toronto Star. Online: http: / / www.thestar.com/ opinion/ commentary/ 2014/ 07/ 31/ stephen_harper_the_environments_best_friend.html [November 12, 2014]. Van Peer, Willie, Jèmeljan Hakemulder and Sonia Zyngier. “Lines on Feeling: Foregrounding, Aesthetics and Meaning.” Language and Literature 16 (2007): 197-213. Warren, Bell (2015). “Stephen Harper Coninues to Make Canada an International Pariah.” Vancouver Observer. Online: http: / / www.vancouverobserver.com/ opinion/ stephen-harper-continues-his-path-transforming-canada-internationalpariah [March 10, 2015]. Zapf, Hubert (2002). Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie: Zur kulturellen Funktion imaginativer Texte an Beispielen des amerikanischen Romans. Tübingen: Niemeyer. ---. “The State of Ecocriticism and the Function of Literature as Cultural Ecology.” Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies. Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocroticism. Ed. Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2006. 49- 69. IV. Literary Change and/ as Cultural Change T OM C LUCAS “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society”: Isaac D’Israeli, Benjamin Disraeli, and the Literary Character 1 Critical Context: Literature, Culture, Society Since the 1980s, historicist critics of Romantic literature have tended to emphasise the distinction between literature and society. As a result, the capacity of Romantic literature to initiate and contribute to cultural change has been downplayed in much historicist criticism. Before the rise of New Historicism, Raymond Williams posited the emergence of culture in the Romantic period as “a court of appeal in which real values were determined, usually in opposition to the ‘factitious’ values thrown up by the market and similar operations of society.” 1 Used in this sense, culture becomes a means of critiquing and reforming social institutions, and literature, as one of the most argumentative facets of culture, becomes key to this process. After 1980, the New Historicists challenged this view by drawing attention to the fact that Romantic writing is itself ideological. In one of the seminal works of this school, Jerome McGann argued that previous studies of Romanticism had been “dominated by a Romantic Ideology, by an uncritical absorption in Romanticism’s own self-representations.” 2 Setting the agenda for a newly self-reflective form of historicism, McGann argued that “the past and its works should be studied by a critical mind in the full range of their pastness.” 3 Increasingly, New Historicists adopted a version of what Paul Ricœur termed “the hermeneutics of suspicion,“ reading Romantic texts in order to tease out their ideological omissions and contradictions, rather than viewing them as works of cultural criticism. 4 Though few would now challenge the basic premise of reading past works with a view to their “pastness,” the New Historicist method has implications for the cultural status of literature. Chief among these is a question of 1 Raymond Williams, Culture and Society 1780-1950 (New York: Anchor Books, 1960), 34. 2 Jerome J. McGann, The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983), 1. 3 McGann 2. 4 Paul Ricœur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (New Haven: Yale UP, 1970), 356. T OM C LUCAS 226 the relative authority assigned to the critic and the text: in elevating contemporary critics above the ideology of Romantic texts, New Historicism risks undermining the potential of Romantic texts to effect cultural change, both in their own time and in the present. The didactic function of literature - which, as I shall argue, played a central role in the Romantic period - is therefore marginalised. With this, there comes a risk of reverting to what Herbert Butterfield termed the “Whig interpretation of history,” in which contemporary critics assume a position of cultural superiority over the artefacts of a past age. 5 Stephen Greenblatt, one of the founders of New Historicism, recognised this difficulty when he emphasised the need to avoid reducing art to “a self-regarding, autonomous, closed system […] opposed to social life.” 6 2 Literature as Legislation: Shelley’s “Defence of Poetry” As we interrogate the subject positions of Romantic authors, searching for the ways in which their texts distort or omit social reality, we also need to be mindful of the ways in which Romantic texts shed light on our own critical ideologies. The aim of this essay is to recover some of the cultural critical authority of Romantic texts, by showing how British writers contributed to the political debates which led up to the passing of the Reform Acts in 1832 and 1867. As its main example, the essay will consider how Isaac D’Israeli’s essay on The Literary Character was reinterpreted by his son, Benjamin Disraeli, a novelist who entered Parliament in 1837 and went on to become Prime Minister from 1874-1880. First, however, it is necessary to provide a little more context on Romantic debates about the relationship between literature and cultural change. In 1821, Percy Shelley composed “A Defence of Poetry” in order to counter his friend Thomas Love Peacock’s essay “The Four Ages of Poetry.” Peacock’s essay advanced the seriocomic argument that poetry hindered rather than helping the progress of society, and that its cultural role was therefore inflated. With typically poised irony, Peacock argued that poetry, viewed as cultural criticism, was destructive: A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community. He lives in the days that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings, associations, are all with barba- 5 For this argument, see Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: G. Bell, 1931), passim. 6 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, second edition (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005), 4. “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society” 227 rous manners, obsolete customs, and exploded superstitions. The march of his intellect is like that of a crab, backward. 7 In the “Defence” - which remained unpublished until 1840 - Shelley hit back at this claim by insisting in on the didactic function of literature. He proclaimed that the “most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is Poetry.” 8 Following this, he built up to what is perhaps the most memorable claim of the “Defence”: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World.” 9 In response to this claim, McGann argues that “the emphasis must be placed on ‘unacknowledged’ to specify the Romanticism of the idea […]. The poet’s privilege was insight and vision, the power to apprehend fundamental truths which custom and habit kept hidden from the ordinary person’s consciousness.” 10 McGann thus negates Shelley’s claim about the role of literature in propelling cultural change, focusing instead on the “poet’s privilege” and the division between art and life. In this reading, the “poet’s privilege” becomes the critic’s, as the “power to apprehend fundamental truths which custom and habit kept hidden” is transferred to the contemporary critic, employing a hermeneutics of suspicion to see through the text’s ideology. Taking a similar approach to Shelley’s claim that “man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave,” 11 McGann remarks that “the great truth of Romantic ideology is that one may escape such a world through imagination and poetry.” 12 7 Thomas Love Peacock, “The Four Ages of Poetry,“ in Peacock’s Four Ages of Poetry, Shelley’s Defence of Poetry, Browning’s Essay on Shelley, ed. H.F.B. Smith (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1921), 16. His reading of the “Defence” thus reflects his wider view that Romanticism was not so much a movement, as a cluster of beliefs which privileged poetry over history and individual genius over social reality. Yet the “Defence” contains some important lines which McGann omits from his quotation. Earlier in the same paragraph, Shelley contends that “[w]e want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life” (530). With this figure of anadiplosis, or rhetorical repetition, Shelley advances one of the central arguments of the “Defence”: the purpose of poetry is to convert knowledge into action. 8 Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry,“ Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat (New York: Norton, 2002), 535. 9 Shelley 535. 10 McGann 114. 11 Shelley 530. 12 McGann 131. T OM C LUCAS 228 Shelley argues that humans can be persuaded of “moral, political and historical wisdom” (530) on a rational level, but that it requires poetry to persuade them on an emotional level into acting that which they know: The functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold; by one it creates new materials of knowledge, and power and pleasure; by the other it engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. (531) Rather than offering a means to “escape [the] world through imagination,” as McGann describes, Shelley claims that poetry brings about cultural change by providing people with an internal standard against which to regulate their actions. 13 In line with McGann’s argument, however, it is important to note that Shelley translates the “materials of external life” into poetic terms. Metaphorically, he suggests that the free play of “knowledge, and power and pleasure” in the mind can be regularised as the reader internalises the “rhythm and order” of poetry. In this way, the “internal laws of human nature” are figured as an underlying poetic metre against which to scan the “materials of external life.” Shelley represents the “excess” of the “selfish and calculating principle” as a kind of hypermetricality, suggesting that it may be reduced, if the reader transfers some of the “quantity” - in the sense of the metrical emphasis — back onto the “internal laws.” In this way, the act of reading poetry encourages readers to rebalance their priorities away from the “materials of external life” and towards the “internal laws of human nature.” As Raymond Williams describes, Poetry offers a system of self-government to be set over and against the government of a market society, which emphasises the “accumulation of the materials of external life.” 14 Shelley’s rhetoric remains evasive, however, when it comes to defining the import of these “internal laws of human nature.” One might argue that humans share a common set of assumptions about what comprises “the beautiful and the good.” In the Romantic period, this belief was heavily debated by thinkers like David Hume and Edmund Burke. In his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume posited the existence of “some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species,“ but then challenged this belief on the basis that: [I]n many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes much of this latter species, and demands the as- 13 McGann 131. 14 Williams 34. “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society” 229 sistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence on the human mind. 15 Shelley’s argument in the “Defence” is that poetry guides us through the process of “argument and reflection” that enables us to perceive the higher orders of “moral beauty.” Earlier on, he argues that “[t]he great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own” (531). By combining moral teaching with aesthetic pleasure, poetry encourages us to identify with and internalise new standards of beauty, and thus grants us the power, in Shelley’s words, to “act that which we imagine” (530). The question remains, however, how we define these standards of beauty and goodness. In his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Burke drew a careful distinction between “beauty, which is a positive and powerful quality,“ and the habitual standards of “custom and use,” which he designated with the phrase “second nature.” 16 Second nature, in other words, denotes the set of aesthetic and moral standards which we internalise from our society. 17 In his ground-breaking study of Wordsworth’s poetry, James Chandler traced Wordsworth’s use of this concept and drew attention to the potential circularity of redefining social customs as part of human nature. Defined in this way, second nature becomes “not so much an identifiable fact in the world as a way of thinking that conveniently collapses certain troublesome oppositions.” 18 The passage from Shelley quoted above might be accused of collapsing several such “troublesome oppositions,“ for example those between “external life” and “internal laws” and “the beautiful and the good.” Yet Shelley’s main argument is not undermined by the claim that the “internal laws of human nature,“ like the “materials of external life,” are in fact social conventions and thus part of “second nature.” The thrust of his argument is that poetry enables individuals to internalise and act upon their chosen standards of beauty and goodness, and thus, in Hume’s terms, grants these standards a “suitable influence” over the mind. 19 15 David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. P.H. Nidditch, third edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), 173. Poetry offers an alternative set of values to the “selfish and calculating principle” (531) and 16 Edmund Burke, Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. T.O. McLoughlin, James T. Boulton, and William B. Todd, in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, gen. ed. Paul Langford and William B. Todd, 9 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1981-2015), 1: 264-5. 17 See also Burke’s ‘Speech in Reply, 24 June 1794,’ India: The Hastings Trial, 1789-1794, ed. P.J. Marshall and William B. Todd, in Burke 7: 540. 18 James Chandler, Wordsworth’s Second Nature: A Study of the Poetry and Politics (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984), 72. 19 Hume 173. T OM C LUCAS 230 helps to render our actions consistent with our beliefs. Rather than collapsing the opposition between the requirements of “external life” and the “internal laws,“ poetry mediates between them. In Shelley’s terms, “a poet considers the vices of his contemporaries as the temporary dress in which his creations must be arrayed, and which cover without concealing the eternal proportions of their beauty” (516). Poetry is thus a veil which helps us to see through the social conventions of our second nature to a more enduring, though still social, set of values. In treating the relation between “the beautiful and the good,” Shelley appears to draw on Aristotle’s discussion of the complex relation between the kalon (the beautiful, fine, noble) and the agathon (the good) in the Nicomachean Ethics. According to Aristotle, the kalon is both an essential property and one of the aims of virtuous action. However, Gabriel Richardson Lear explains that the kalon is a more general term than the agathon, because “being kalon connotes being good (although not necessarily morally good).” 20 In the Metaphysics, Aristotle clarifies this point further by arguing that “goodness is distinct from beauty [to kalon] […] for it is always in actions that goodness is present, whereas beauty is also in immovable things” (1078a: 31-4). 21 3 D’Israeli, Coleridge, and the Role of Literature What Shelley does in the “Defence” is to show that poetry combines the principles of the kalon and the agathon, and thus emphasise that it is not an immovable thing, but rather involves the action of “assimilating” one’s experience to the “internal laws of human nature.” Specifically, poetry “engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce” rational truths on an internal and emotional level, so that it becomes harder for individuals to profess moral, political, and historical wisdom, while continuing to act according to “the selfish and calculating principle.” In this way, Shelley suggests, poetry unites the qualities of “the beautiful and the good,” by providing us with “the generous impulse to act that which we imagine” (530). The “Defence” counters Peacock’s criticisms by showing how poetry can drive cultural change: it not only provides standards of beauty and (moral) goodness as alternatives to “the selfish and calculating principle,“ but also induces feelings of love towards these standards, and thus leads us to act upon them. One of Shelley’s predecessors in championing the social role of literature was Isaac D’Israeli, the father of the future British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. As an essayist and biographer, D’Israeli extends his defence of litera- 20 Gabriel Richardson Lear, “Aristotle on Moral Virtue and the Fine,” Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Richard Kraut (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006): 116-36, 117. 21 Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. Hugh Tredennick, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1947), 2: 192-3. “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society” 231 ture beyond poetry to other genres, including prose and drama. In this, there is little difference between him and Shelley, since Shelley, too, credits prose with having poetic power when he assets that “[t]he distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error […]. Plato was essentially a poet […]. Lord Bacon was a poet” (514). Isaac D’Israeli’s reputation has begun to revive in recent years, yet more remains to be said about how his essay on The Literary Character, published in 1795 and expanded in 1818, helped to shape Romantic ideas about the role of literature in driving cultural change. In this essay, which was read and extensively annotated by Byron in 1810-11, D’Israeli encouraged his readers to “observe the influence of authors in forming the character of men, where the solitary man of genius stamps his own on a people.” 22 Despite this remove, D’Israeli argues that writers and artists then feed the products of their cultural labour back into society, helping to shape the moral and political characters not only of individuals, but also of national and even international populations. His recurrent metaphor for this process is not that of the “stamp” quoted above, but rather one of diffusion, in which authors develop new moral and political values in private and then, as it were, pollinate the minds of their readers. In a passage which anticipates Shelley’s “Defence,“ D’Israeli declared that: In the chapter entitled “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society,” D’Israeli contended that the literary “master-spirits who create an epoch” must exist at a certain remove from society: “The founders of National Literature and Art pursued their insulated studies in the full independence of their mind and the development of their inventive faculty” (102). There is a small portion of men, who appear marked out by nature and habit, for the purpose of cultivating their thoughts in peace, and giving activity to their sentiments, by disclosing them to the people. Those who govern a nation cannot at the same time enlighten them; - authors stand between the governors and the governed […]. The people are a vast body, of which men of genius are the eyes and the hands; and the public mind is the creation of the philosophical writer; these are axioms as demonstrable as any in Euclid, and as sure in their operation, as any principle in mechanics. (351-2) D’Israeli’s claim that “authors stand between the governors and the governed” closely resembles Shelley’s claim that “[p]oets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” The fact that D’Israeli’s essay on The Literary Character went through five editions in his lifetime, the fourth of which was dedicated to the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, shows the influence of his 22 Isaac D’Israeli, The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius, Drawn from their Own Feelings and Confessions (London: John Murray, 1818), iv, 355. T OM C LUCAS 232 own work on shaping what he calls “the public mind.” 23 Though not his own coinage, the concept of the public mind was central to D’Israeli’s work, since it suggested that the character of large groups of people could by shaped by the gradual acceptance of a shared set of cultural values. Adapting Benedict Anderson’s term, we might refer to these bodies of readers not as imagined but as imaginative communities: groups which hang together loosely and across political borders because of their shared determination to “act that which [they] imagine.” This complex concept has two interlinking facets: firstly, it denotes the process by which authors “awaken all the knowledge which lies buried in the sleep of nations” (359) to develop a cultural canon of beliefs and values; secondly, it denotes authors’ individual contributions to this canon, whereby “the single thought of a man of genius […] has sometimes changed the dispositions of a people, and even of an age” (352). 24 Marshall Brown coined the phrase “horizontal ethics” to describe cultural values which “go beyond borders, traveling to other countries and other spheres, if not physically, then psychically.” 25 D’Israeli drew on a similar notion of dissemination when he declared that “these literary characters now constitute an important body, diffused over enlightened Europe, connected by the secret links of congenial pursuits, and combining often insensibly to themselves in the same common labours” (3). Here, the phrase “literary characters” refers not only to writers, but also to their readers, whose characters are shaped by what they read: in short, it encompasses all writers and readers who respect the values conveyed by literary texts. According to D’Israeli, these “literary characters” form a body politic governed by a shared set of “internal laws,“ 26 23 Martin Spevack, Curiosities Revisited: The Works of Isaac D’Israeli (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2007), 103-4. which travel beyond historical, political, and geographical borders. Three years later, Shelley developed the same idea when he referred to the “great poem, which all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world” (522). Shelley and D’Israeli shared the idea of an unbroken tradition of world literature forming a vast community of readers and writers with a common set of humanistic values. By promoting this idea, they attempted to elevate the status of literature from being an 24 Shelley 530. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006), 6: “the members of even the smallest national will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” 25 Marshall Brown, “Transcendental Ethics, Vertical Ethics, and Horizontal Ethics,” Ethics in Culture: The Dissemination of Values through Literature and Other Media, ed. Astrid Erll, Herbert Grabes, and Ansgar Nünning (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008): 51-72, 53. 26 Shelley 531. “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society” 233 imaginative endeavour towards becoming a sophisticated and vitally active organ of government. As well as anticipating Shelley’s “Defence,“ D’Israeli’s image of “literary characters” as “an important body, diffused over enlightened Europe” bears a striking resemblance to Coleridge’s later concept of the “clerisy.” Coleridge first expounded this concept in his essay On the Constitution of the Church and State, published in 1829. In this work, Coleridge advanced a similar argument to D’Israeli, claiming that “we must be men in order to be citizens” and that among those involved in governing the church and the state “a certain smaller number were to remain at the fountain-heads of the humanities.” 27 This latter and far more numerous body were to be distributed throughout the country, so as not to leave even the smallest integral part or division without a resident guide, guardian, and instructor; the objects and final intention of the whole order being these — to preserve the stores, to guard the treasures, of past civilization, and thus to bind the present with the past; to perfect and add to the same, and thus to connect the present with the future; but especially to diffuse through the whole community, and to every native entitled to its laws and rights, that quantity and quality of knowledge which was indispensable both for the understanding of those rights, and for the performance of the duties correspondent. (43-4) He proceeded to posit a whole order of individuals — the “National Clerisy” — whose role was to oversee “national education, the nisus formativus of the body politic, the shaping and informing spirit” (46-8). Coleridge continued: Compared to D’Israeli, Coleridge expands the membership of this order from “literary characters” to include “all the so called liberal arts and sciences,” (46) yet its cultural role and method of operation remain similar. Like D’Israeli, Coleridge emphasises that cultural values “diffuse” through society. Behind this metaphor lies an assumption about the agency through which cultural values spread. Where Shelley claims that poetry “engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce” (531) standards of beauty and goodness, Coleridge figures the humanities as “fountain-heads” - sources from which people come voluntarily to drink. Both authors suggest that literature governs through encouraging individuals to admire and emulate its values, rather than through top-down enforcement. Like D’Israeli, Coleridge uses the body politic as a convenient metaphor to describe the differentiation of social roles without positing a strict social hierarchy. Where D’Israeli maintained that “the people are a vast body, of which men of genius are the eyes and the hands” (352), Coleridge claims that the clerisy will cooperate with the other organs of the body politic in its role 27 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On the Constitution of the Church and State, ed. J. Colmer, in The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, gen. ed. Kathleen Coburn, 16 vols in 34 (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976), 10: 43. T OM C LUCAS 234 as “guide, guardian, and instructor.” Following McGann, one might argue that Coleridge assigns the clerisy special “insight and vision” to “apprehend fundamental truths […] kept hidden from the ordinary person’s consciousness.” 28 Yet Coleridge’s model of didacticism is more subtle than this would imply. Both Coleridge and D’Israeli may be said to postulate a cultural contract, which forms part of the larger social contract discussed by writers like Locke, Rousseau, and Hume. In his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume used the examples of “affection to virtue” and “detestation of vice” to argue for the existence of a “public affection,” through which “the interests of society are not, even on their own account, entirely indifferent to us” and “everything, which contributes to the happiness of society, recommends itself directly to your approbation and good-will.” 29 The cultural contract proposed by D’Israeli and Coleridge partakes of this public affection, which helps the individual relate to the idea of the society in which they live. Rather than a social contract between the governors and the governed, or in which the individual consents to be governed by the general will, this cultural contract involves a bond of admiration or love which the individual feels for the shared set of cultural achievements, which Coleridge terms the “treasures” of “past civilization.” In this way, Coleridge figures the clerisy not as governors, but rather as benefactors, bestowing the “stores” of literature to those who wish to receive them. Like D’Israeli, Coleridge proposes that “authors stand between the governors and the governed,” 30 Ronald Shusterman has drawn attention to the complexities of this image of diffusion, pointing out that “it involves an effort towards harmony rather than mere obedience”: “learning means forging together in the smithies of our interrelated souls the continuously re-created conscience of our race.” diffusing cultural values by inspiring love and veneration. 31 28 McGann 114. Yet Coleridge was aware that for the clerisy to work, it would need to encourage people to feel like stakeholders within their culture. Early in his essay On the Constitution of the Church and State, he observed that “no man who has ever listened to labourers […] discussing the injustice of the present rate of wages, and the iniquity of their being paid in part out of the parish poor-rates, will doubt for a moment that they are fully possessed by the idea” of a social contract (17). Both Coleridge’s and D’Israeli’s ideas about the diffusion of culture played an important role in shaping British debates about politics and education during the first half of the nineteenth century. In particular, a number of novelists engaged with their ideas and put them imagi- 29 Hume 219. 30 Isaac D’Israeli 351. 31 Ronald Shusterman, “Agrammaticality, Silence and the Diffusion of Values: The Holiday of Language,“ Ethics in Culture 73-86, 84. “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society” 235 natively into practice within the fictional (or semi-fictional) communities described in their novels. By doing so, they revealed further tensions in the image of diffusion as the dominant metaphor for cultural change. One of the most important roles played by the so-called “condition of England” novels written in the 1830s and ’40s was to show that the metaphor of the diffusion of ethics and culture — even when deployed “horizontally,” as described by Marshall Brown — had to be supplemented with other models. 4 Sybil and the Metaphors of Cultural Change Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Sybil, or The Two Nations, published in 1845, represents the author’s attempt to give a narrative form to the arguments about literature and cultural change discussed in the previous section. In the novel, Disraeli recounts the history of the Chartist movement, which aimed to secure the vote for working men, in the fictional town of Mowbray in the years 1837-1844. As the book’s subtitle suggests, Disraeli argues that the rich and the poor in Britain form “[t]wo nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy” (65). Both within the story, and through the novel’s reception, Disraeli attempted to show how literature could mediate in this political conflict and bridge the cultural gulf between Britain’s social classes. Disraeli was a strong advocate of his father’s idea that literature helps to shape the public mind, and published a seven-volume edition of The Works of Isaac Disraeli in 1859. In the biographical notice “On the Life and Writings of Mr. Disraeli” with which he prefaced this edition, the now prominent politician claimed that before his father’s time “the Literary Character had never been fairly placed before the world,” adding that “in the analysis and record of its power, he vindicated the right position of authors in the social scale. They stand between the governors and the governed, he impresses on us in the closing pages of his greatest work.” 32 Here, Benjamin Disraeli singles out his father’s work on The Literary Character for praise, and echoes its central argument about the potential of literature to mediate in the process of government. Disraeli revealed the influence of this idea on his own political philosophy throughout his novels. Early in Sybil, he questions the “beneficial influence” of the 1832 Reform Act, asking: “Has it elevated the tone of the public mind? Has it cultured the popular sensibilities to noble and ennobling ends? ” 33 32 Benjamin Disraeli, “On the Life and Writings of Mr. Disraeli. By His Son,” Isaac D’Israeli on Books: Pre-Victorian Essays on the History of Literature, ed. Marvin Spevack (London: The British Library, 2004), xxxii-xxxiii. This is one of the many instances on which Disraeli uses his father’s concept of the “public mind” and echoes his belief that “the public mind is 33 Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil: Or, The Two Nations, ed. Sheila M. Smith (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008), 30. T OM C LUCAS 236 the creation of the philosophical writer.” 34 The novel revolves around a love plot between the aristocratic Charles Egremont and the eponymous heroine, Sybil Gerard, a working-class woman whose father Walter and family friend Stephen Morley are leaders in the Chartist movement. Unbeknownst to the Gerards, Walter himself stands to inherit a large estate, and the revelation of this fact at the end of the novel ultimately enables the marriage between Sybil and Charles. Because of this revelation and the resulting plot twist, many critics have regarded the novel as being socially conservative. Chris R. Vanden Bossche, for example, recently argued that “Sybil represents a working class that ultimately relinquishes its claims for a role in governance and accepts the benign rule of a single aristocrat.” Set in the fictional town of Mowbray at the height of the Chartist movement, Sybil depicts the failure of traditional methods of governing church and state, emphasising instead the vital role which men and women of letters — Isaac D’Israeli’s “literary characters” or Coleridge’s “clerisy” — play in holding the town’s politically-riven community together. 35 One might thus interpret Egremont as a more politicised version of Isaac D’Israeli’s “master-spirits,” (102) exercising cultural authority over a culturally and politically disenfranchised woman, yet there is a strong case for arguing that the political message of this novel does not depend upon its resolution in the marriage of Sybil and Egremont. Sybil is indeed awed by “the voice of a noble” (291) when she reads of how Egremont upheld the Chartist cause in Parliament, yet the spread of cultural values in Mowbray is by no means as hierarchical as Vanden Bossche implies. Instead, Disraeli employs a whole spectrum of metaphors to show how writing — in the form of novels and newspapers, but also of Chartist periodicals and broadsides — allows cultural values to circulate through society, many times travelling against the traditional social hierarchy and model of top-down cultural diffusion. Disraeli brings not only Egremont, but also his own readers into contact with the ideas of Chartist luminaries like Sybil, Walter Gerard, and Stephen Morley. In this way, he imagines a new, more inclusive model of the clerisy, which includes working people alongside Coleridge’s “sages and professors.” 36 Initially, the conversation between the social classes in Sybil is enabled by the fact that Egremont disguises his aristocracy. During the first half of the At the same time, Disraeli supplements his father’s metaphor of cultural diffusion with a more active model of the conversation of culture, in which the workers in Mowbray speak back and educate the aristocrats living among them. 34 D’Israeli 352. 35 Chris R. Vanden Bossche, Reform Acts: Chartism, Social Agency, and the Victorian Novel, 1832-1867 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2014), 90. 36 Coleridge 46. “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society” 237 novel, he assumes the identity of “Mr. Franklin,” (136) telling Walter Gerard that he is “a reporter” and justifying his visit to Mowbray on the grounds that “they want information in London as to the real state of the country” (135). In narrative terms, this encapsulates Egremont’s role: as a novelistic device, his function is to convey information and cultural values between the interests of land and labour, both within the novel and beyond it - to Disraeli’s readers. Egremont’s choice of the name “Franklin” is significant for two reasons. Firstly, Disraeli’s father made an example of how Benjamin Franklin’s characteristics had “imprinted themselves on his Americans,“ claiming that “loftier feelings could not elevate a man of genius, who became the founder of a trading people, retaining the habits of a journeyman printer” (355-6). Secondly, Coleridge had drawn attention to the mediatory role played by the class of “Franklins” within British society. Coleridge argued that the “possessors of land” were “subdivided into two classes,“ adding that the “lower of the two ranks,” namely “the Franklins, will, in their political sympathies, draw more nearly to the antagonist order” of labourers and manufacturers “than the first rank” (26-7). This pattern is played out in Disraeli’s novel, in which Egremont’s elder brother Lord Marney remains completely impervious to the needs of workers, while his own movements open up a channel of communication between the interests of land and labour. Crucially, Egremont does not arrive in Mowbray as the purveyor of a predetermined set of cultural values. Disraeli introduces him by claiming that “although he had been at a public school and a university, he in fact knew nothing” (34-5). Egremont himself acknowledges this during the novel, as he gives Walter, Stephen, and especially Sybil the credit for shaping his own moral character. After he first meets her among the ruins of Marney Abbey, Egremont recognises that Sybil embodies the cultural values of a lost age. Disraeli uses free indirect discourse to recount how Egremont asks himself: “Who was this girl, unlike all the women whom he had yet encountered, who spoke with such sweet seriousness of things of such vast import, but which had never crossed his mind, and with a kind of mournful majesty bewailed the degradation of her race? ” (131). Certainly, owing to his gender and social class, Egremont possesses the balance of power when he later confesses his love to Sybil. Critics like Vanden Bossche are right to draw attention to the fact that Sybil’s cultural “majesty” over Egremont is an illusion which he sustains. 37 37 Vanden Bossche 95. Nonetheless, Disraeli depicts other ways in which the Gerards do exert a strong influence on Egremont’s mind. For example, Disraeli describes his surprise when he first enters Walter’s cottage and encounters Stephen Morley’s collection of books: “Egremont read the titles of works which he only knew by fame, but which treated of the loftiest and most subtle questions of social and political philosophy” (133-4). Here, the T OM C LUCAS 238 stewardship of Coleridge’s “fountain-heads of the humanities” is called into question, 38 Throughout the novel, Egremont repeatedly experiences a countercurrent of culture which works against the top-down model of diffusion described by Coleridge and Isaac D’Israeli. In a striking passage, Disraeli the novelist claims that: as Disraeli suggests that Morley has an intimate knowledge of the contents of great works which Egremont “only knew by fame.” There are tumults of the mind, when, like the great convulsions of nature, all seems anarchy and returning to chaos, yet often, in those moments of vast disturbance, as in the material strife itself, some new principle of order, or some new impulse of conduct, develops itself, and controls, and regulates, and brings to an harmonious consequence, passions and elements which seemed only to threaten despair and subversion. So it was with Egremont. (246) Egremont experiences this “tumult of the mind” upon hearing Sybil profess her belief that the “gulf” between their social classes is “utterly impassable” (246). In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke had figured the French Revolution as a reversion to a Hobbesian state of nature, claiming that: “Every thing seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies, in viewing this monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily succeed, and sometimes mix with each other in the mind.” 39 Disraeli figures Egremont’s initial experience of class conflict in similar terms, but argues that unlike the political revolution which led to the Napoleonic wars, Egremont’s inner reform will give rise, successfully, to a “new principle of order.” Disraeli internalises the contemporary language of revolution and political reform to describe the emergence of a “new impulse of conduct” in Egremont’s mind. The experience which he undergoes resembles Shelley’s account of the operation of the “poetical faculty,” in which poetry “engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange [the materials of knowledge, and power and pleasure] according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the good.” 40 Two further examples of the Chartist clerisy in Disraeli’s novel may be found in the characters of Stephen Morley and Walter Gerard. Morley is the As a result, Egremont realises that he has to make a choice: either he has to modify both his own and Sybil’s attitudes towards the class system, or he has to renounce his love for her. In this case, it is Sybil’s speech, rather than writing, which works this change in Egremont’s thinking, yet the effect is still to halt and then reverse the didactic flow of cultural values from the aristocratic to the working class. 38 Coleridge 43. 39 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. L.G. Mitchell and William B. Todd, in Burke 8: 60. 40 Shelley 531. “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society” 239 editor of the local newspaper, the Mowbray Phalanx, and a champion of “moral force.” 41 When Gerard first introduces Morley to Egremont, he claims that “the world will hear of him yet, though he was only a workman, and the son of a workman. He has not been at your schools and your colleges, but he can write his mother tongue, as Shakespeare and Cobbett wrote it; and you must do that, if you wish to influence the people” (134). The equation of Shakespeare and Cobbett shows Disraeli continuing to develop his father’s ideas, by levelling and broadening out the membership of group of “literary characters” who act as “master-spirits” of the age. Despite the fact that Sybil ultimately chooses Egremont over Morley, the editor of the Mowbray Phalanx nonetheless plays a vital role in setting the cultural agenda of the novel. When they first meet in the ruins of Marney Abbey, it is Morley who explains the novel’s subtitle by informing Egremont that Britain comprises “[t]wo nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws” (65-6). With this nested figure of anaphora (“who are […] who are […] are […] are”) and the careful switch from “whom” to “who,“ Disraeli portrays Morley as a refined orator, claiming that he possessed “one of those voices that instantly arrest attention” (64). Since Sybil has imbibed Morley’s vision of the two nations, Egremont is forced to confront, understand, and address the Chartist vision of Britain’s culture before he can win Sybil’s hand. As in the passage from Shelley’s “Defence” quotated above, Egremont is forced to negotiate between the “materials of external life exceed” and the “internal laws of human nature,“ 42 A similar point may be made for Walter Gerard, who rivals Isaac D’Israeli’s “master-spirits” through his espousal of direct action over moral force. which unite him with Sybil. In this way, the downward diffusion of cultural values from the aristocracy is interrupted by the arguments between Sybil and Egremont, both of whom take and give ground in order to arrive at an understanding of their common humanity. 43 His air, his figure, his position were alike commanding, and at the sight of him a loud and spontaneous cheer burst from the assembled thousands. It was the sight of one who was, after all, the most popular leader of the people that had ever fig- Gerard’s most impressive moment comes when he appears on top of Trafford’s factory, attempting to dissuade the violent mob from sacking the works of the one sympathetic manufacturer in the region. Disraeli claims that: 41 Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil, 356. 42 Shelley 531. 43 Isaac D’Israeli 102. T OM C LUCAS 240 ured in these parts, whose eloquence charmed and commanded, whose disinterestedness was acknowledged, whose sufferings had created sympathy, whose courage, manly bearing, and famous feats of strength were a source to them of pride. There was not a Mowbray man whose heart did not throb with emotion, and whose memory did not recall the orations from the Druid’s altar and the famous meetings on the moor. “Gerard for ever! ” was the universal shout. (396) With this image of Gerard as “the most popular leader of the people […] whose eloquence charmed and commanded,“ Disraeli continues to transform his father’s arguments about literature and cultural change. Within the popular culture of Mowbray, Gerard performs the same function as Isaac D’Israeli’s men of genius, who “stamp” their “character […] on a people” by inspiring admiration and veneration. 44 5 Conclusion: Historicising the Concept of Literature Throughout Sybil, Benjamin Disraeli shows that what is at stake is not the top-down diffusion of a single, national culture, as his father and Coleridge had suggested, but rather a series of entanglements and negotiations between various competing accounts of which cultural values should remain foremost in the “public mind.” Furthermore, Gerard’s example shows that where the dominant culture is at fault, it can be corrected by the conduct of the oppressed. Although Disraeli mounts an original argument for the importance of Chartist culture, he subscribes wholeheartedly to the argument advanced by his father, Shelley, and Coleridge that literature can act as a powerful force for cultural change. Disraeli forces his readers to confront an impasse between cultural values within British society in the 1830s and ’40s. As an author, he situates himself, exactly as his father had suggested, “between the governors and the governed.” 45 In this way, Disraeli’s novel can be seen to support Shelley’s claim that “[p]oets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” 46 McGann argued that “the emphasis must be placed on ‘unacknowledged’ to specify the Romanticism of the idea,“ yet this essay has shown how Romantic ideas about the cultural status of literature fed directly into debates about political reform in the 1830s and ’40s. 47 44 Isaac D’Israeli 355. Here, it is important to remember that Shelley’s “Defence” was first published by his sister, Mary, in 1840, just five years before the publication of Sybil. This fact appears to bear out Isaac D’Israeli’s claim that the thought “which has sometimes changed the dispositions of a people, and even of an age, is slowly matured in meditation” (352). Cultural change often takes place over the course of one or more 45 Isaac D’Israeli 351. 46 Shelley 535. 47 McGann 114. “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society” 241 generations: to observe the influence of Romantic claims about the role of literature in driving this change, we must look a little later, to British culture in the early Victorian period. Though Isaac D’Israeli’s ideas about the societal importance of literature were not fully realised until the 1830s and ’40s, the fact that they were realised during his lifetime suggests that these ideas were not as far removed from “the ordinary person’s consciousness” as McGann suggests. 48 The example of the Disraelis shows that the legislative role of literature was not only “acknowledged,” but also made the subject of imaginative experimentation by nineteenth-century writers and their readers. To understand the cultural status of literature in the Romantic period, it is necessary to take a middle ground, partially suspending the hermeneutic of suspicion without succumbing to an “uncritical absorption in Romanticism’s own selfrepresentations.” 49 The language of Romantic texts needs to be interrogated, but without revoking their authority as works of cultural criticism and reducing art to “a self-regarding, autonomous, closed system […] opposed to social life.” 50 In this way, it is possible to historicise claims for the cultural status of literature made in a past age, when the didactic function of literature was held in higher esteem than it is now. As evidence of this claim, one might cite Helen Small’s recent recognition that advocates of the humanities now tend to ‘esche[w] the language of moralism’ and demonstrate ‘a care not to be seen to assert that the activities of the humanities are necessarily ethically driven.’ 51 This essay has argued that Sybil built on the arguments of Shelley, Coleridge, and Isaac D’Israeli to examine the ways in which cultural values travel through society. Benjamin Disraeli replaced the metaphor of top-down diffusion with a more complex network of “tumults in the mind” (246), which captures the political power play between competing sets of cultural values. Raymond Williams later sketched a similar method in Marxism and Literature, when he proposed a “Sociology of Culture” and wrote of the need for “studies of different types of institution and formation in cultural production and distribution, and in the linking of these within whole social material processes.” For writers like Shelley, Coleridge, and the Disraelis, this would have been an alien claim. Therefore, in the process of historicising Romantic and early Victorian literature, it is valuable to reconsider what the original readers of these works thought literature was capable of doing. 52 48 McGann 114. In suggesting this, Williams implicitly returned to Shelley’s “Defence,“ and the claim that the “poetical faculty […] engenders in the 49 McGann 1. 50 Greenblatt 4. 51 Helen Small, The Value of the Humanities (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013), 144-5. 52 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977), 138. T OM C LUCAS 242 mind a desire to reproduce and arrange [the materials of knowledge, and power and pleasure] according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the good.” 53 Disraeli’s novel also draws on Shelley’s conviction that literature can transform society by encouraging its readers to emulate and act upon a shared set of values, thus creating a cultural contract between an international and trans-historical body of writers and readers. At the same time, Disraeli develops this argument by revealing the ways in which these cultural values are constructed by inequalities in what Shelley calls “the materials of external life” (531). Sybil revises Romantic arguments about the social importance of literature to show that the “fountain-heads of the humanities” do not belong solely to the aristocracy or a middle-class clerisy, but are the common property of the whole population. In this way, Romantic arguments about the role of literature in facilitating cultural change can be seen to have fed directly into the reformist politics of the nineteenth century. 53 Shelley 531. “The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society” 243 Works Cited Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 2006. Aristotle. Metaphysics. Trans. Hugh Tredennick. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1947. ---. The Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. H. Rackham. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2003. Brown, Marshall. ‘Transcendental Ethics, Vertical Ethics, and Horizontal Ethics,’ Ethics in Culture: The Dissemination of Values through Literature and Other Media. Ed. Astrid Erll, Herbert Grabes, and Ansgar Nünning, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. 51-72. Burke, Edmund. Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. T.O. McLoughlin, James T. Boulton, and William B. Todd. 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Isaac D’Israeli on Books: Pre-Victorian Essays on the History of Literature. London: The British Library, 2004. ---. Curiosities Revisited: The Works of Isaac D’Israeli. Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 2007. Vanden Bossche, Chris R. Reform Acts: Chartism, Social Agency, and the Victorian Novel, 1832-1867. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2014. Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society 1780-1950. New York: Anchor Books, 1960. ---. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977. ---. The Country and the City. London: Hogarth Press, 1985. V ERA N ÜNNING “Human Character Changed”: Virginia Woolf’s Conceptualisation of Literary Change in the 21st Century “[O]n or about December 1910 human character changed.” 1 This famous assertion by Virginia Woolf has often been quoted in order to explain the author’s plea for new forms of writing in the period of modernism. The setting of a date is, of course, highly arbitrary, and Woolf hastened to add that the developments she refers to already began in the late nineteenth century. Many events and tendencies have been mentioned in connection with the emergence of modernist ways of writing, such as the translations of Freud’s works or the first exhibition of Post-Impressionist paintings in London, which took place in December 1910. 2 If one contextualises Woolf’s remarks and tries to understand them in the light of her historical and critical essays, it becomes clear that she had very complex and pertinent ideas about literary change and its connections to cultural developments. Throughout her life, Woolf published hundreds of essays, most of which are now available in standard collections of five or six volumes. However, the point that Woolf makes goes beyond the marking of a particular milestone in the history of literature. Instead, it is part of a full-fledged theory of literary change, which is based on her conception of literature as a means of communication. Literary works are written by authors in order to be read, and fictional prose is intricately tied to human nature in many ways: to what writers believe to be human nature and human life, to the expectations of readers, and to the subject matter of literature. 3 1 Virginia Woolf, “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,” [1924] The Captain’s Death Bed and Other Essays (London: Hogarth, 1950), 91. Her biographical and historical essays reveal a deep interest in and awareness of the importance of differences between cultural periods. In the two volumes of her essays which she edited herself, The Common Reader (first 2 See Pericles Lewis, The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007), 65, 86; Jane Goldman, “Virginia Woolf and Modernist Aesthetics,” Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts, ed. Maggie Humm (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2010), 38f.; Stephen Matthews, Modernism: A Sourcebook (London: Palgrave, 2008), 181. 3 Andrew McNeillie and Stuart Clarke edited the most recent collection in six volumes; this essay, however, uses the editions published by the Hogarth Press, the first two of which were published by Virginia Woolf herself. V ERA N ÜNNING 246 and second series), she took great care to place historical pieces next to essays dealing with literature. In her critical essays on literature, she more often than not drew readers’ attention to the historical and cultural characteristics of a broad range of periods. At the same time, she was aware of historical contingencies, and of the variety of influences on particular works of literature: “But let us always remember - influences are infinitely numerous; writers are infinitely sensitive; each writer has a different sensibility. That is why literature is always changing [...]. Yet there are groups.” 4 Woolf’s wariness of undue generalisations, her dislike of authority and of teaching literature in abstract terms, her ingenious way of developing metaphors and the sheer number of her statements on literature have led the great majority of the few critics who deal with her essays and her conceptualisation of literature to assume that Woolf was “fundamentally resistant towards the systematising of rational thought,“ 5 as, among others, Deborah Parsons believes. Numerous scholars have characterised Woolf’s criticism as “impressionistic,“ 6 an adjective which was at first used to belittle it as unimportant. Later feminist criticism has re-evaluated this ‘impressionist’ procedure as a positive quality, but retained the characterisation of Woolf as a stimulating, interesting essayist who does not use any fixed categories for conceptualising and evaluating literature at all, let alone consistent ones. 7 4 “The Leaning Tower,” [1940] The Moment (London: Hogarth, 1947), 106. A number of recent studies show the coherence of particular 5 Deborah Parsons, Theorists of the Modernist Novel: James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Routledge Critical Thinkers (London: Routledge, 2007), 14; Hermione Lee, “Virginia Woolf’s Essays,” The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, eds. Sue Roe and Susan Sellers (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2000, 91-108), 101, also stresses the lack of analytical thinking in Woolf’s essays; she thinks that “scene-making […] is at the heart of her critical method” (ibid. 100). 6 For feminist criticism on the ‘feminine’ quality of Woolf’s style, see for instance, Elsie F. Mayer, “Literary Criticism with a Human Face: Virginia Woolf and The Common Reader,” Private Voices, Public Lives: Women Speak on the Literary Life, ed. Nancy Owen Nelson ( Denton: U of North Texas Press, 1995), 288f., and Leila Brosnan, Reading Virginia Woolf’s Essays and Journalism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1997), 88. For an earlier, negative evaluation of Woolf’s ‘impressionistic’ feminist criticism see Maggie Humm, “Virginia Woolf,” Feminist Criticism: Women as Contemporary Critics, ed. Maggie Humm (Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1986), 124. 7 For a brief review of the academic reception of Woolf’s essays, which have recently become the focus of several book-length studies, see Katerina Koutsantoni, Virginia Woolf’s Common Reader (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 10-14, and Randi Saloman, Virginia Woolf’s Essayism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012), 6-8. Saloman also stresses that many recent studies treat Woolf’s essays as a starting point for an understanding of her novels. “Human Character Changed” 247 aspects of Woolf’s aesthetics, but these often focus on her fictional works rather than on her essays. 8 In the following, I will argue against this image of Woolf as an essayist incapable of or averse to logical thinking and try to show that Woolf not only asked her readers to employ their intellect, their emotions and their imagination in order to understand and evaluate literary works, but also linked these resources to formulate her own views on literary texts. What is more, the style of her essays is characterised by these resources and by her beliefs regarding the tasks of authors, readers and critics. Although her conceptualisation of fiction and of literary change is developed and refined throughout the decades, and though the emphasis shifts, the key tenets remain; Woolf did not contradict herself. 9 Her principles are not easy to recognise, however, since Woolf abhorred apodictic preaching and did not believe in teaching literature by using abstract or theoretical language. Her hatred of preaching corresponds to her rejection of authorities, particularly in the field of reading, which can be found in several essays, from her introduction to The Common Reader I (1925) up to the unfinished manuscript of an essay called “The Reader” written in 1940/ 1941. 10 In my discussion of Woolf’s aesthetics I will single out three factors that, according to her, influence literary change: First, factors attributable to the historical and cultural context, particularly cultural beliefs prevalent at the time of production; second, aspects inherent in literature, above all literary traditions and changing genre conventions; and, third, worldviews and preferences of individual authors. After this exploration of Woolf’s ideas, I will look at her practice of literary historiography in the light of modern conceptualisations of literary history. Finally, I want to take stock of some 8 See, for instance, Linden Peach, “Virginia Woolf and Realist Aesthetics,” The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts, ed. Maggie Humm (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP 2010), 104-117, who concentrates on Night and Day, Flush and The Years, and Adriana C. Duban, “The Mark on the Wall of Fiction: Virginia Woolf’s Ars Poetica,” Scientific Journal of Humanistic Studies 3.5 (2011): 99-102, who focuses on the short story “Mark on the Wall.” In a discerning chapter on Woolf’s conception of ‘literary geography,’ Andrea Zemgulys, Modernism and the Locations of Literary Heritage (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008) also mentions some key features of Woolf’s aesthetics. 9 For a detailed delineation of Woolf’s aesthetics, see my Die Ästhetik Virginia Woolfs: Eine Rekonstruktion ihrer philosophischen und ästhetischen Grundanschauungen auf der Basis ihrer nichtfiktionalen Schriften (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1990). Koutsantoni, Woolf’s Common Reader, 41, stresses that Woolf raises “even more unanswered questions” in her Common Reader II, than in Common Reader I. 10 See her desire “to free ourselves from all the impositions of authority & the dominion of what is customary” (“‘Anon’ and ‘The Reader’: Virginia Woolf’s Last Essays,” ed. Brenda R. Silver, Twentieth Century Literature 25.3/ 4 (1979): 369-441, 434). For her “hatred” of preaching, see Woolf, “Defoe” [1919], The Common Reader I [1925] (London: Hogarth, 1984), 92, and: “Here again my hatred of preaching pops out and barks” [25.6.1935], Letters, vol. V, eds. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (London: Hogarth, 1979), 408. V ERA N ÜNNING 248 aspects of Woolf’s poetics that can be further explicated or enriched with the help of narrative theory and psychology. 1 Cultural Beliefs of Authors and Readers Woolf started from the premise that writers want to communicate their individual visions of human life to readers. The vicissitudes of human lives, the slow growth of feelings and the development of human relations are at the centre of fictional works, which explore what it is like to be a human being. 11 Novels, specifically, deal with characters, and Woolf emphasised that it is often difficult to describe, let alone to understand the life of characters. She illustrates this difficulty by imagining meeting a woman who asks her to be included in a novel: “My name is Brown. Catch me if you can.” 12 In this as well as other essays, Woolf uses fictional scene making in order to illustrate her point, describing a situation in which she attempts to capture the life of a person she meets. Her example is Mrs. Brown, a little elderly lady, whom she observes sitting in a corner in a train. But though it is easy to depict her appearance or to point out where she lives, it is difficult to understand her, let alone to commit her to paper. What is essential for Woolf, “life or spirit, truth or reality,“ 13 In addition to being elusive, beliefs about human nature, reality, life and truth are susceptible to historical change, which in turn fosters literary change. Woolf does not cease to emphasise that different periods have different views about what is real, natural and important. In her essays, she often referred to general knowledge and implicit cultural beliefs related to the time of production of literary works. She spent great care to raise readers’ awareness, for instance, of the specifics of cultural beliefs and social conduct in the times of Chaucer, Elizabeth I, and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The differences between cultures are profound, according to Woolf, and her own contemporaries and those of John Evelyn in the seventeenth century “rate the same things at different values [...]. [T]here is enough discrepancy between his view of pain and ours to make us wonder whether we see any fact with the same eyes […] or judge any conduct by the is highly elusive. 11 “I believe that all novels […] deal with character, and that it is to express character […] that the form of the novel […] has been evolved” (“Mr. Bennett,“ 97). See also her more elaborate statement: “The novel is the only form of art which seeks to make us believe that it is giving a full and truthful record of the life of a real person,“ “Phases of Fiction” [1929], Granite and Rainbow (London: Hogarth, 1958), 141. See also “writing is a method of communication,“ “The Patron and the Crocus,” Common Reader I, 207. 12 Woolf, “Mr. Bennett,“ 90. 13 “Modern Fiction,” first published under the title “Modern Novels” in 1919, revised and retitled 1925, Common Reader I, 149. “Human Character Changed” 249 same standards.” 14 In order to be able to understand and fully engage with the fictional worlds of former periods, Woolf stressed, it is necessary to adjust one’s own beliefs of what is real to those prevalent in the period. 15 To be in a position to appreciate Elizabethan and seventeenth-century literature, Woolf therefore advised her readers to adjust their own ‘sense of reality.’ Twentieth century expectations concerning ‘human nature’ or ‘reality,’ she suggests, diverge in many ways from Elizabethan beliefs: The reality to which we have grown accustomed is, speaking roughly, based upon the life and death of some knight called Smith, who succeeded his father in the family business, […] did much for the poor of Liverpool, and died last Wednesday of pneumonia while on a visit to his son at Muswell Hill. 16 That a character succeeding his father in the family business and dying of pneumonia would have fulfilled readers’ expectations of a life-like character at the beginning of the twentieth century affirms Woolf’s observation by demonstrating the rapidity of changes in the sense of what is real. In the twenty-first century, with its precarious working conditions, financial crises and climate change, such a character, presented by Woolf as stock example of what is regarded as ‘real,’ would appear to be nearly as unreal as an Elizabethan nobleman. Woolf was deeply aware of the impact that changes in people’s ‘sense of reality’ had on literary developments. She noted that in Elizabethan times, travellers coming back from the New World told tales about incredibly strange flowers and animals - about American natives and their wondrous beliefs and behaviours - and about headless people, unicorns and other marvels. These cultural beliefs influenced many Elizabethan plays, which feature characters “who spend their lives in murder and intrigue, dress up as men if they are women, as women if they are men, see ghosts, run mad, and die in the greatest profusion on the slightest provocation” 17 14 “Rambling Round Evelyn,” [1920] Common Reader I, 80f. Sally Greene, “Entering Woolf’s Renaissance Imaginary: A Second Look at The Second Common Reader,” Virginia Woolf and the Essay, eds. Beth Carole Rosenberg and Jeanne Dubino (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 81-95, 88 stresses that Woolf used “the process of defamiliarizing her readers, opening their minds to a time before the course of literary history was set so that they might imagine other directions it could have taken.” - and this leaves modern readers in despair, because they search in vain for some connection to Smith, or to London and the world they know. In the Renaissance, people thought and felt differently, and dukes and other grandees were expected to 15 Zemgulys, Modernism and the Locations of Literary Heritage, 157, also emphasises that Woolf wrote literary criticism in order to “shape the tastes and understandings of a wide public of readers.” 16 “Notes on an Elizabethan Play,” Common Reader I, 48-67, 48f. 17 “Notes on an Elizabethan Play,” 49. V ERA N ÜNNING 250 use language that was “long-winded and abstract and full of metaphors.” 18 Changes in implicit and explicit cultural beliefs are therefore among the driving forces of literary change. As Woolf’s example of the characters in Elizabethan plays, of their behaviour, their emotions and their language shows, variations of what is held to be ‘real’ or ‘human nature’ influence just about every aspect of literary works, ranging from the conceptualisation of characters to plotlines and style. Sociological factors have a part to play in this, too, and Woolf was convinced that they would continue to be significant in the future. Even in the twentieth century, she suggested, the English novel was still young and very much bound up with the middle class. Any future levelling of the differences between classes, and the disappearance of the British class system would have a great impact on the development of fiction in England: Readers have to be aware of the prevalent cultural beliefs; Woolf maintains that they have to adjust their sense of what to expect from any given text with regard to the particular time in which it was published. They should not judge books without taking the cultural presuppositions and the dominant narrative or poetic techniques at the time of their publication into account. But what will happen to English fiction when it has come to pass that there are neither Generals, nieces, Earls, nor coats, we cannot imagine. It may change its character so that we no longer know it. It may become extinct. […] The art of a truly democratic age will be - what? 19 Far from being the elitist aesthete solely concerned with the subtle depiction of human consciousness and formal aspects of writing, Woolf acknowledged the importance of cultural and sociological changes for the development of literature. 2 Literary Traditions and Genre Conventions The second important group of factors influencing literary change was, according to Woolf, intrinsic to literature. She put great store by literary traditions and genre conventions, but her evaluation of their impact on authors and readers was ambivalent. On the one hand, she appreciated the influence of traditions. As she famously claimed in A Room of One’s Own, “we think back through our mothers if we are women,“ 20 18 “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia,“ Common Reader II (London: Hogarth, [1932] 1953), 46. and the lack of a substantial and renowned tradition of female writing proved to be a serious obstacle to 19 “The Niece of an Earl,” [1928] Common Reader II, 219. 20 A Room of One’s Own [1929] and Three Guineas, ed. Hermione Lee (London: Hogarth, 1984), 70f. “Human Character Changed” 251 the development of literature - particularly for poetry and plays - by British female authors. Her observations on the problems of female authors can serve to highlight her general point and demonstrate that traditions are an important catalyst for the production of innovative works. On the other hand, literary traditions and particularly genre conventions could be an impediment to change and prevent authors from giving expression to their own beliefs, convictions and imaginations. Widely accepted narrative conventions render it difficult to respond to changes in cultural beliefs and to create works of literature that are more than just a repetition of well-known formulae. To look at the positive impact of traditions first, being aware of them could be useful for writers and readers since both, according to Woolf, stand to gain by enlarging their own experiences by means of literature. After all, “masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common,“ 21 which gives authors confidence and makes it possible to create something new. For Woolf, literary creativity depends on a kind of calmness, unawareness and concentration, on a lack of self-doubt and anger that is fostered by the consciousness of being part of a long and fruitful tradition of writing. 22 This mental state allows authors to experiment with conventions and provides a basis for new and innovative works of literature, which are nonetheless part of a larger historical background. The lineage of books could therefore be compared to those of families: “Books descend from books as families descend from families. Some descend from Jane Austen; others from Dickens.” 23 Since writing is a method of communication, adherence to established traditions also facilitates the process of reaching readers, who know what to expect when they open a book belonging to a particular lineage or genre. This advantage of gaining readers’ attention and goodwill, and making them willing co-creators of the book, was held to be extremely important by Woolf: “The writer must get into touch with his reader by putting before him something which he recognizes, which therefore stimulates his imagination, and makes him willing to co-operate.” 24 21 A Room of One’s Own, 61. To be able to write within literary traditions is an important precondition for generating literary change. Writers need the 22 “[A] novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy […] so that nothing may disturb or disquiet […] the imagination”; “Professions for Women” [21.1.1931], The Death of the Moth (London: Hogarth, 1942), 152. See also ibid. 150-153; and “The Leaning Tower,“ 120. For the necessity of incandescence and unimpeded concentration, see also A Room of One’s Own, 53, 68. 23 “The Leaning Tower,“ 106. See also: “For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately” (A Room of One’s Own, 75). 24 “Mr. Bennett,“ 104. V ERA N ÜNNING 252 confidence to draw on traditions in order to create something new, and readers need something to recognise in order to co-operate. Just as necessary as the reliance on established conventions, however, is the need to adjust and change them. According to Woolf, there are good reasons for using old conventions for new aims or for creating new conventions for the expression of innovative beliefs. The pleasure of reading and the state of enchantment that is evoked by reading works of fiction rely on some kind of variety. To be drawn into “the enchanted world of imagination,” 25 which can engross readers and raise their emotions, requires more than just the repetition of old formulae. The use of old conventions and constellations is unlikely to evoke the same emotions again and again; a state of rapture or enchantment is difficult to achieve when one sticks to old patterns: “If the old methods are obsolete, it is the business of the writer to discover new ones. The public can feel again what it has once felt - there can be no doubt about that; only from time to time the point of attack must be changed.” 26 On the other hand, traditions and genre conventions can pose significant obstacles to literary change. Readers expect writers to use familiar genre conventions; they are puzzled and confused if faced with books which radically depart from such established ways of writing. In addition, the standards we raise as readers and the judgments we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work. An influence is created which tells upon them […]. And that influence, if it were well instructed, vigorous and individual and sincere, might be of great value now. 27 For modernist writers, readers’ preferences for old narrative conventions which persuaded them that the content of a book was lifelike or authentic proved to be a problem. Beliefs about human nature had changed, if not in 1910 then thereabouts, and writers who wanted their novels to respond to new ideas about the way the human mind worked, had to turn away from old conventions and develop new methods of writing. Woolf emphasised that the established conventions did not fit the beliefs of modernist authors: 25 “The Novels of E.M. Forster,” [1927] Death of the Moth, 111. See also the references to “rapture” and “excitement” in A Room of One’s Own, 67. See also Woolf’s “On Rereading Novels,” [1922] The Moment, 127, and: “It is the peculiarity of Chaucer, however, that though we feel at once this quickening, this enchantment, we cannot prove it by quotation” (“The Pastons and Chaucer,” Common Reader I, 18f.). 26 “Henry James’s Ghost Stories” [1921], Granite, 67. To be confronted with the same, oldfashioned kind of fiction would ultimately bore readers: “[I]f fiction had remained what it was to Jane Austen and Trollope, fiction would by this time be dead.” (“The Novels of George Meredith” [1928], revised for Common Reader II, 234) 27 “How Should One Read a Book,” [1926] Common Reader II, 269. “Human Character Changed” 253 “For us those conventions are ruin, those tools are death.” 28 Instead, Post- Impressionist paintings and ideas advanced by Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud influenced modernist authors’ conception of the human mind and literary forms. The new ideas could not easily be expressed by means of Victorian realist conventions. 29 There was Mrs. Brown protesting that she was different, quite different, from what people made out, and luring the novelist to her rescue […]; there were [novelists like Bennett and Wells] handing out tools appropriate to house building and house breaking; and there was the British public asseverating that they must see the hotwater bottle first. Extraordinary, intense and inexplicable thoughts and feelings, obscure or missing motives, and opaque or conflicting intentions and emotions seemed to ask for different modes of writing. The bewildering ideas about the complex workings of the human mind jarred with realist forms of characterisation and plot lines: 30 At the beginning of the twentieth century, a combination of established traditions, genre conventions and the expectations of readers therefore seemed to hinder and impede literary change. The rejection of realist modes of writing and the clarion call for new and innovative conventions in Woolf’s two essays “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” and “Modern Fiction” are often referred to in introductions to modernist writing or in interpretations of Woolf’s novels in order to show that she wanted to establish a new genre sometimes referred to as the ‘stream-ofconsciousness novel’ and a new mode of writing trying to “imitate” the “continuous formless flow” of human thoughts and feelings. 31 28 “Mr. Bennett,“ 104. The importance of changing cultural beliefs as catalysts of literary change certainly forms one essential aspect of Woolf’s thoughts about the development of literature. Views on human nature had changed, and “[t]he mind receives a myriad impressions - trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved 29 Therefore, “the convention cease[d] to be a means of communication between writer and reader, and becomes instead an obstacle and an impediment.” (“Mr. Bennett,“ 108) 30 “Mr. Bennett,“ 107. Woolf therefore asked readers to become aware of their own thoughts and feelings and to insist that literary works take into account their daily experiences (cf. ibid. 110f.). 31 Duban, “The Mark on the Wall,“ 99. Duban considers the essay ‘Modern Fiction’ “Woolf’s theoretical credo” (ibid. 100). See also Gary Day, “Changes in Critical Responses and Approaches,“ The Modernism Handbook, eds. Philip Tew and Andrew Murray (London: Continuum, 2009, 135-157), 142, who also refers to William James's concept of the ‘stream of consciousness.’ See also Jürgen Klein, “Virginia Woolfs Idee des neuen Romans,” Neue Rundschau 96.1 (1985): 143-152. In contrast, Linden Peach recognises that Woolf had two different conceptualisations of the ‘real,’ and that she wanted to go beyond the depiction of the stream of consciousness. For a more detailed discussion of Woolf’s conception of the ‘real’ see my Ästhetik Virginia Woolfs 107-135; for her idea of a ‘new novel,’ 164-174. V ERA N ÜNNING 254 with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms.” 32 However, these two often-quoted and anthologised essays date from the period between 1919 and 1925, and they illuminate only one facet of Woolf’s ideas about literary change. While they can serve as a starting point for an understanding of an important aspect of Woolf’s aesthetics and of the novels she wrote in the 1920s, they do not provide much in the way of enlightenment to Woolf’s later works. We should bear in mind, moreover, that even in 1919 Woolf praised Dorothy Richardson’s psychological realism, but at the same time criticised her way of depicting human consciousness, asserting that “the old method seems sometimes the more profound and economical of the two.” Beliefs such as these should be acknowledged in modern fiction, which in turn necessitates the development of new literary conventions. 33 In addition, Woolf’s ideas about the development of fiction went beyond the concentration on the ‘stream of consciousness’ and the resulting changes in narrative techniques. As early as 1927, when she had just finished To the Lighthouse, she speculated that in ten or fifteen years’ time prose will be used for purposes for which prose has never been used before. That cannibal, the novel, which has devoured so many forms of art will by then have devoured even more. We shall be forced to invent new names for the different books which masquerade under this one heading. 34 Instead of propagating the depiction of “an incessant shower of innumerable atoms,“ she stated that “the psychological novelist has been too prone to limit psychology to the psychology of personal intercourse.” 35 What becomes visible in these propositions is a desire for formal innovation and the expression of new ideas - ideas that go beyond the description of a ‘stream of consciousness.’ Authors need to modify literary conventions in order to avoid repetition and to adjust them to their own visions. Looking back on her decision to break with the old realist conventions, Woolf admitted in a letter from January 1929 that the criticism of the tools used by authors such as Arnold Bennett or H.G. Wells was not the only reason, perhaps not even the most significant one for her desire to generate change: 32 “Modern Fiction,“ 150. Goldman, “Virginia Woolf and Modernist Aesthetics,“ 40, 43, 47 emphasises Woolf’s alleged stress on feminine subjectivity and fragmentation. See also Nicola Watson, “Virginia Woolf, Orlando,“ Aestheticism and Modernism, eds. Richard D. Brown and Suman Gupta (London: Routledge, 2005, 277-323), 303 on Woolf’s emphasis on “‘myriadness’ and incoherence - to the point of incipient nausea - of subjective experience.” 33 “The Tunnel” [1919], Contemporary Writers, 122. 34 “The Narrow Bridge of Art,” [1927] Granite, 18. 35 “Narrow Bridge,“ 19. In the 1930s, she thought about and experimented with the integration of essay-writing into the ‘cannibalistic’ form of the novel. “Human Character Changed” 255 Anna Karenina is branded on me, though I’ve not read it for 15 years. That is the origin of all our discontent. After that of course we had to break away. It wasn’t Wells, or Galsworthy or any of our mediocre wishy washy realists: it was Tolstoy. How could we go on with sex and realism after that? How could they go on with poetic plays after Shakespeare? It is one brain, after all, literature; and it wants change and relief. 36 This quote could be interpreted in terms of Harold Bloom’s ‘anxiety of influence’; 37 In addition, it bears emphasising that Woolf’s conception of literary change transcends national boundaries. Both her aesthetics and her fictional works are influenced by European writers, particularly by French and Russian authors such as Gustave Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Ivan Turgenev. In her rejection of realist modes of characterisation in “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,“ Woolf significantly also considers cultural differences. Her interest in the specificity of cultures transcends her concern with temporal differences between periods; it also encompasses spatial differences between national cultures. In her brief illustration of national modes of approaching the depiction of character, the English mode does not appear to be the most attractive, since an English writer “would make the old lady into a ‘character’; he would bring out her oddities.” A French author would see beyond the individual character “to give a more general view of human nature; to make a more abstract, proportioned, and harmonious whole.” A Russian author, in turn, “would reveal the soul.” in the last sentence, however, Woolf gives it a turn which suggests that the impetus towards variety and change is inherent in literature. The dynamics of literature are at the centre of her aesthetics - both with regard to and independent of cultural change. 38 36 8.1.1929, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. IV, eds. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (London: Hogarth, 1978), 4. See also: “No critic ever gives full weight to the desire of the mind for change,“ The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. IV, ed. Anne O. Bell (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 26.1.1933, 145. The ideal of going beyond details, appearances and conduct in order to express ‘human nature’ and ‘reveal the soul’ is at the core of Woolf’s aesthetics. In demanding changes of English narrative conventions, she also aimed at integrating patterns developed by French and Russian writers. Literature, for her, was “one brain, after all,” not limited to the British tradition. 37 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford UP, 1973). 38 “Mr. Bennett,“ 97 (all three quotes). V ERA N ÜNNING 256 3 Authors’ Visions and Perspectives “I think I shall find some theory about fiction [...]. The one I have in view is about perspective.” 39 The third major driving force of literary change is, according to Woolf, caused by individual differences between authors. Though she fully acknowledged the importance of cultural beliefs and generic change, she also insisted that the individual sensitivity and creative power of authors had to be taken into account. She illustrated this by referring to Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Love Peacock, who lived and wrote at the same time and more or less on the same spot - but their perspectives on human nature and the major aims of literature could scarcely have been more different. 40 [I]f there is one gift more essential to a novelist than another it is the power of combination - the single vision. The success of the masterpieces seems to lie […] in the immense persuasiveness of a mind which has completely mastered its perspective. An author’s perspective, for Woolf, encompasses more than just an individual angle from which he or she creates the fictional worlds in particular novels. An author’s perspective is closely connected to his or her vision, to some profound and deeply subjective and individualistic view of human life that he or she tries to express by means of narrative conventions. This perspective determines the relations between the elements of a fictional world. According to Woolf, in a good novel everything is connected to the single vision which the author expresses: 41 Authors’ perspectives are, of course, influenced by the cultural beliefs and by the genre conventions prevalent at a time. However, the way in which authors respond to these cultural beliefs and conventions varies. Their attitudes towards such common knowledge can range from acceptance to rebellion, and leave room for modifications in both the choice of subject matter and the use of narrative conventions. Since unifying visions are subjective and deeply felt on the parts of authors, and since conventions are by definition conventional, there is, according to Woolf, a clash between the interests of the author and the narra- 39 Diary of Virginia Woolf, 7.12.1925, vol. III (1982), 50. 40 See “Robinson Crusoe” [1926], slightly revised for Common Reader II, 53: “writers may live at the same time and yet see nothing the same size.” 41 “The Novels of E.M. Forster” [1927], Death of the Moth, 104-112, 106f. See also: “For a novel [...] is a statement about a thousand different objects - human, natural, divine; it is an attempt to relate them to each other. In every novel of merit these different elements are held in place by the force of the writer’s vision.” (“Women and Fiction” [1929], Granite and Rainbow, 81). “Human Character Changed” 257 tive tools that are needed in order to give shape to individual visions. 42 Established conventions are unlikely to fit an individual author’s perspective. This discrepancy between narrative techniques and authors’ visions fosters literary change, because great writers will have to re-create the narrative tools and fictional forms in order to fit their own purpose: “the sign of a masterly writer is his power to break the mould callously.” 43 This breaking of moulds and shattering of forms confuses readers, who expect novels to adhere to genre conventions, and who need to be shown something they can recognise in order to become ‘co-creators’ of literary works in whose imagination characters and situations come to life. 44 Authors therefore have to inspire the imagination of readers and to “lay an egg” in their minds, an egg the future of which is determined by readers, and cannot be controlled by writers. 45 However, for Woolf it is the mark of great writers that they can make readers believe in fictional worlds which are governed by highly subjective rules: “while we are under their spell these great geniuses make us see the world any shape they choose. We remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens; we forget that we have ever felt the delights of solitude.” 46 42 “[Dorothy Richardson’s method] represents a genuine conviction of the discrepancy between what she has to say and the form provided by tradition for her to say it in. She is one of the rare novelists who believe that the novel is so much alive that it actually grows” (“The Tunnel,” 120). Woolf believed that great authors always convey an unusual perspective; they shatter the relations that are usually deemed to exist between the various parts of the world which they depict and impose their own perspective on readers, making them see familiar things in a new light. In this respect, Woolf’s ideas on the nature of art resemble those of Viktor Shklovsky and other formalists, who stress that literature can enable 43 Diary, 14.5.1933, vol. IV (1983), 157. 44 See “The Patron and the Crocus,” The Common Reader I, 206; for Woolf’s insistence that the common reader has the desire and capacity to “create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole,“ see “The Common Reader,“ The Common Reader I, 1. 45 “Fishing,” Moment, 176. The metaphor of an “egg,“ which has to be fertilized or hatched in order to turn into a living being, lays even greater emphasis on the freedom and power of readers than the metaphor of the “crocus.” The “crocus” has to be cared for by its patron, the reader, whose actions can influence whether the plant will wither, bloom or be malformed. 46 “David Copperfield,” [1925] Moment, 67. See also: “In masterpieces - books, that is, where the vision is clear and order has been achieved - he inflicts his own perspective upon us so severely that as often as not we suffer agonies - […] our own order is upset” (“Robinson Crusoe,” Common Reader II, 53f.), and: “the whole is held in its place, and its variety and divagations ordered by the power which is among the most impressive of all - the shaping power, the architect’s power. It is the peculiarity of Chaucer, however, that though we feel at once this quickening, this enchantment, we cannot prove it by quotation” (“The Pastons and Chaucer,“ Common Reader I, 18f.). V ERA N ÜNNING 258 readers to break out of routines of perception, to see and appreciate reality in a new way. 47 Each fictional world is, according to Woolf’s normative aesthetics, governed by laws and principles consistent with the author’s single vision. Though readers enter different fictional worlds each time they begin reading a good novel, these worlds are ordered and coherent: we are living in a different world. [...] Yet different as these worlds are, each is consistent with itself. The maker of each is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective, and however great a strain they may put upon us they will never confuse us, as lesser writers so frequently do, by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book. 48 This insistence on coherence runs contrary to postmodernist conceptualisations of aesthetics. It does, however, acknowledge a great divergence between literary works. Moreover, Woolf’s aesthetics allows her to identify major catalysts of literary change and at the same time account for individual differences between the works of authors living in the same period. For Woolf, novels are harmonious wholes, each presenting a different fictional world: “a world where each part depends upon the other, the serene, impersonal, and indestructible world of art.” 49 In contrast to later conceptions of literature, Woolf insisted throughout the 1920s and 1930s that “[t]umult is vile; confusion is hateful; everything in a work of art should be mastered and ordered.” 50 Such an ordering requires a large amount of energy on the part of authors, especially if the vision that is expressed is a highly individualistic one, necessitating the modification or even breaking of old forms. If the writer’s belief is intense enough, however, it can result in the creation of a perfect world of art which stimulates readers to become cocreators. 51 47 See Viktor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique,” [1917] Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, ed. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis (Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1965), 12-13. 48 “How Should One Read a Book? ” 260. See also: “But [the stories] have this characteristic of greatness - they exist by themselves. [...] We can see in what respects his vision was different from other people’s,“ “A Glance at Turgenev,” [1921] Books and Portraits (London: Hogarth, 1977), 107. 49 “Congreve’s Comedies,” [1937] Moment, 30-38, 38. See also “a world where all is ordered, rational, and serene” (“Oliver Goldsmith” [1934], Captain’s Death Bed, 18). 50 “Narrow Bridge,“ 22. “When the last sentence is finished nothing vague or superfluous is left to blur the outline; the substance is all neatly packed into the form, rounded off, disposed of, completed,” Woolf writes in “The Three Black Pennys” [1918], Contemporary Writers, ed. Jean Guiguet (London: Hogarth, [1965] 1978), 105-107, 105. 51 “The great novelist feels, sees, believes with such intensity of conviction that he hurls his belief outside himself and it flies off and lives an independent life of its own,” “George Moore” [1925], Death of the Moth (London: Hogarth, 1947, 100-104), 101. See also “Women and Fiction,” Granite, 81. This energy impedes the facile use of stereotypical “Human Character Changed” 259 4 Woolf’s Practice of Literary History in the Light of Recent Conceptualisations of Literary Historiography Seen in the light of theories of literary history, both Woolf’s theory of literary change and her practice of writing literary history seem to be as consistent as they are interesting today. Woolf acknowledged the impact of two basic modes of explaining literary change, i.e. a contextualist and an immanent one, 52 The principles that govern Woolf’s practice of literary history correspond to some key beliefs of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, such as the rejection of master narratives, the widening of the scope beyond nationalist literatures, and the inclusion of female authors. Most of her essays shed light on literary history, but many resist an easy classification as historical, biographical, or literary. Numerous essays deal with mainly obscure historical persons and forgotten as well as famous authors; many discuss books ranging from letters and diaries published from the Middle Ages onwards to a variety of literary works since the time of Elizabeth I; a large number were first published as reviews of new works or collections of works; others address cornerstones of her own aesthetics, such as the significance of authors’ perspectives or the conceptualisation of fiction as a means of comarguing that literary works are related to the common beliefs of the time and to the existing literary tradition. In her essays, she often points to the influences of sociological and cultural change, mainly to prevailing beliefs about human nature and human relations. Interestingly, she only rarely refers to great political events in order to explain literary change. She once even drew attention to the fact that there is no mention of the Napoleonic wars in many writers of the period. Instead of politics, she emphasised the influence of beliefs and relations between human beings. The amelioration of class differences and social hierarchies, for instance, would change both human relations and images of men; it would also transform English novels. Her explanation of literary change is in itself encompassing, integrating, for instance, formalist ideas about the necessity of aesthetic changes in order to evoke similar emotions in readers that were raised by established conventions at earlier times. She also refers to other factors like authors’ desire to vary prevailing techniques, or even the wish to produce something as perfect as had been achieved by authors like Tolstoy, but not being able to excel in his use of realist conventions. In addition, Woolf reserved a prominent role to the individuality of authors and the power of their vision, which could take different stances towards common beliefs and literary works. patterns and thus fosters literary change. It leads to a harmonious integration of form and content, which in its turn makes it easier for readers to become entranced. 52 See David Perkins, Is Literary History Possible? (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992), 121- 174. V ERA N ÜNNING 260 munication. With the exception of some impressionistic essays on fleeting feelings and experiences (and even including some of those), all of these works illuminate Woolf’s conception of literature and literary change. In accordance with her many-faceted theory of literary change, Woolf shied away from writing master narratives. Instead, she wrote numerous essays, each of them exploring particular works, genres or periods in a subjective, yet thoughtful and rigorous manner. Even her long essay A Room of One’s Own (1929) does not consist of one narrative only. Instead, several chapters probe into different facets of the topic, using counterfactual speculation, facts and fiction in order to pursue her argument. 53 If there is a kind of master narrative - or rather stance - at all in this essay, it is that of the fictional persona of Woolf searching for knowledge about women’s lives and literary works. In the two volumes of her essays which she edited herself, she did not use any narrow principle of selection, let alone a single narrative structure. As the title indicates, anything that is important to ‘the common reader’ can be included. In her preface to The Common Reader I, she quotes Samuel Johnson on “‘the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, [without] the refinements of subtility and the dogmatism of learning.’” 54 Woolf adds that the common reader “differs from the critic and the scholar” in that he or she does not have their education and learning. 55 It does not come as a surprise, therefore, that Woolf consciously rejects authoritative and professional categories of writing literary history. According to her, “[t]he common reader is […] suspicious of fixed labels and settled hierarchies.” 56 Woolf’s attempt to go beyond fixed labels and do justice to individual works, however, does emphatically not imply that she was suspicious of 53 This essay grew out of a lecture with a set topic; Woolf did not start working on it with the intention of producing a small book. For Woolf’s method of using “counterfactual thinking,“ see Saloman, Woolf’s Essayism, 10. 54 “The Common Reader,“ 1. For Woolf’s conceptualisation of the non-academic ‘common reader’ and her rejection of “authoritarianism,“ see also Koutsantoni, Woolf’s Common Reader, 75-100; however, Koutsantoni relates this aversion to authoritarianism to a belief in authority and to collectivism as well as Woolf’s conception of perspective (ibid. 93, 97f., 79). On Woolf’s ideas about the common reader, see also Saloman, Woolf’s Essayism, 58-63. 55 “The Common Reader,“ 1. See also: “Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions - there [in libraries, when reading] we have none.” (“How Should One Read a Book? ” 258) For Woolf’s distrust of academic categories such as a ‘period,’ see also Elena Gualtieri, Virginia Woolf’s Essays - Sketching the Past (London: Macmillan Press, 2000), 46f. 56 “Phases of Fiction,” Granite, 94. On Woolf’s rejection of a didactic and authoritarian voice in her essays see also Saloman, Woolf’s Essayism, 55, and Koutsantoni (fn. 54). Koutsani also recognises that “Virginia Woolf’s objective is to construct a system in which the common reader is a common critic” (ibid. 63). “Human Character Changed” 261 interpreting, evaluating and judging literary works. Instead, she draws on several modes of explaining literary change and establishes her own categories, which allow her to evaluate a work according to the coherence of its elements, its perspective, the match between vision and style, the evocation of a reality that is deeper than the surface, and the modification of narrative techniques. 57 The variety of literary and cultural contexts that Woolf addresses might be regarded as a failure to identify one particular type of context in order to explain literary change. However, seen in light of recent insights that the selection of a relevant context is, in any literary history, always arbitrary and depends on the preferences of the historian, Woolf’s mode of proceeding seems to be justified from today’s perspective. After all, each work of history only describes a small part of a given context, and “most literary histories are eclectic with respect to the kinds of contexts and the modes of relationship they deploy as explanations.” She does not make these categories explicit, however, and uses narratives, metaphors and anecdotes illustrating her aesthetic principles as well as her criteria of judging literary prose. Rather than assuming the stance of a teacher, she encourages readers to arrive at their own conclusions, and provides examples of the ways in which this could be done in many of her own essays. She employs a pluralist approach, trying to be sensitive towards as many facets of literary works as possible. Her choice of the kinds of reasons that can explain literary change is just as diverse and wide as her choice of types of essay. 58 Woolf implicitly acknowledged this by flaunting her arbitrariness and by choosing different contexts, depending on the books, authors or themes she wanted to interpret and develop. She even went further and, as a rule, refrained from identifying significant similarities between works and grouping books together. Though she mentions some relations between books in passing and claims that books descend from books, she published only one longer essay on the development of fiction. Significantly, she introduces her essay “Phases of Fiction” as an “attempt to record the impressions made upon the mind by reading a certain number of novels in succession” - which, she hastens to add, is neither a chronological succession nor one that includes every great author. 59 57 See above; see also my Die Ästhetik Virginia Woolfs., Anne E. Fernald, “Pleasure and Belief in ‘Phases of Fiction,’“ Virginia Woolf and the Essay, ed. Beth Carole Rosenberg and Jeanne Dubino (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1997, 193-211), 197, stresses that in her essay “Phases of Fiction,” “Woolf relies upon an organizing principle of contrast rather than development.” In addition, she does not resort to accepted categories such as genres or periods. Instead, she creates loose groups, such as those encompassing ‘truth-tellers’ or ‘character- 58 Perkins, Is Literary History Possible, 133. For the problems of contextualisation, see Perkins, 126-128. 59 “Phases of Fiction,“ 93. V ERA N ÜNNING 262 mongers and comedians’ and ‘psychologists’ as well as ‘poets.’ Even within these groups she stresses the particularities of authors, stating, for instance, that Guy de Maupassant brings a reality “before us [which] is always one of the body, of the senses.” 60 5 Woolf’s Conceptualisation of Literary Change in the Light of Recent Trends in Narrative Theory and Psychological Research Her brief account of literary history again includes ‘lesser’ as well as ‘major’ authors, as well as French and Russian writers. Woolf’s practice of literary history was both manifold and open to different nationalities. Many of Woolf’s ideas on literature are still worthy of consideration today. In the following, I will concentrate on three aspects of Woolf’s conceptualisation of literary change, and briefly relate them to research in narrative theory and psychology: first, the bi-active model of the reading process; second, her focus on literature as a means of worldmaking; and, third, her ideas concerning author’s visions and the persuasive power of fiction. Woolf’s view of literature as a means of communication, which is at the basis of her conceptualisation of literary change, entails a focus on the reader and is based on an understanding of the reading process which fits the biactive reading model. This model, which is accepted in many linguistic and cognitive studies, 61 60 Ibid., 99. The discussion of the first group, the “truth-tellers,“ begins at page 94. presupposes an interplay between textual cues and the readers’ attribution of meaning, which shapes their understanding of the text. Bottom-up processes are stimulated by textual characteristics, while topdown processes involve the application of cognitive and generic schemata as well as the readers’ knowledge and earlier emotional experiences. Readers therefore have to know the pertinent schemata and be able to draw inferences in order to be able to make sense of the text. This bi-active model of reading implies that, in order to understand fictional works of earlier 61 Norman N. Holland, Literature and the Brain (Gainesville, FL: PsyArt Foundation, 2009), 175. For an overview of different models of the reading process, cf. 173-177. Reading is conceptualised as a response to texts which is initiated by the perception and interpretation of textual cues. For linguistics, see Margit Schreier, “Belief Change Through Fiction: How Fictional Narratives Affect Real Readers,” Grenzen der Literatur: Zum Begriff und Phänomen des Literarischen, eds. Simone Winko, Fotis Jannidis, and Gerhard Lauer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 317: “It is one of the most robust results in psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology that the meaning that a reader assigns to a text is a function both of textual and of reader characteristics.” Other studies on Woolf relate her belief in the importance of readers to varieties of reader-response criticism, including that of Wolfgang Iser. See, for instance, Koutsantoni, Woolf’s Common Reader, 58-59, 64-65, 69 et passim. “Human Character Changed” 263 periods or works which are governed by unusual perspectives, it is necessary to be in command of the knowledge that makes it possible to draw inferences. Only when readers are able and willing to use meaningful topdown processes and apply cognitive schemata, can they emotionally engage with a text. This necessity to know enough about periods and authors in order to appreciate literary works can explain why Woolf wrote so many essays illuminating cultural beliefs or key principles of the author’s perspective and tried to “pick up something humble and colloquial that will make these strange Elizabethans more familiar to us.” 62 Woolf’s belief in the importance of the reading process and the application of cognitive and generic schemata can also serve to illuminate why she laid such stress upon genre conventions. Knowledge of these conventions makes it easier for readers to become ‘co-creators’ and build their own model of the fictional world. In her essays on modernist fiction, Woolf explained the reasons for modernist changes of established conventions, thus trying to make it possible for readers to appreciate novels which did not fit their expectations concerning realist fiction. From the point of view of recent cognitive theories, Woolf’s assumption that literary genres and their formal characteristics are closely related to expectations of readers seems to capture key ideas about the functions of genres. According to contemporary scholars, knowledge about genre characteristics is shared by authors and readers and crystallised in scripts and frames, which are forms of storing past experiences. Again and again she attempted to inform readers about the cultural context and the preferences and beliefs of particular authors, thus providing readers with the knowledge necessary for understanding the texts. 63 Most importantly, it shapes our expectations concerning texts which we have not yet read: “For the reader, genres constitute sets of expectations which steer the reading process. […] As sets of norms of which both readers and writers are aware, genres fulfil an important role in the process of literary communication.” 64 Secondly, Woolf’s conviction that novels present fictional worlds which are governed by laws of their own corresponds to the conceptualisation of literature as a means of worldmaking. The philosopher Nelson Goodman In many of her essays, Woolf attempted to familiarise readers with the reasons for genre conventions which did not fit their expectations. 62 Woolf, “The Strange Elizabethans,” Common Reader II, 15. 63 David Herman, Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative (Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2002), 85, emphasises that “representations [of past experience] can assume either a static (frame-like) or a dynamic (script-like) form.” Scripts are stereotyped sequences of events, and therefore “help explain the difference between a mere sequence of actions or occurrences and a narratively organized sequence” (ibid.). 64 Elisabeth Wesseling, Writing History as a Prophet: Postmodernist Innovations of the Historical Novel (Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1991), 18. V ERA N ÜNNING 264 emphasised that worlds are never created ex nihilo; instead, the process of worldmaking always starts with the knowledge of one (or many) world(s), which are then rebuilt by cognitive processes such as deformation, deletion and substitution, and ordering. 65 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Woolf’s insistence on the single vision and her claim that a literary work should form a harmonious whole, with nothing left to disturb the order imposed upon it by the strength of the author’s vision, seem startlingly perceptive when compared to recent psychological research into the persuasive power of narratives. Her belief “in the immense persuasiveness of a mind which has completely mastered its perspective” Woolf was aware of the impact of older fictional worlds, and of diachronic relations between them, stressing the importance of traditions for the creation of new fictional worlds. In addition, she asked readers to accept deformation and substitution of generic conventions, and to be open to fictional worlds which do not bear many resemblances to either the real world or to that created in traditional fictional works. 66 fits empirical research which established that stories with a high degree of perceived realism are particularly persuasive. 67 This ‘perceived realism’ does not primarily refer to works which resemble the real world; instead, the term also corresponds to Woolf’s principle of internal consistency, of works which do not mix several kinds of reality or feature significant internal contradictions. 68 65 Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1978), particularly 3- 15. See also the articles in Vera and Ansgar Nünning and Birgit Neumann, eds., Cultural Ways of Worldmaking: Media and Narratives (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010). ‘Perceived realism’ evokes a high degree of ‘transportation’ or immersion in the fictional world - or, in Woolf’s terms, enchantment or rapture. Although this conceptualisation excludes postmodernist novels, metafiction, or particular kinds of utopian fiction, Woolf’s aesthetics is not only consistent in itself, but also able to explain a peculiar, if elusive, power of persuasion that particular fictional stories have. Reading fiction is an end in itself, as Woolf stressed, but it also has a significant impact on readers’ minds. The recognition of this persuasive power of literary works may be at the heart of Woolf’s attempts to induce readers to remain open- 66 “The Novels of E.M. Forster” [1927], Death of the Moth, 104-112, 107. 67 There is a broad range of research on this question. See especially Melanie C. Green, “Transportation into Narrative Worlds: The Role of Prior Knowledge and Perceived Realism,“ Discourse Processes 38.2 (2004). 68 See, for instance, Rick Busselle and Helena Bilandzic, “Fictionality and Perceived Realism in Experiencing Stories: A Model of Narrative Comprehension and Engagement,” Communication Theory 18.2 (2008): 255-280, the studies on aesthetic illusion by Werner Wolf, for instance “Aesthetic Illusion,“ Immersion and Distance: Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and Other Media, eds. Werner Wolf, Walter Bernhart and Andreas Mahler (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013), 1-66, and my Reading Fictions, Changing Minds: The Cognitive Value of Fiction (Heidelberg: Winter, 2014), chapter five. “Human Character Changed” 265 minded, to welcome literary change, and to insist that authors do not fob them off with lesser works, but produce the best writing that they possibly can. If reading fiction changes readers’ minds, one should choose the books one reads carefully, and subject them to sensitive, if rigorous, criticism. V ERA N ÜNNING 266 Works Cited Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford UP, 1973. Brosnan, Leila. Reading Virginia Woolf’s Essays and Journalism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1997. Busselle, Rick, and Helena Bilandzic. “Fictionality and Perceived Realism in Experiencing Stories: A Model of Narrative Comprehension and Engagement.” Communication Theory 18.2 (2008): 255-280. Day, Gary. “Changes in Critical Responses and Approaches.” The Modernism Handbook. Eds. Philip Tew and Andrew Murray. London: Continuum, 2009. 135-157. Duban, Adriana C. “The Mark on the Wall of Fiction: Virginia Woolf’s Ars Poetica.” Scientific Journal of Humanistic Studies 3.5 (2011): 99-102. Fernald, Anne E. “Pleasure and Belief in ‘Phases of Fiction.’” Virginia Woolf and the Essay. Eds. Beth Carole Rosenberg and Jeanne Dubino. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. 193-211. Goldman, Jane. “Virginia Woolf and Modernist Aesthetics.” Virginia Woolf and the Arts. Ed. Maggie Humm. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2010. 35-57. Goodman, Nelson. Ways of Worldmaking. Indiana, IN: Hackett, 1978. Green, Melanie C. “Transportation into Narrative Worlds: The Role of Prior Knowledge and Perceived Realism.” Discourse Processes 38.2 (2004): 247-266. Greene, Sally. “Entering Woolf’s Renaissance Imaginary: A Second Look at The Second Common Reader.” Virginia Woolf and the Essay. Eds. Beth Carole Rosenberg and Jeanne Dubino. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. 81-95. Gualtieri, Elena. Virginia Woolf’s Essays: Sketching the Past. London: Macmillan, 2000. Herman, David. Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Holland, Norman N. Literature and the Brain. Gainesville, FL: PsyArt Foundation, 2009. Humm, Maggie. “Virginia Woolf.” Feminist Criticism: Women as Contemporary Critics. Ed. Maggie Humm. Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1986. 123-154. Klein, Jürgen. “Virginia Woolfs Idee des neuen Romans.” Neue Rundschau 96.1 (1985): 143-152. Koutsantoni, Katerina. Virginia Woolf’s Common Reader. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Lee, Hermione. “Virginia Woolf’s Essays.” The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf. Eds. Sue Roe and Susan Sellers. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. 91-108. Mayer, Elsie F. “Literary Criticism with a Human Face: Virginia Woolf and The Common Reader.” Private Voices, Public Lives: Women Speak on the Literary Life. Ed. Nancy Owen Nelson. Denton, TX: U of North Texas P, 1995. 283-297. Nünning, Ansgar and Vera, and Birgit Neumann (eds.). Cultural Ways of Worldmaking: Media and Narratives. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010. Nünning, Vera. Die Ästhetik Virginia Woolfs: Eine Rekonstruktion ihrer philosophischen und ästhetischen Grundanschauungen auf der Basis ihrer nichtfiktionalen Schriften. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1990. Parsons, Deborah. Theorists of the Modernist Novel: James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. “Human Character Changed” 267 Peach, Linden. “Virginia Woolf and Realist Aesthetics.” The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts. Ed. Maggie Humm. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2010. 104-117. Perkins, David. Is Literary History Possible? Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992. Saloman, Randi. Virginia Woolf’s Essayism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012. Schreier, Margit. “Belief Change through Fiction: How Fictional Narratives Affect Real Readers.” Grenzen der Literatur: Zum Begriff und Phänomen des Literarischen. Eds. Simone Winko, Fotis Jannidis and Gerhard Lauer. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. 315- 337. Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique” [1917]. Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Eds. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1965. 3-24. Watson, Nicola. “Virginia Woolf, Orlando.” Aestheticism and Modernism. Eds. Richard D. Brown and Suman Gupta. London: Routledge, 2005. 277-323. Wesseling, Elisabeth. Writing History as a Prophet: Postmodernist Innovations of the Historical Novel. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1991. Wolf, Werner. “Aesthetic Illusion.” Immersion and Distance: Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and Other Media. Eds. Werner Wolf, Walter Bernhart and Andreas Mahler. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013. 1-66. Woolf, Virginia. “‘Anon’ and ‘The Reader’: Virginia Woolf’s Last Essays.” Ed. Brenda R. Silver. Twentieth Century Literature 25.3/ 4 (1979): 369-441. ---. A Room of One’s Own [1929] and Three Guineas. Ed. Hermione Lee. London: Hogarth, 1984. ---. Books and Portraits: Some Further Selections from Her Literary and Biographical Writings. Ed. Mary Lyon. London: Hogarth, 1977. ---. Contemporary Writers. Ed. Jean Guiguet. London: Hogarth, [1965] 1978. ---. Granite and Rainbow. Ed. Leonard Woolf. London: Hogarth, 1958. ---. The Captain’s Death Bed and Other Essays. Ed. Leonard Woolf. London: Hogarth, 1950. ---. The Common Reader I [1925]. London: Hogarth, 1984. ---. The Common Reader II [1932]. London: Hogarth, 1953. ---. The Death of the Moth. Ed. Leonard Woolf. London: Hogarth, 1942. ---. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Anne O. Bell. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982 [Vol. 3], 1983 [Vol. 4]. ---. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Eds. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann. London: Hogarth, 1978 [Vol. 4], 1979 [Vol. 5]. ---. The Moment. Ed. Leonard Woolf. London: Hogarth, 1947. Zemgulys, Andrea. Modernism and the Locations of Literary Heritage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. S NEŽANA V ULETIĆ Constructing Alternative Narratives, Triggering Cultural Change: Functions and Emplotment of Igbo Folklore in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964) 1. Chinua Achebe’s Novels as a Form of Ideological Resistance: an Introduction Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964) were written at a time marked by what Chinua Achebe defined as a “general atmosphere of optimism” 1 The fact that Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God were written and published at the time when the decolonisation sentiment in Nigeria was at its strongest accounts for the keen scholarly interest in the relationship between these two novels on the one hand and the cultural context in which they emerged on the other. Edward Said brought postcolonial literary production in close contact with its cultural context in “Resistance, Opposition and Representation,” where he states that an equally important form of decolonisation as physical resistance to the coloniser is ideological resistance, “when efforts are made to reconstitute a ‘shattered community,’ to save or restore the sense and fact of community against all the pressures of the colonial sysin Nigeria. It was the formal independence from British rule in 1960 which inspired that optimism, and Achebe’s novels were written and published in the midst of that euphoria. However, at that time Nigerians were facing not only the possibility or the very attainment of independence from colonial rule but also the need to free themselves from colonial representations of their histories, identities, and cultures as well as from the overwhelming colonial influence on their education. In such a context, Achebe was prompted to contribute to the initiative of ‘cultural repair,’ eventually producing highly significant postcolonial literary works whose influence and significance transgressed the borders of Nigeria. 1 Achebe qtd. in Bernth Lindfors, ed., Conversations with Chinua Achebe (Jackson, MI: UP of Mississippi, 1997), 115. S NEŽANA V ULETIĆ 270 tem.” 2 African people did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans; […] Their societies were not mindless but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and beauty […] They had poetry and above all, they had dignity. It is this dignity that many African people all but lost during the colonial period and it is this that they must now regain. The need to “restore the sense and fact of community” after the colonial disruption is echoed in Achebe’s essay “The Role of the Writer in a New Nation,” where he announces: 3 In light of Said’s and Achebe’s views pertaining to the dynamics between literary production and cultural context, Achebe’s novels can be defined as literary attempts at restoring the sense of ‘dignity’ to the Igbo 4 In Achebe’s understanding of the term, ‘dignity’ is intimately related to the colonised peoples’ sense of pride in their pre-colonial histories, cultures, and traditions as well as their sense of self-affirmation and agency. The colonial rule in Nigeria gravely disrupted both: it shattered the Igbo sense of pride in their histories, cultures, and traditions, and stripped the Igbo of the power of self-rule and self-representation. Accordingly, at the time of strong de-colonisation movement in and beyond literature, a restoration of the sense of ‘dignity’ meant a restoration of the indigenous peoples’ awareness of how rich and valuable their cultural legacy is. Such kind of a restoration of went hand in hand with the rise in the indigenous peoples’ political power in the nation-state in becoming as well as with the increase in their authority over how they are represented in fiction and nonfiction discourses. and as significant literary contributions to the ideological resistance against the colonial influence in Africa. While the connection between Achebe’s early fiction and the cultural context of the time has repeatedly been established, 5 2 Edward Said, “Resistance, Opposition and Representation,” The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft, Helen Tiffin and Gareth Griffiths (Oxford: Routledge, 1995), 95. there are at least two points which should still be thoroughly examined in that respect. Firstly, we ought to look closely at the specific literary strategies which Achebe employs in order to construct narratives which would have the power to restore ‘dignity’ to the Igbo. After establishing that Achebe extensively uses Igbo folklore as 3 Chinua Achebe, “The Role of the Writer in a New Nation,” African Writers on African Writing, ed. G.D. Killam (London: Heinemann, 1978), 8. 4 The Igbo are the third largest ethnic group in Nigeria, primarily inhabiting the southeastern part of the country. 5 See Simon Gikandi’s Reading Chinua Achebe: Language and Ideology in Fiction (Oxford: Heinemann: 1991); Kalu Ogbaa’s Understanding Things Fall Apart: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group 1999); and Abiola Irele’s The Cambridge Companion to the African Novel (New York: W.W. Norton & Co 2009). Constructing Alternative Narratives, Triggering Cultural Change 271 one of the most prominent literary strategies to show that African societies “were not mindless but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and beauty,” 6 we come to a second point in need of further elaboration. Namely, whereas the presence of Igbo folklore in Achebe’s early novels have been fairly well researched, 7 For that reason, this article seeks to elucidate on the use of Igbo folklore in the chosen novels and discuss how it helps the author shape narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions alternative to those constructed and promoted during the colonial rule. Such an approach to understanding the use of folklore in Achebe’s early fiction promises to also shed light on the process of literary emplotment of folklore into fictional narratives. In order to address these questions, I will draw on Bernth Lindfors’s insights about the dynamics between literary production and its context, Vera and Ansgar Nünning’s work on the functions of fiction, as well as Ashis Nandy’s, Karin Barber’s, and Carey Snyder’s work on various aspects of the use of ethnographic material (in fiction writing). the precise role of Igbo folklore in constructing alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions in these novels has not yet been fully explored. 2. Igbo Folklore, Literature, and Cultural Change: Theoretical Considerations Bernth Lindfors argues that “the new literatures in English and French that have emerged in black Africa in the twentieth century have been profoundly influenced by politics,” adding that “one could argue that they have been generated and shaped by the same forces that have transformed much of the African continent during the past hundred years.” 8 Significant as Lindfors’s claim is, it is equally important to specify how exactly early West African literature responds to its context(s). In order to understand this, I am going to consult Achebe’s intention when writing as well as his reasons for employing certain literary strategies in order to fulfil his intention. In “The Novelist as a Teacher,” Achebe overtly refers to the didactic nature of his writing: “I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially By implying that the forces of colonialism, among others, have affected literary production in Africa as much as its political and economic landscapes, Lindfors establishes an immediate link between literature and the context in which that literature was produced. 6 Chinua Achebe, 1978, 3. 7 See Bernth Lindfors, 2009; and Charles Nnolim, 1983. 8 Bernths Lindfors, “Politics, Culture, and Literary Form in Black Africa,” Colby Quarterly 15.4 (1979), 23. S NEŽANA V ULETIĆ 272 the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past - with all its imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.” 9 In order to do that, Achebe’s early novels are dedicated, first, to deconstructing colonial representations of indigenous Igbo people and, then, constructing alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions, while one of his most prominent literary strategies employed to achieve that goal is the extensive use of Igbo folklore. Being “a space for experimenting with alternative ways of worldmaking,” Achebe’s novels are “at work in negotiating values, constructing and deconstructing knowledge, and fabricating storied versions of ‘the world’.” 10 In other words, Achebe’s novels become laboratories where alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions are fashioned, which provide “a second handle on reality” and “a way out when it becomes necessary to do so.” 11 In light of understanding fiction as a space for examining, challenging, and manipulating realities and a powerful worldmaking tool, Achebe’s statement that “if someone is in search of information, or knowledge, or enlightenment about the total life of these people - the Igbo people - [his] novels would be a good source” 12 provides only a partial insight into the significance of his early novels. Even though Achebe integrates much of Igbo ethnographic material into his fiction, his role is indeed much more than that of an ethnographer. It is thanks to Achebe’s skill of (politically engaged) imagination rather than that of ethnographic writing that he is believed to have shifted the paradigm in thinking and writing about indigenous African identities. In other words, rather than examples of ethnographic writing, Achebe’s novels are in fact much more valuable as creative endeavours which result in a construction of alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions and whose ‘fictional knowledge’ - understood as knowledge gained through fiction - has the potential to shape not only the ways to remember colonialism but also the ways to understand the nature of the colonial condition in the post-colonial age. It is in light of such insights that we may agree with Lindfors that (postcolonial African) writers assume not only the role of chroniclers of contemporary political history, but also of advocates of social and cultural change. 13 9 Chinua Achebe, “The Novelist as a Teacher,” Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays (New York, NY: Anchor, 1988), 45. 10 Vera Nünning and Ansgar Nünning, “Introduction,” Cultural Ways of Worldmaking: Media and Narratives, eds. Vera Nünning, Ansgar Nünning and Birgit Neumann (Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter, 2010), 6-7. 11 Achebe qtd. in Lindfors, 1997, 168. 12 Ibid, 64. 13 Bernth Lindfors, 1979, 23. Constructing Alternative Narratives, Triggering Cultural Change 273 Having sketched the ways Achebe’s fiction could be understood as a space where alternative forms of knowledge and narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions are produced, it is worthwhile pondering the nature and value of Igbo folklore, which is ultimately made into a productive literary strategy in Achebe’s early writing. For example, as early as in 1858, colonial missionaries recognised the potential of Igbo folklore to capture and shape worldviews: “Send us as full account as possible of the people of the tribes and towns to the east (of Onisha): how far the Ibo language extends, what traditions they have, send us also specimens of their proverbs and folktales in their language.” 14 As the quote implies, indigenous Igbo folklore was used to gain knowledge about the Igbo, 15 the fact which testifies to Igbo proverbs, legends, and folktales being seen as artefacts capturing Igbo worldviews, lifestyles, and traditions. 16 Yet, apart from the potential of Igbo folklore to capture certain worldviews and lifestyles, missionaries also recognised the moral tone of indigenous Igbo proverbs, legends, myths, and folktales, consequently exploiting them for introducing new ideas and (re)shaping worldviews, both of which were at work in the process of spreading Christian messages across Igboland, for instance. 17 When speaking about folklore as employed in a fictional text, equally important as discussing its most immediate functions in the text is addressing the complexities of the process of emplotting that folklore into a literary genre. What the process of emplotment involves in this context are the processes of authorial interpretation, selection, and revision, all three of which considerably shape both the form which folklore assumes in a literary text and the role it plays in constructing fictional worlds. In specifying the dynamics between folklore as ethnographic material on the one hand and literary production on the other, Nandy’s, Barber’s, and Snyder’s views on different aspects of the use of ethnographic material (in fictional texts) are highly enlightening. Hence, it is exactly that meaningand world-making potential of Igbo folklore which makes it a suitable literary strategy in the novels which claim to be restoring the sense of ‘dignity’ to a people, as well as an important factor to analyse if we wish to shed some light on Achebe’s literary construction of alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions. Having conducted fieldwork about the transition from oral to written literature in Yorubaland (a region encompassing southwest Nigeria, Southern 14 Venn to John Christopher Taylor on January 23, 1858. Christian Missionary Society Archive, CA 3/ L1, Letter Book 1858-1882. http: / / www.ampltd.co.uk/ collections_az / CMS-4-06/ contents-of-reels.aspx 15 Helen Chukwuma, Igbo Oral Literature: Theory and Tradition (Ikot Ekpene: Belpot Nigeria Co., 1994), 7. 16 See Helen Chukwuma, 1994; Chukwuma Azuonye, 1999; Emmanuel E. Obiechina, 1975. 17 Chukwuma, 1994, 7. S NEŽANA V ULETIĆ 274 and Central Benin, and Central Togo), Barber concluded that “writing oral tradition enables cultural editing, while the writer who is ‘entextualising’ oral tradition is actually in the position to revise it.” 18 Revision includes moments of legitimising some pieces of tradition and excising the illegitimate. Also, writing down oral literature puts the writer in a relation of partial detachment from the traditions he or she inhabits, setting him or her above the tradition in the act of writing it down. 19 Nandy’s view that “each re-interpretation of tradition is a form of creating new traditions” The position of being both within oral tradition (by participating in it) and outside of it (by revising it while writing it down) accounts for the conscious manipulation of folklore which one witnesses in Achebe’s early novels. 20 echoes Barber’s findings while foregrounding the outcome of the process: the construction of the new material. Transferred to the field of fiction writing, Nandy’s assumption inevitably raises such questions as how ethnographic material is emplotted in different genres and what kind of a narrative of tradition it ultimately helps to (re-)construct. The necessary adjustments of ethnographic material to the novel genre as well as the authors’ intentions with their work shape a specific approach to that ethnographic material, which provides a basis for manipulating the narrative of tradition by manipulating its artefacts. It is precisely this creative touch given to the ethnographic material in the process of authorial interpretation and narrative emplotment which both undermines the folklore’s universality of meaning and discloses the malleability of the notion of tradition which that folklore captures. In other words, the flexibility of ethnographic material coupled with the creative process of writing fiction account for what Nandy has so neatly phrased as “a re-interpretation of tradition as a form of constructing new traditions,“ 21 Snyder’s sobering discussion against reading Achebe’s novels as purely ethnographic narratives is in line with Nandy’s and Barber’s arguments. Snyder states that Achebe’s own ambivalent attitude towards the indigenous traditions, his subject position as having experienced just one (or some) of the many forms of Igbo culture, and his political agenda behind the novel all influence the way he interprets and treats Igbo ethnographic material in his novels. Therefore, to “uncover the complexities in the narrative voice we need to read the novel not naïvely as providing a clear window onto an alien the process arguably at work in Achebe’s early novels, too. 18 Karin Barber, ed., Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2006), 19. 19 Ibid. 20 Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1983), xvii-xviii. 21 Ibid. Constructing Alternative Narratives, Triggering Cultural Change 275 culture, but meta-ethnographically, in a way that attends to the complexity inherent in any ethnographic situation.” 22 Departing from the theoretical insights outlined in this section, the following two sections explore the functions which Igbo folklore performs in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, what is involved in the process of literary emplotment of Igbo folklore into the two novels, as well as how alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions as constructed in Achebe’s novels may be thought of as triggers of cultural change. Taking into account Barber and Nandy’s findings, the complexity inherent in the ethnographic situation in Achebe’s early fiction is the additional layer of meaning that Igbo ethnographic material acquires in the process of being re-interpreted, selected, and emplotted into his novels. Authorial interpretation, selection, and revision processes render ethnographic material a layer of literariness other than that already inherent to it, thus transforming Achebe’s narratives into alternative narratives rather than mirror images of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions. 3. Functions of Igbo Folklore and the Construction of Alternative Narratives in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964) When analysing the functions of Igbo folklore in Achebe’s early fiction, one is reminded of Lindfors’ seminal essay “The Palm Oil with which Achebe’s Words are Eaten,” 23 in which he outlines major functions of Igbo proverbs in Achebe’s early novels. “Achebe’s proverbs,” states Lindfors, “can serve as keys to an understanding of his novels because he uses them […] to sound and reiterate themes, to sharpen characterisation, to clarify conflict, and to focus on the values of the society he is portraying.” 24 However, I wish to suggest a) that other forms of Igbo folklore, such as folktales and legends, 25 22 Carey Snyder, “The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Ethnographic Readings,” College Literature 35.2 (2008): 157. perform identical functions in Achebe’s fiction as those ascribed by Lindfors to proverbs, and b) that Lindfors’ list ought to be extended by those functions of Igbo folklore which speak most overtly to Achebe’s intentional construction of alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions - the 23 Bernth Lindfors, “The Palm Oil with which Achebe’s Words are Eaten,” Early Achebe, Bernth Lindfors (Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, 2009), 51-75. 24 Ibid, 56. 25 Although, as Jack Berry and Richard Spears note in West African Folktales, classification and definition of West African oral storytelling has posed problems from the outset of the study of verbal art (1991, ix), for the purposes of this article folktales are understood folktales as purely fictional narratives while legends as narratives based on some real historical personages or events. S NEŽANA V ULETIĆ 276 functions of folklore to capture and shape worldviews, respectively. (Re-) examining the above-mentioned functions of Igbo folklore is significant in so far as it ultimately sheds light on the nature and power of Achebe’s alternative narratives in his early novels. Firstly, while Lindfors shows that Igbo proverbs sound and reiterate themes, 26 Arrow of God also contains one such story which functions as a parable of Ezeulu’s most controversial decision to send one of his sons to learn Christianity, an act which eventually undermines both his reputation and his authority in the clan. Namely, in reference to a question why he sends his son to a Christian school, Ezeulu reminds his friend of a legend about their ancestors who “when pushed beyond the end of things by the warriors of Abam, sacrificed not a stranger but one of themselves.” I maintain that the same could be claimed for certain Igbo folktales and legends in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, respectively. For instance, an Igbo folktale about a bird and a tortoise, stretching across three pages in chapter eleven in Things Fall Apart, functions as a paradigm for the major topic in the novel - namely, Okonkwo’s rise and fall as a respected member of the Umuofia community. The folktale is strategically placed between chapter ten, where it is shown that Okonkwo has occupied the second highest position in his village, and chapter thirteen, which speaks of his exile from the village. The fact that the folktale itself thematizes a sudden rise and fall of its own protagonist implicitly announces Okonkwo’s own fate. 27 Secondly, Achebe employs Igbo proverbs to sharpen characterisation, In Ezeulu’s perception of his immediate world, his community is “pushed beyond the end of things” by the great force of the colonial disruption. In order not to get disoriented in the midst of the radical change, Ezeulu “sacrifices” one of his sons to the new religion which is perceived as an embodiment of the new cultural and political order. 28 the same of which could also be demonstrated for certain examples of Igbo folktales in Arrow of God and legends in Things Fall Apart. Taking our cue from Ker’s argument that the village of Umuaro in Achebe’s Arrow of God should be treated as a character in its own right, 29 the Igbo folktale which Achebe employs to describe the village of Umuaro indeed serves to sharpen its characterisation: “Umuaro had grown wise and strong in its own conceit and had become like the little bird, nza, who ate and drank and challenged his personal god to single combat.” 30 26 Ibid, 56. In Things Fall Apart, it is the character of 27 Chinua Achebe, The African Trilogy (New York, NY et al.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 420. 28 Lindfors, 2009, 56. 29 David I. Ker, The African novel and the modernist tradition (New York et al.: Peter Lang, 1997), 132. 30 Achebe, 2010, 333. Constructing Alternative Narratives, Triggering Cultural Change 277 Okonkwo which is often characterised through associations with Igbo legends. In fact, at the very onset of the novel, Okonkwo’s success in wrestling Amalinze the Cat, whose “back would never touch the earth,” leads to an agreement among the old men of the clan that Okonkwo’s wrestling match “was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights.” 31 Thirdly, while Lindfors finds that Igbo proverbs serve to clarify conflicts in Achebe’s early novels, Employing a legend to characterise Okonkwo simultaneously informs the readers about Okonkwo’s physical advantage over his clansmen and announces the place he himself would earn in the chronicles of his Igbo community at the end of the novel. 32 the same could be stated about Igbo folktales in Arrow of God and Things Fall Apart. For instance, one major aspect of the character of Ezeulu in Arrow of God is the conflict inherent to his role as the Chief Priest of Ulu. Ezeulu is often unsure about the scope of his personal power in comparison to that given to him by the god of Ulu, and that conflict is made explicit at the very opening of the novel. At first, Ezeulu admits that, whenever he thinks about “the immensity of his power over the year and the crops,” he realizes that “he [is] merely a watchman,” 33 an arrow in the hand of his god. Yet, Ezeulu’s uncertainty (and perhaps uneasiness, too) in the face of such a thought leads him to immediately add: “No! The Chief Priest of Ulu was more than that, must be more than that.” 34 It is that internal conflict that is additionally explained by means of an Igbo folktale about a child who has power over a goat which is said to be his: “As long as the goat was alive it could be his; he would find it food and take care of it. But the day it [is] slaughtered he would know soon enough who the real owner was.” 35 In Things Fall Apart, the character of Nwoye is made to epitomise the conflict between an indigenous Igbo religion and Christianity. Interestingly enough, even before that conflict is made central to the character of Nwoye, Achebe provides a hint at it very early in the novel, by explaining what kind of folktales Nwoye finds appealing. It is such folktales as the one about “the quarrel between Earth and Sky” which got into an argument because “Sky withheld rain for seven years; ” “at last the Vulture was sent to plead with the Sky, and to soften his heart with a song of the suffering of the sons of men.” Such a folktale indirectly clarifies Ezeulu’s internal conflict, making explicit that Ezeulu’s power is of a similar nature to the power of the child: Ezeulu is in charge of it in the name of his god, rather than truly owning it. 36 31 Ibid, 5. 32 Lindfors, 2009, 56. 33 Achebe, 2010, 293. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid, 40. S NEŽANA V ULETIĆ 278 Even this short section of the entire folktale already contains certain elements which would be made central to Nwoye’s choice of Christianity over an indigenous Igbo religion. Namely, as with the folktale, Nwoye would be attracted to Christianity because of the melody of its hymns and the narrative of human suffering, which speaks to Nwoye’s own grief over the tragic fate of his brother Ikemefuna. Finally, Igbo proverbs provide a “grammar of values” by which the deeds of Achebe’s characters can be measured. 37 Yet, it is also Igbo legends and folktales which perform an identical function in Arrow of God and Things Fall Apart, respectively. For example, in Arrow of God, Ezeulu tells a legend about a bird to his son Oduche: “I am like the bird Eneke-nti-oba. When his friends asked him why he was always on the wing he replied: ‘Men of today have learned to shoot without missing and so I have learned to fly without perching’.” 38 The folktale foregrounds the need for flexibility in the face of change, which is what the novel investigates from various angles through its diverse characters. In Things Fall Apart, it is Igbo folktales which predominantly serve to prescribe a code of conduct to the characters. For example, such folktales as those about a bird and a tortoise 39 as well as about Mother and Daughter Kite 40 Before we proceed to discussing how the above-listed functions of Igbo folklore shape Achebe’s alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions, it is pertinent to examine the functions of Igbo folklore to capture and shape worldviews. It is these two functions which most overtly demonstrate the power of folklore and its specific role in the construction of (fictional) worlds. condemn cheating and gluttony in the case of the former, and the lack of peaceful conversation in the case of the latter. It is the implicit messages about the respectable ways of behaving which such legends and folktales convey that not only shape the characters behaviour in the novels but also trigger the readers’ approval and disapproval of those characters who obey or fail to abide the communal rules of behaviour. The capacity of Igbo folklore to remember indigenous Igbo worldviews and lifestyles is reflected in its role as a record-keeping device and a mode of preserving knowledge and information. For instance, in Achebe’s novels, some Igbo legends behave as informal accounts of historical events. In Things Fall Apart, the narrator summarizes the rise of Umuofia to prominence by means of a legend about the power of Umuofia’s war-medicine, which was “as old as the clan itself.” 41 37 Lindfors, 2009, 56. While nobody knew how old the medicine was, 38 Achebe, 2010, 333. 39 Ibid, 67-70. 40 Ibid, 98-99. 41 Ibid, 10. Constructing Alternative Narratives, Triggering Cultural Change 279 “there was a general agreement - the active principle in that medicine had been an old woman with one leg,” whose shrine was “in the centre of Umuofia, in a cleared spot” and “if anyone was so foolhardy as to pass by the shrine after dusk he was sure to see the old woman hopping about.” 42 In Arrow of God, a character called Akukalia also resorts to telling a legend when he sets out to explain how the great Eke market came into being. Interestingly enough, an old woman plays a central role in Akukalia’s legend, too, appearing in the market place “with a broom in her right hand and [dancing] round vast open space beckoning with her broom in all directions of the earth and drawing folk from every land” 43 However, by integrating Igbo folklore in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, Achebe does much more than simply invoking Igbo worldviews and lifestyles: Igbo folklore is also employed to shape worldviews of Achebe’s characters and readers. In light of that, it is worth examining those Igbo folktales and legends which serve as a mode of informal education, by first addressing those which are directed at Achebe’s fictional characters and then those intended to trigger changes in the ways Achebe’s readers conceptualise African (pre-colonial) worlds. to come to the market. Such examples are testimonies to the power of Igbo folklore to narrate events from the communal past and - through remembering that past - to nourish, strengthen, and validate the sense of communal belonging and identity. In Things Fall Apart, the narrator points to a difference between male and female stories only to emphasize the importance of Okonkwo’s male stories “about tribal wars, or how, years ago, he had stalked his victim, overpowered him and obtained his first human head” 44 in his son Nwoye’s maturing into “a great farmer and a great man.” 45 Another example is a folktale about Mother Kite and her daughter who eventually learns that “there is something ominous behind the silence,” 46 42 Ibid. told in reference to a clan of Abame which was wiped out by the coloniser after some members of a clan killed one a white man before any form of communication was established between them. In Arrow of God, Ezeulu tells his community a legend about a “great wrestler whose back had never known the ground,” who then decided to “wrestle in the land of the spirits, and became a champion there as well,” and after he beat every spirit that came forward, the wrestler “gave a challenge to the spirits to bring out their best and strongest wrestler […] So they sent him his personal god, a little wiry spirit who seized him with one hand and 43 Ibid, 308. 44 Ibid, 40. 45 Ibid, 25. 46 Ibid, 99. S NEŽANA V ULETIĆ 280 smashed him on the stony earth.” 47 While Achebe employs folktales as a means of educating his characters, it is Igbo proverbs - in particular those which speak about change - that assume a similar role in shaping readers’ worldviews. For instance, when in Things Fall Apart Achebe writes that “the clan was like a lizard, if it lost its tail it soon grew another,” Ezeulu tells this legend in order to remind his clansmen that one ought to obey the rights assigned to them within certain roles in a clan, thus alluding to a clansman who transgressed the rights within his position as a messenger and ultimately got killed in a neighbouring village. 48 he in fact emphasizes the inevitable processes of regeneration and construction which follow a destructive (or disruptive) event. In Arrow of God we find yet another proverb which equally masterfully shapes the readers’ understanding of change: “The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well you do not stand in one place.” 49 What all of the above-discussed usages of Igbo folklore ultimately do is shape Achebe’s narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions. The vast variety of Igbo folklore that Achebe weaves into his novels presents Igbo culture as incredibly rich. Furthermore, the fact that Achebe uses Igbo folklore to add touches of local colour to his fictional worlds portrays his Igbo culture and traditions as highly localised and specific in their nature and form. Also, the author’s playing with the communal wisdom inherent to Igbo folklore in order to sharpen characterisation renders the Igbo culture in his novels with a peculiar kind of shrewdness and philosophical profundity, whereas the employment of Igbo folklore to establish a set of values in Achebe’s Igbo communities portrays Igbo philosophies of life and conduct as utterly developed. Not any less important is Achebe’s use of Igbo folklore as historical accounts, which allows him to depict Igbo histories as long and complex. Finally, the integration of Igbo folklore as a source of education In this case, Achebe underlines the notions of flexibility and adaptability to change. By means of such proverbs, Achebe does much more than merely share indigenous Igbo wisdom with his readers. Instead, he suggests ways to rationalise and cope with change and difference, both that occurring within and beyond the novels in question. Achebe’s obvious insistence on the process of regeneration after destruction/ disruption and his emphasis on flexibility in the face of perpetual change in African communities bear the potential to change the (Western) readers’ ways of understanding Igbo/ African colonial histories as well as their pre-colonial cultures and traditions from thinking about them as static and simple to thinking about them as equally resilient, malleable, complex, and rich as the Western ones. 47 Ibid, 315. 48 Ibid, 121. 49 Ibid, 365. Constructing Alternative Narratives, Triggering Cultural Change 281 presents Igbo systems of education in Achebe’s novels as very influential, creative, and elaborate. Such a portrayal of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions provides an alternative narrative of indigenous African worlds to those available in colonial(ist) literature, challenging its representations of Africa as a ‘blank slate,’ of African cultures and traditions as simple-minded and illogical, and of indigenous Africans as ‘half-Devils, half-children.’ 50 4. The Process of Emplotting Igbo Folklore and Alternative Narratives in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God While countering and debunking colonial(ist) portrayals of African worlds, Achebe’s alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions simultaneously offer a more dignifying representation of African pasts, give agency to African actors at the time of colonialism, and provide tools which arguably have the power to restore the sense of ‘dignity’ to the Igbo (and by implication, to other colonised peoples across Africa) after devastating colonial experiences. Although the nature of Achebe’s early writing might at first appear to be an uncomplicated matter which does not deserve much reflection per se, Snyder’s plea to readers and literary scholars to take into serious consideration the “complexities of any ethnographic situation” 51 Firstly, Achebe’s critical stance towards Igbo culture is traceable both in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. When in Things Fall Apart a character named Obierika questions the Igbo custom of throwing away twins by askforegrounds several issues which inform Achebe’s treatment of Igbo folklore and, by further implication, considerably shape Achebe’s narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions. In Snyder’s view, Achebe’s own ambivalent attitude towards indigenous traditions, his subject position as being familiar with just some of the many forms of Igbo culture, and his political agenda behind the novel should be taken into serious consideration when trying to understand the nature of Achebe’s early writing. Since, as demonstrated so far, Achebe’s emplotment of Igbo folklore as ethnographic material is tightly related to his construction of alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions, I now proceed to show how the three factors which Snyder delineates as significant in the process of Achebe’s early writing inform Achebe’s treatment of Igbo folklore and shape his alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. 50 Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” http: / / historymatters.gmu.edu/ d/ 5478/ . 51 Snyder, 2008, 157. S NEŽANA V ULETIĆ 282 ing what crime they had committed to deserve it, 52 a critical examination of the Igbo custom is inevitably triggered. Yet, figuring as a just, obedient, and honourable member of the Umuofia community, Obierika immediately explains that “the Earth had decreed that [the twins] were an offence on the land and must be destroyed” and that “if the clan did not exact punishment for an offence against the great goddess, her wrath was loosed on all the land and not just on the offender.” 53 In Arrow of God, Achebe’s critical examination of Igbo culture is traceable in the recurrent comments by his character-focalisers about a diachronic change in culture. For instance, several times throughout the novel, Ezeulu criticises a radical change in understanding and performing Igbo culture in temporal terms, by employing such phrases as “if the world had been what it was” By means of foregrounding the laws which underlie the custom in question through a character of high moral standing and reputation in the clan, Achebe seems to subtly discourage his readers from simple-minded accusation and moral judgement of the Igbo custom. Instead, the questioning of Igbo custom as present in Things Fall Apart is valuable for it highlights the overall intention of Achebe’s early novels: to show the (pre-colonial) African worlds in all their complexity by revealing, for instance, that they consist of both unquestionably positive and admirable aspects as much as of those which raise concern. And perhaps more importantly, questioning indigenous custom in Achebe’s fiction testifies to the presence of highly valuable forces of interrogation coming from within the custom itself, which more often than not account for gradual modifications or an ultimate abandonment of a given custom. 54 and stating that an unfinished homestead upon a new wife’s arrival “does not trouble the present age.” 55 Another character, Akukalia, negatively evokes changes across generations in the way they perform Igbo culture, when he says that “things like this would have never happened when I was a young man, to say nothing of the days of my father.” 56 What Achebe’s investigatory stance towards Igbo culture implies is an equally critical treatment of Igbo folklore as an integral element of that culture. Such critical treatment of Igbo folklore means specific processes of authorial interpretation, selection, and revision being at work. As Barber ex- Rather than arguments in favour of equating the author’s opinion with that of his characterfocalisers, the examples discussed are significant because they demonstrate the author’s awareness of the dynamics of change in Igbo culture and his intention to address it in various ways and from various angles in his fiction. 52 Achebe, 2010, 87. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid, 341. 55 Ibid, 302. 56 Ibid, 309. Constructing Alternative Narratives, Triggering Cultural Change 283 plains, what enables the processes of conscious selection and revision of Igbo folklore is “a relation of partial detachment” of the author from the traditions he or she inhabits. 57 Indeed, Achebe himself acknowledges the state of inbetweenness when he says that “[he] was brought up in a village where the old ways were still active and alive, so [he] could see the remains of [Igbo] tradition actually operating.” 58 He adds: “At the same time I brought a certain amount of detachment to it too, because my father was a Christian missionary, and we were not fully part of ‘heathen’ life of the village. It was divided into the people of the Church and the people of the ‘world’. I think it was easier for me to observe.” 59 Secondly, although detailed descriptions of the many aspects of Igbo culture, such as religion, philosophy, education, ceremonies, and the ways market functions, project an image of Igbo culture in its totality, Achebe does not fail to allude to a vast variety of forms in which Igbo culture offers itself to those investigating it. While it has already been demonstrated how, in Arrow of God, the notion of difference is portrayed in relation to a temporal dimension, in Things Fall Apart the notion of cultural difference is related to a spatial dimension by placing difference across geographical space in focus. For instance, on several occasions in Things Fall Apart, Achebe’s characters discuss cultural difference among Igbo tribes, mentioning those where, unlike in Achebe’s Igbo community, “it is an abomination for a man to die during the Week of Peace,” In reality, instead of assuming a position of an ethnographer who is simply “observing,“ that is, recording and quoting Igbo folklore in his narratives, a conscious selection and revision of Igbo folklore turns Achebe into an active (and creative) participant in (re)constructing the notions of Igbo history, culture, and tradition in part shaped by that very folklore. Achebe’s simultaneous involvement and detachment from indigenous Igbo traditions indeed lends him the power to manipulate that ethnographic material and - in Nandy’s sense of the phrase ‘re-interpreting tradition’ - use it as building blocks to construct alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions in his fiction. It is that fact which undoubtedly discourages one from treating Achebe’s narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions as faithful portrayals of the Igbo world but as its artistic and speculative (re)constructions. 60 “a man of title is not forbidden to climb the palm tree,” 61 and where people “haggle and bargain” for a bride. 62 57 Barber, 2006, 19. Ultimately, a character 58 Achebe qtd. in Lindfors, 1997, 18. 59 Ibid. 60 Achebe, 2010, 145. 61 Ibid, 5. 62 Ibid, 53. S NEŽANA V ULETIĆ 284 named Uchendu concludes that “the world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.” 63 The ways in which the issue of cultural difference is portrayed in Arrow of God and Things Fall Apart, thus, help to revise the view that Achebe’s Igbo world is a world depicted in its totality, both in a spatial and a temporal sense. Achebe’s exposure to a limited set of forms which Igbo culture has assumed across time and space arguably causes an equally limited exposure to the many forms of Igbo folklore. By means of implication, Achebe’s alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions - largely shaped by the limited exposure to and the careful selection of items from that folklore - arguably exist as forever incomplete literary representations of an Igbo world, rather than reliable and complete ethnographic accounts of the Igbo world in its totality. Finally, Achebe’s political agenda shapes his alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions in at least two ways. On the one hand, the author’s intention to restore ‘dignity’ to the Igbo leads to long and detailed descriptions of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions, as well as to an elaborate psychological composition of his protagonists in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. Therefore, while as much as one third of Things Fall Apart is dedicated to unusually exhaustive descriptions of Igbo historical and cultural setting, a substantial portion of Arrow of God is informed by Ezeulu’s peculiar interior world. Such extensive and informative descriptions of Igbo internal and external worlds have a clear political goal: They serve as an antithesis to reluctant, over-simplified, and/ or reductive colonial representations of indigenous African worlds as those depicted in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) or Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson (1939). On the other hand, Achebe’s descriptions of Igbo exterior and interior worlds contain an abundance of Igbo proverbs, legends, myths, and folktales, whose function, as already mentioned, is both aesthetic - dedicated to developing the sense of the Igbo art of conversation - and utilitarian - in that they are selected in such a way so as to fulfil the author’s intention to restore ‘dignity’ to the Igbo. Let us now consider an example of an overtly utilitarian function of the Igbo proverbs which speak about ‘difference’ being accepted as ‘a fact of life’ in both Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. Namely, in Things Fall Apart, Obierika’s eldest brother says that “what is good in one place is bad in another place,” 64 while Ezeulu from Arrow of God teaches his children that “there must be good people and bad people, honest workers and thieves, peacemakers and destroyers […] In such a place, whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.” 65 63 Ibid, 99. Such proverbs tell the 64 Ibid, 53. 65 Ibid, 365. Constructing Alternative Narratives, Triggering Cultural Change 285 story of Igbo cultures and traditions as being welcoming to difference, thereby standing in opposition to the colonial narratives which tended to homogenise religious and linguistic diversity as well as economic and political systems among the indigenous peoples in Nigeria/ Igboland. Hence, it is by means of such a careful choice of Igbo folklore and a serious consideration of the narratives they trigger that Achebe’s stories of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions gradually grow into those that revise colonial(ist) narratives of indigenous Igbo peoples, history, and cultures, and have the potential to restore the sense of ‘dignity’ to the (formerly) colonised peoples. By means of a brief discussion of the three factors shaping Achebe’s early writing, I hope to have demonstrated why Achebe’s alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions cannot be read as ethnographic accounts of the Igbo world in its totality, but as incomplete and speculative fictional narratives. Or, if they were to be read as windows into the Igbo world, it can only be done so bearing in mind the distorted glass in the window pane, whereby the distortion is caused by a creative manipulation of Igbo folklore, an inherent literariness of a fictional text, and an explicit politicised intention on the part of the author. 5. Concluding Remarks Achebe’s reputation as one of the most influential early postcolonial African writers 66 The use of Igbo folklore, the stories it tells, and those it helps shape are of central importance to Achebe’s construction of alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions. I hope to have demonstrated that precisely because of, rather than in spite of, the factors such as authorial interpretation, selection, and revision of Igbo folklore involved in the process of its emplotment into a fictional work, Achebe’s narratives contain the potential to ‘alter’ reality. By investigating and challenging Igbo reality through its artefacts, Achebe ultimately constructs narratives which not only reflect but also comment in most creative ways on the political and cultural contexts which inform them. is, in part, accounted for by the power of his fiction. In this article, I argued that this power resides in Achebe’s alternative narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions as constructed in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. The complexity of Achebe’s narratives of Igbo history, cultures, and traditions, their telling depictions of colonial and indigenous influences intertwining and layering, as well as their bold unveiling of the various forms of colo- 66 See Catherine Lynette Innes, 1990; Bernth Lindfors, 1997; Carole Davies, 2008; and Terry Ochiagha, 2015. S NEŽANA V ULETIĆ 286 nial violence severely challenge the reductive and utterly misleading colonial narratives about the colonial contact and the colonised Other. As such, Achebe’s narratives promise an escape from repressive colonial discourses and narratives, teach and/ or remind the (formerly) colonised peoples of the grandeur of their pre-colonial history, and inspire new ways of remembering the past, thinking about the present, and envisioning the future. It is through such a potential that Achebe’s fiction can restore the sense of ‘dignity’ to the (formerly) colonised peoples and figure as a powerful literary tool in the ideological resistance to the effects of colonisation. Constructing Alternative Narratives, Triggering Cultural Change 287 Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. The African Trilogy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. ---. “The Novelist as a Teacher.” Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. New York: Anchor, 1988. 40-46. ---. “The Role of the Writer in a New Nation.” African Writers on African Writing. Ed. G.D. Killam. London: Heinemann, 1978. 7-13. 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Things Fall Apart: Authoritative Text, Contexts and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2009. Ker, I. David. The African Novel and the Modernist Tradition. New York et al.: Peter Lang, 1997. Kipling, Rudyard. “The White Man’s Burden.” historymatters. Web. 3 April. 2016. http: / / historymatters.gmu.edu/ d/ 5478/ . Lindfors, Bernth, ed. Conversations with Chinua Achebe. Jackson, MI: UP of Mississippi, 1997. ---. “The Palm Oil with which Achebe’s Words are Eaten.” Early Achebe. Trenton, NJ/ Asmara, Eritrea: African World Press, 2009. 51-75. ---. “Politics, Culture, and Literary Form in Black Africa.” Colby Quarterly, 15.4 (1979): 240-251. Nandy, Ashis. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1983. Nnolim, E. Charles. “The Form and Function of the Folk Tradition in Achebe’s Novels.” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 14.1 (1983): 35-47. Nünning, Ansgar, and Vera Nünning. “Introduction.” Cultural Ways of Worldmaking. 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F RANK Migrant Literature and/ as Cultural Change: The Case of “London Is the Place for Me” Arrivals: The Empire Windrush and the Making of Postcolonial London On June 24th, 1948, British Pathé issued a newsreel consisting of two starkly contrasting arrival scenes. 1 The first is set at Heathrow airport and features actress Ingrid Bergman and director Alfred Hitchcock on the way to shooting their third and last film together. Greeted by a throng of journalists, the two celebrities stop for a short interview at the foot of the gangway, with “Hitch” taking on the role of reporter and bantering with Bergman about “the diet in England” and its effects on body weight. 2 Although the Windrush was not the first ship to carry larger numbers of West Indians to Britain, The sequence ends with a close-up of Bergman’s smiling face. From here, the newsreel cuts abruptly to a long shot of the MS Empire Windrush docking at Tilbury near London. On board the former troopship are 492 male passengers from the West Indies who have come to Britain to rejoin the Royal Air Force or to find other kinds of work. The arrival scene that follows lacks the glamour of the previous one, and its protagonists are far less confident in front of the camera than movie star Ingrid Bergman, yet it is this second scene that would leave a lasting imprint on historical memory. 3 1 British Pathé, “Pathé Reporter Meets —,” June 24, 1948, accessed September 9, 2016, http: / / www.britishpathe.com/ video/ pathe-reporter-meets. The newsreel can also be watched on British Pathé’s YouTube channel: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=QDH4IBeZF-M. and although the influx of Caribbean migrants would increase vastly in the subsequent two decades, the much-publicized arrival of the Windrush in June 1948 is generally considered a watershed moment in the post-war history of the British nation. The Windrush has given its name to a whole generation of migrants, and its docking in Tilbury now serves as a shorthand for both the beginning of “mass migration” from the colonies to Britain and for the cultural transformation of British society that this demographic process entailed. In their 1998 book Windrush, a compila- 2 Ibid. 3 See Ian R.G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 51-52. M ICHAEL C. F RANK 290 tion of oral memories that accompanied the BBC television documentary series of the same title, Mike and Trevor Phillips celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush by stating that: By the time the Windrush arrived there were already black communities [in Britain] who could trace their ancestry back a couple of centuries. But on 22 June 1948 the Windrush sailed through a gateway in history, on the other side of which was the end of Empire and a wholesale reassessment of what it meant to be British. 4 As the subtitle of their book indicates - The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain - Mike and Trevor Phillips tell an optimistic story. It is a story of change against all odds, in the course of which people and customs with roots in former colonies have become integral parts of a reconstituted, postcolonial British society, a society in which compounds like “Caribbean British” or “Black British” are no longer considered oxymoronic. The Empire Windrush, Mike and Trevor Phillips suggest, is an apt symbol to mark the beginning of this gradual and ultimately unstoppable process of ethnic and cultural pluralization. The Pathé newsreel of June 24th, 1948, frames the arrival of the Windrush in a markedly different fashion. Reassuring the audience about the “good intent” of the West Indians on board, the announcer explains that many of the passengers are “ex-servicemen who know England.” 5 By adding that they “served this country well,” 6 the voice-over implies that the migrants have proved their commitment to England during World War II and that they therefore deserve a favour in return. This is their “mother country,” after all, and as such, it has a quasi-parental responsibility for its colonial subjects, who are explicitly identified as “citizens of the British Empire.” 7 In this way, the newsreel presents the arrival of the Windrush not as a moment of rupture (or the beginning of something new), but simply as the next chapter in the ongoing history of cooperation and exchange between imperial centre and periphery. The passengers are still standing on deck when a reporter sporting a mackintosh boards the ship. His style of interrogation can only be characterized as patronizing and invasive: “I’d like to ask you, please, are you a single man? ” 8 4 Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (London: HarperCollins, 1998), 6. Underlying such questions is the concern that some of the West Indians might wish to settle permanently in Britain. What the reporter is really asking is: Will your wife join you, and are you planning to stay here for good? The man’s answer - yes, he is unmarried and only his mother is dependent on him - is supposed to illustrate the voice-over’s preceding claim 5 British Pathé, “Pathé Reporter Meets —.” 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. Migrant Literature and/ as Cultural Change 291 that many of the Jamaicans plan to return to their economically ailing home country as soon as “conditions improve” there 9 The announcer goes on to identify another passenger as the “spokesman” of the West Indians - an absurd notion which implies that the randomly assorted group of travellers formed a coherent and organized community speaking with one voice. “I am told that you are really the king of Calypso singers. Is that right? ” (the possibility that the interviewed Jamaican might fall in love in Britain, perhaps with a white person, is apparently not considered). 10 Visibly taken by surprise at this opening question, the man duly replies: “Yes, that is true,” 11 a confirmation that is more polite than immodest. Born Robert Aldwyn in Arima, he was indeed a popular performer in both his native Trinidad and in Jamaica; after landing a first hit in the early 1940s, he had changed his sobriquet from Champion of Arima (where he had won four calypso contests) to the more grandiose Lord Kitchener. 12 In the Pathé newsreel, the reporter continues his brash interviewing by asking him to sing one of his tunes. “Right now? ” Lord Kitchener asks before delivering an impromptu a cappella rendition of a brand-new composition of his, imitating the instrumental passages with his voice. 13 What the newsreel does not mention is that at the moment of performance, Lord Kitchener had never set foot on British soil - a fact that clearly distinguishes him from the ebullient speaker of the song: The song’s chorus - “London is the place for me” - forms the conclusion of the Pathé newsreel, thus giving Kitchener’s calypso the last word. London is the place for me, London this lovely city You can go to France or America, India, Asia or Australia But you must come back to London city Well believe me, I am speaking broad-mindedly I am glad to know my mother country I’ve been travelling to countries years ago But this is the place I wanted to know Darling, London, that’s the place for me 14 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Philip Carter, “Roberts, Aldwyn (1922-2000),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed., September 2012, accessed September 9, 2016, http: / / www.oxforddnb.com/ view/ article/ 73811. 13 British Pathé, “Pathé Reporter Meets —.” 14 Ibid. (my transcription). M ICHAEL C. F RANK 292 Even upon first viewing the newsreel, we intuitively feel that contrary to what the voice-over would have us believe, Lord Kitchener’s song does more than express “his thanks to Britain.” 15 While it is certainly right to state that the calypso evokes a general mood of joy and hopefulness, it would be crudely reductive to read it merely as a sign of gratitude. In her contextual discussion of “London Is the Place for Me,” historian Kennetta Hammond Perry argues that the song undercuts the newsreel’s narrative about “crowds of West Indian men looking to Britain with gratitude in search of acceptance.” 16 Perry stresses the importance of the song’s musical genre, the calypso, which traditionally serves as a “medium of political expression.” 17 Accordingly, she suggests that the song makes both a cultural and a political point: it employs a Trinidadian form of creative expression (which is being showcased as a part of the “cultural baggage” that the Caribbean migrants have brought with them to Britain) in order to publicly express a “sense of belonging.” 18 For Perry, Lord Kitchener’s statement “that London was a place where he belonged,” “a place […] to which he could lay claim” is the core message of the song. 19 Upon closer examination, “London Is the Place for Me” turns out to be more complicated and ambiguous than its simple melody and catchy chorus seem to suggest. What is striking, first of all, is that the song chooses not to reflect Kitchener’s own perspective as a newcomer to London. Rather than articulating the excitement of first arrival, it celebrates the desire for return, thus giving its hyperbolic identification with London an “exclusively imaginary” character, as Bill Schwarz rightly points out. She does not look beyond the song’s refrain, however. 20 Concurrently, and perhaps even more significantly, the song describes London not as a “white, white city” (as the Jamaican poet Una Marson had done in the 1930s 21 15 Ibid. ), but as 16 Kennetta Hammond Perry, London Is the Place for Me: Black Britons, Citizenship, and the Politics of Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 3. 17 Ibid., 4. 18 Ibid., 2, 3. Perry writes: “At the very moment when Lord Kitchener confidently sang the refrain ‘London is the place for me’ in a locally recognized standard English that suggests that he was very aware of his audience, not only did he express a sense of belonging for himself and his fellow passengers within the physical confines of the British Isles, but he also performed within the conventions of calypso, a musical genre born and bred in the crucible of Trinidad’s inter-imperial histories of colonization, enslavement, occupation, and migration” (ibid., 3). 19 Ibid., 2, 8. 20 Bill Schwarz, “Unspeakable Histories: Diasporic Lives in Old England,” Philosophies of Race and Ethnicity, eds. Peter Osborne and Stella Sandford (London and New York: Continuum, 2002), 92. 21 Una Marson, “Little Brown Girl,” The Moth and the Star (Kingston, Jamaica: Published by the author, 1937), 11. The poem has since been reprinted in Una Marson, Selected Poems, ed. Alison Donnell (Leeds: Peepal Tree, 2011), 92-95, here 92. Migrant Literature and/ as Cultural Change 293 a post-Windrush London before the fact. This London is the home - rather than the destination - of the West Indian speaker, and it is marked by both his presence and his activities. As the song’s subsequent verses make clear, he has made room for himself in London by means of his everyday practices (on which more later). In this essay, “London Is the Place for Me” will serve as an exemplary case study for an investigation into how migrant literature (in this case, a song lyric) relates to cultural change. My hypothesis is that London texts by authors from British colonies or former colonies allow us to approach the cultural consequences of immigration not as an accomplished fact (as the BBC documentary celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush does), but as an ongoing process. They give us a glimpse of cultural change in the making, of the making of what we may term “postcolonial London.” I borrow this term from John McLeod’s eponymous monograph, which presents itself as “a book about change.” 22 McLeod begins his study by reminding us how the dismantling of the Empire and the continuing legacies of imperialism have left their mark on the space of London, most notably in the form of immigration from Britain’s former colonies. As a literary scholar, McLeod is not directly concerned with material transformations of the city, however. Rather, he investigates the London fictions of immigrants or their descendants, arguing that their “novel and divergent ways of regarding and representing [the city]” are themselves manifestations and motors of change. 23 McLeod contends that the “creative endeavours” and “cultural energies” that have gone into postcolonial London writings provide resources helping to “reimagine London, nurturing new ways of regarding and living in the city.” 24 Underpinning this approach is the understanding that cities like London are not simply “out there,” where we have direct and unmediated access to them, but that our perception and experience of cities is always mediated by our images (or imaginations) of them, which are themselves based on previous representations. On that premise, James Donald suggests in his book Imagining the City that the dominant conception of a city can impact the material space of that city, since “ways of seeing and understanding the city inevitably inform ways of acting on the space of the city, with consequences which then in turn produce a modified city which is again seen, understood and acted on.” 25 22 John McLeod, Postcolonial London: Rewriting the Metropolis (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 4. 23 Ibid., 7. 24 Ibid., 4, 7. 25 James Donald, Imagining the Modern City (London: The Athlone Press, 1999), 27. See also McLeod, Postcolonial London, 8. M ICHAEL C. F RANK 294 In what follows, I want to take a closer look at the “novel and divergent ways of regarding [London]” mentioned by McLeod, employing a slightly different theoretical emphasis. “If ‘postcolonial’ is a useful word,” Peter Hulme wrote in 1995, “then it refers to a process of disengagement from the whole colonial syndrome.” 26 Hulme italicized the word “process” in order to emphasize that the “postcolonial” has not been fully achieved. In a similar vein, John Clement Ball says about postcolonial London: “If [...] London is becoming postcolonial, the emphasis must remain, as in all uses of that much-debated theoretical term, on becoming: on a process that is always underway and never complete.” 27 Migrant literature about London, I want to argue, takes part in this ongoing process. Rather than passively reflecting social conditions, it actively engages in the transformation of culture. At the level of plot, it does so by using its fictional characters and situations to create (and experiment with) forms of cultural change in London; and at the level of form, it does so by performing cultural change by means of language, imagery, narrative strategies. To illustrate this point, I will return to Lord Kitchener’s calypso song, which will serve as a paradigmatic example. My reading of this text will draw on Michel de Certeau’s understanding of “practice” (particularly the practice of “using” cities) as a form of creative “appropriation.” Contrary to most previous applications of Certeau in the field of postcolonial studies, I will apply his concept of “practice” not only to the characters in the text, but also to the texts themselves, arguing that both turn the “Concept-city” of London into a “metaphorical city” (to use Certeau’s terms). 28 Appropriations: Lord Kitchener’s “London Is the Place for Me” Three years after his live rendition of “London Is the Place for Me” for British cinema audiences, Lord Kitchener released a full-band studio recording of the song on the London-based Melodisc label. This version is much longer than the one heard in the Pathé newsreel, which is probably incomplete (either because the newsreel only shows an excerpt from Kitchener’s performance or because Kitchener himself shortened the tune for the occasion). It is also quite possible that Kitchener continued working on his calypso between 1948 and 1951. At any rate, the studio version contains several additional verses. It opens with the already familiar introduction of the speaker as a 26 Peter Hulme, “Including America,” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 26.1 (1995): 120 (emphasis original). 27 John Clement Ball, Imagining London: Postcolonial Fiction and the Transnational Metropolis (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: U of Toronto P, 2004), 16 (emphasis original). 28 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: U of California P, 1984), 93, 94. Migrant Literature and/ as Cultural Change 295 widely travelled West Indian who knows from experience that no place in the world can compete with London (see the two stanzas quoted above). The song then goes on to describe his leisure activities in the city, while saying nothing about such prosaic matters as his occupation and source of income: To live in London you’re really comfortable Because the English people are very much sociable They take you here and they take you there And they make you feel like a millionaire So London, that’s the place for me At night when you have nothing to do You can take a walk down Shaftesbury Avenue Yeah, you will laugh and talk and enjoy the breeze And admire the beautiful sceneries Of London, that’s the place for me Yes, I cannot complain of the time I have spent I mean my life in London is really magnificent I have every comfort and every sport And my residence is at Hampton Court London, that’s the place for me 29 In light of the precarious situation of Caribbean migrants in post-war Britain, Kitchener’s song about the pleasures and amenities of London life can seem “painfully naive,” as Ashley Dawson remarks 30 - but only if we ignore the satirical and playful nature of calypso music. Musically and lyrically, the roots of calypso have been traced to the performances of West-African griots, whose songs established various distinctive features such as the call-andresponse pattern and percussive rhythmic beats (both of which are on display in “London Is the Place for Me”). 31 29 Lord Kitchener, “London Is the Place for Me” (1951), in Various Artists, London Is the Place for Me: Trinidadian Calypso in London, 1950-1956, Honest Jon’s Records, HJRCD 2, 2002 (my transcription). In their traditional capacity as court singers, griots sang at official ceremonies and masquerades as well as at other festivities. Their repertoire mainly consisted of panegyric songs (performed in honour of their patrons), but it also included songs of blame and ridicule. Hollis Liverpool contends that during the time of slavery, when West African musical traditions were brought to the Caribbean, songs of praise and deri- 30 Ashley Dawson, Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 2007), 2. 31 See Errol Hill, “The Calypso,” in Caribbean Rhythms: The Emerging English Literature of the West Indies, ed. James T. Livingston (New York: Washington Square Press, 1974), 286- 297, here 286-87, 288, as well as the chapter “Sounds of Struggle: From Griot to Calypsonian” in Hollis “Chalkdust” Liverpool, Rituals of Power and Rebellion: The Carnival Tradition in Trinidad and Tobago, 1763-1962 (Chicago, IL: Research Associates School Times Publications / Frontline Distribution, 2001), 185-210, 185. M ICHAEL C. F RANK 296 sion provided a means of “cultural resistance” (for instance, when flattery of the master was used as “resistance in disguise,” or when work songs deriding the master became vehicles of frustration). 32 A third type of song from the period of slavery had a more plaintive mood, presenting satirical takes on topical issues in the form of laments. 33 The influence of these various forerunners of kaiso or calypso is quite evident in the English recordings of Lord Kitchener. Soon after Kitchener released his ode to London on the Melodisc label, he composed several humorous songs of complaint, bemoaning the nosiness of white landladies (“My Landlady,” 1952) or lamenting the labyrinthine intricacies of the London tube system (“The Underground Train,” 1950). Feelings of homesickness are expressed in songs like “Nora” (1950) or “Sweet Jamaica” (1952), the latter of which can be considered the pessimistic counterpart of “London Is the Place for Me.” It adopts the point of view of a disillusioned Jamaican who is fed up with the shortage of jobs and food in post-war London and who yearns for a return to his native country. The first verse runs: “Thousands of people are asking me / How I spend my time in London city / Well, that is a question I cannot answer / I regret the day I left sweet Jamaica.” In the last verse, the speaker states that the same applies to other West Indian migrants in London: Many West Indians are sorry now They left their country and don’t know how Some left their jobs and their family And determined to come to London city Well, they are crying, they now regret No kind of employment that they can get The city of London they have to roam And they can’t get their passage to go back home . 34 In each of his calypso songs of the early 1950s, Lord Kitchener assumes a different role, thus reflecting the ambivalent and multifaceted character of the migrant experience in London, which he captures in a series of fragmentary glimpses. “London Is the Place for Me” certainly qualifies as a song of praise, yet it is replete with comic exaggeration and irony. Its facetious stance is signalled early on when the speaker declares that he is “speaking broadmindedly,” which indicates that everything that follows has to be taken with a grain of salt. The tongue-in-cheek character of the lyric is also obvious in Lord Kitch- 32 Liverpool, Rituals of Power and Rebellion, 193, 196. 33 See ibid., 197. 34 Lord Kitchener, “Sweet Jamaica” (1952), in Various Artists, London Is the Place for Me: Trinidadian Calypso in London, 1950-1956, Honest Jon’s Records, HJRCD 2, 2002 (my transcription). Migrant Literature and/ as Cultural Change 297 ener’s seemingly unquestioning endorsement of the “mother country” myth. The imperial myth of the “mother country” encouraged colonized peoples throughout the British Empire to develop an affective bond with the colonizing nation of England by casting the latter as a protective, caring, and nurturing parent. True to this myth, the Londoners in Kitchener’s song welcome colonial migrants with open arms. Their exceptional generosity goes so far that they willingly serve as guides, showing West Indians a good time in their city. London may not be the famed El Dorado, where the streets are paved with gold, but at least one can feel like a millionaire there because one is being treated accordingly. This portrayal of London as a site of harmonious cross-cultural interactions is self-consciously optimistic and even utopian. By taking the “mother country” myth literally, it confronts listeners with a fantasy rendition of a potential London rather than a depiction of the actual London of 1948. Far from providing an element of realism, Kitchener’s occasional references to real locations only reinforce this effect. In the third verse, the speaker talks about his leisurely strolls along Shaftesbury Avenue at night, during which he likes to exchange stories and jokes. This kind of activity - “hanging out” casually in a public place to chat with friends - can best be described with the Trinidadian slang word “liming.” It is not the kind of activity that one would usually associate with London’s main theatre street. The phrases “enjoy the breeze” and “beautiful sceneries” seem even more incongruous in a West End context, as they both evoke landscapes (in the case of “enjoy the breeze,” a landscape close to the sea) rather than a megacity notorious for its smog. It is quite evident here that the song projects features of the composer’s native Caribbean onto London. And the same may be said about the assertion that “English people are very much sociable.” Jahan Ramazani argues that in this line, Kitchener’s song “culturally creolises England by attributing to it a Caribbean hospitality.” 35 The blending of West Indian and British features at the level of content goes hand in hand with parallel instances of creolization at the level of form. Ramazani mentions linguistic creolization in phrases such as “you really comfortable” (“West Indian ellipsis”) as well as musical creolization (“a buoyantly syncopated sound new to London”). 36 Though often “located” in London, their poems are “translocal,” in that they see the metropolis afresh through the lenses of non-metropolitan history, language What we see at work here, according to Ramazani, is a technique of “translocation,” which he identifies as a distinctive feature of the poetry of African and African-Caribbean writers in Britain: 35 Jahan Ramazani, “Black British Poetry and the Translocal,” The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English, ed. Neil Corcoran (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge UP, 2007), 200-214, 205. 36 Ibid. M ICHAEL C. F RANK 298 and power, and shuttle across and unsettle imperial hierarchies of centre and periphery, motherland and colonial offspring, North and South. In short, they dislocate the local into translocation. 37 Ramazani’s explanation of “translocation” as involving a moment of “dislocation” is slightly misleading, however, since it implies a separation of features from their original context. As Lord Kitchener’s song lyric illustrates, “translocal” imagery is “translocal” only in the sense that it forges a connection between two spatially and culturally separate contexts. While being associated with a new environment, the features in question retain their original associations - the whole point of the technique of “translocation” being the simultaneous evocation, and blending, of two distinct environments. 38 Lord Kitchener’s “creolization” of London by means of “translocation” goes hand in hand with a “carnivalization,” which becomes more pronounced as the song progresses. In the final verse, we move from the West End to another tourist destination, this time outside the city, in the affluent borough of Richmond-upon-Thames. It is here that the speaker has his domicile of choice. He lives at Hampton Court, a favourite residence of Tudor king Henry VIII - one of several aspects of Kitchener’s representation of London that is quite obviously derived from history classes in the British colony of Trinidad and Tobago. The image of a West Indian migrant literally living like a king in London is the most deliberately fantastic element of the song, and it hints at the close relationship between calypso music and the Trinidadian Carnival. As John Cowley reminds us, Another way of describing this effect would be by means of a photographic and cinematic metaphor: superimposition, that is, the placement of one image (in this case: the image of West Indian landscapes and forms of sociability) over another (London and its white inhabitants). In many respects [calypso] grew from the hierarchical structure of the Carnival bands which, in masquerade, adopted the European nomenclature of Kings, 37 Ibid., 202. 38 John Clement Ball sees a similar technique at play in postcolonial prose literature about London, in which “[t]he metropolitan city [...] becomes newly interlinked with Trinidadian or Nigerian spaces and lived realities to which, as imperial capital, it has long been related, but at an oceanic distance” (Ball, Imagining London, 10-11). For Ball, this reduction or elimination of distance gives the resulting representations of London a “transnational” character - an adjective that unnecessarily invokes the political concept of the nation, even though the British Nationality Act of 1948 gave all people born in British colonies the status of “Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies.” Ball’s concept of the “transational metropolis” is not so much concerned with the issue of citizenship, however, than it is with “translocation” in Ramazani’s sense of the word (with which it is largely synonymous). Like Ramazani, Ball is interested in how “London [...] becomes overlaid with and complexly linked to faraway landscapes and cultures” (ibid., 11). Migrant Literature and/ as Cultural Change 299 Queens, Lords, Ladies and other measures of social status. For the black maskers, in a world turned upside down, these served to satirize the symbols of European power as well as to establish an African-American authority over them. 39 Among the pseudonyms of well-known calypsonians are such extravagant names as Atilla the Hun, the Mighty Terror, or Black Stalin. Lord Kitchener was not the first “lord” in the scene (having been preceded by the likes of Lord Executor and Lord Pretender), and there were no less than two other lords of calypso on board the Empire Windrush when he arrived in England: Lord Beginner and Lord Woodbine (the latter of whom would go on to promote the Beatles in their pre-Hamburg days). 40 What distinguishes the sobriquet “Kitchener” from these other aliases is its explicit connection to British colonialism. “Lord Kitchener” is the title of military hero Horatio Herbert Kitchener, who became “Lord Kitchener of Khartoum” in 1898 after having commanded the army that re-conquered the Sudan for Britain. Lord Kitchener subsequently served in South Africa, India, and Egypt, before being appointed Secretary of State for War (and immortalized on a now iconic recruitment poster, “Lord Kitchener wants you”) in 1914. When Aldwyn Roberts adopted the sobriquet “Lord Kitchener” during World War II - upon the suggestion of his fellow calypsonian Growling Tiger 41 A similar reversal of hierarchies is enacted at the end of “London Is the Place for Me” in the carnivalesque image of a Caribbean migrant residing in a well-known English palace. At one level, this over-the-top version of the rags-to-riches formula seems like a wish-fulfillment fantasy inspired by imperial propaganda, as does the song’s glorification of the “heart of the empire” more generally. At another level, though, it can be said to challenge precisely such hegemonic representations. For the speaker’s joyful announcement that “London is the place for me” does not necessarily imply that he intends to embrace the city exactly as he finds it (that London is perfect the way it is). Rather, the phrase “the place for me” signals a symbolic appropriation, a self-confident affirmation of the desire - and the entitlement - to use the city actively, to shape it according to the speaker’s own needs and purposes. The whole song is pervaded by a “powerful feeling of agency,” - he assumed the title of one of Britain’s imperial icons (leading to a comic scene in the Pathé newsreel when the reporter asks him for his name, and Aldwyn Roberts surprises British viewers by mentioning the epithet of their late former Secretary of War). 42 39 John Cowley, “London is the Place: Caribbean Music in the Context of Empire 1900-60,” Black Music in Britain: Essays on the Afro-Asian Contribution to Popular Music, ed. Paul Oliver (Milton Keynes and Philadelphia: Open UP, 1990), 58-76, 59. and 40 See Carter, “Roberts, Aldwyn.” 41 See ibid. 42 Dawson, Mongrel Nation, 2. M ICHAEL C. F RANK 300 the vibrancy of the lyrics is amplified by the band’s “buoyant percussive rhythms and clarinet solos.” 43 Detour: Michel de Certeau’s “Walking in the City” A helpful theoretical tool to describe this “appropriation” of London may be found in a study that initially appears to be far removed from the situation of Caribbean migrants in post-war England: The Practice of Everyday Life, a study that is as difficult to pigeonhole as its discipline-hopping author, Michel de Certeau. Originally published in 1984 as L’invention du quotidien 1: Arts de faire, Certeau’s best-known book challenges the prevalent understanding of consumption according to which the consumer is forced to submit himor herself to the prevailing system of production, which controls the act of consumption - a view which places the user in a merely passive position vis-àvis the products he or she consumes. In Certeau’s view, it is shortsighted to consider the relation between consumers and the system of production merely in terms of subjection. While there is no question for Certeau that users are indeed “the dominated element in society,” this does not mean that they are necessarily “docile.” 44 Most relevant in the present context is Certeau’s chapter “Walking in the City,” in which the author applies his understanding of productive consumption to the “users” of urban space. In this much-anthologized section of his book, Certeau considers the act of walking though the metropolis as an act of “using” the city. From this perspective, the pedestrians who walk through streets, squares, and shops consume the product of urban planners. In the process, they transform what is given - the solid structure of the city imposing “possibilities” and “interdictions” - into something that is at least partially of their own making: Rather, Certeau asserts, users have the possibility to make active and creative use of the products that are part of their everyday culture, to employ them in ways unforeseen by their producers. In doing so, users become producers in their own right - albeit not of primary, but of secondary products; in other words, the act of consumption can be become a form of second-order production. [T]he walker transforms each spatial signifier into something else. And if on the one hand he actualizes only a few of the possibilities fixed by the constructed order (he goes only here and not there), on the other he increases the number of possibilities (for example, by creating shortcuts and detours) and prohibitions (for ex- 43 Ramazani, “Black British Poetry and the Translocal,” 205. 44 Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, xi-xii, xii. Migrant Literature and/ as Cultural Change 301 ample, he forbids himself to take paths generally considered accessible or even obligatory). 45 One essential feature of Certeau’s approach is its indebtedness to speech act theory. For Certeau, the itinerary of the individual pedestrian along certain idiosyncratic and improvised routes is the equivalent of a speech act. Because the concrete performance of the speech act generates context-specific meanings that lie beyond the reach of linguistic rules, the act cannot be reduced to its dependence on the language system. Certeau describes this as an “appropriation, or re-appropriation” of language through the speaker in the moment of utterance. 46 In a similar fashion, Certeau writes, each walk through the city can be understood as “a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian (just as the speaker appropriates and takes on the language).” 47 This is to say that the relationship between the city (as a given structure) and the act of walking is analogous to the relationship between language (as a given system) and the act of talking. The activity of walking in the city - which Certeau describes as a “pedestrian enunciation” - engenders its own “rhetoric of walking”: “a series of turns (tours) and detours that can be compared to ‘turns of phrase’ or stylistic figures.” 48 At the beginning of “Walking in the City,” Certeau distinguishes between two views on, and manifestations of, the city. The first is the city seen from high above, in bird’s-eye perspective. This is the city in its abstract totality, the city devised by urban planners, the city familiar from maps that can be read like a text. Certeau calls it the “Concept-city” and dismisses it as a “theoretical [...] simulacrum” for its failure to acknowledge the “practices” of the “ordinary practitioners of the city [...] ‘down below’. ” The exact course of this process cannot be predicted, let alone controlled. The only thing that can be planned systematically is the material shape of the city, as it is represented in maps. 49 The myriad intersecting movements of the people on the ground compose “a manifold story,” albeit one that cannot be read, for it defies cartographic representation and therefore remains illegible from the vantage of the Concept-city. 50 45 Ibid., 98. To adopt 46 Ibid., xiii. 47 Ibid., 97-98 (emphasis original). 48 Ibid., 99, 100. 49 Ibid., 95, 93. 50 Maps cannot depict movements in progress, because they have no means of representing temporality. Certeau writes: “It is true that the operations of walking on can be traced on city maps in such a way as to transcribe their paths (here well-trodden, there very faint) and their trajectories (going this way and not that). But these thick or thin curves only refer, like words, to the absence of what has passed by. Surveys of routes miss what was: the act itself of passing by. [...] The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system has of be- M ICHAEL C. F RANK 302 the point of view of the spatial practitioners at ground level means to disturb the sense of order that is imposed on urban dwellers by the Concept-city: “A migrational or metaphorical city [...] slips into the clear text of the planned and readable city.” 51 Certeau’s use of the word “migrational” may be one of the reasons why his approach has been so popular with postcolonial critics, who applied it in readings of Sam Selvon’s 1956 novel The Lonely Londoners 52 As ex-colonials come to dwell in London and walk its streets; they appropriate it and reterritorialize it. [...] The London that once imposed its power and selfconstructions on them can now be reinvented by them. or migrant literature about London more generally: 53 [R]epresentations of postcolonial London bear witness to modes of authority which attempt to trap London’s newcomers and their families in a particular mapping of the city [...], regulating their movements and placing their activities under surveillance. But these texts primarily give expression to the improvizational, creative and resistant tactics of those who make possible new subaltern spaces in the city. 54 It must be noted, however, that Certeau’s theory is designed for the “user” as such, and not for any particular subaltern group. When Certeau speaks of marginality, he refers to the “marginality of the majority” rather than that of “minority groups,” even if he concedes that the specific position of the “immigrant worker” - who has “inferior access to information, financial means, and compensations of all kind” - is likely to elicit an “increased deviance.” 55 It is problematic, moreover, to “conflate or equate mobility with political resistance”; for, as Lisa Kabesh notes, “walking and other everyday practices might reify strategies of power” and we “must recognize that these enunciative practices are neither homogenous nor necessarily coherent.” 56 ing able to transform action into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten” (ibid., 97). Certeau explicitly states that the relationship between the individual act of walking and the Concept-city is not necessarily oppositional, and that there is a whole spectrum of possibilities: “[w]alking affirms, suspects, tries out, 51 Ibid., 93. 52 See, for example, Rebecca Dyer, “Immigration, Postwar London, and the Politics of Everyday Life in Sam Selvon’s Fiction.” Cultural Critique 52 (2002): 108-44; Lisa M. Kabesh, “Mapping Freedom, or Its Limits: The Politics of Movement in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners,” Postcolonial Text 6.3 (2011), accessed September 9, 2016, http: / / www.postcolonial.org/ index.php/ pct/ article/ download/ 1255/ 1211. 53 Ball, Imagining London, 9. 54 McLeod, Postcolonial London, 9-10. 55 Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, xvi-xvii, here xvii. 56 Kabesh, “Mapping Freedom, or Its Limits,” 4. Migrant Literature and/ as Cultural Change 303 transgresses, respects, etc. the trajectories it ‘speaks’.” 57 Bearing these reservations in mind, we can nevertheless apply Certeau’s model to migrant literature of the post-war years, as Rebecca Dyer demonstrates in her reading of Sam Selvon’s Moses trilogy: This range of attitudes is clearly reflected in “London Is the Place for Me,” where the speaker does indeed “respect” and even “affirm” certain features of imperial discourse (such as the idealization of London, which is ironically distorted and exaggerated but ultimately reinforced, albeit from a different perspective), even as he “transgresses” other stereotypical assumptions and representations. The men and women who migrated from the British West Indies to London following World War II had been - prior to their migration - the “consumers” of an ideal of Englishness that was being exported from Britain to its colonies. [...] As actual London residents, these migrants, though still “the dominated elements of society,” as de Certeau puts it, were consumers of existing culture but also its creators, involved in a poiesis of their urban surroundings. They became both the chroniclers and practitioners of everyday life in the city. 58 Dyer, too, transfers Certeau’s theory about the individual act of consumption to a whole social group, and we should be careful not to lump the diverse activities of migrants together (as if they were the activities of one collective subject). Yet, Dyer makes a compelling point by referring not only to the contents of migrant literature - its representation of everyday practices at the level of plot - but also to the writing of this literature by authors who are, in turn, “practitioners” in Certeau’s sense of the word. The (re)writing of London is itself a performance which can be considered an agent of cultural change, since it produces new visions and versions of the city. Conclusion and Outlook As we have seen, “London Is the Place for Me” depicts the British capital - in an emphatically carnivalesque spirit - as a transformed space. By using the metropolis in an idiosyncratic way according to his own desires, needs, and habits, the speaker leaves his personal signature in the city. This distinguishes the Certeauian understanding of “appropriation” from “mimicry,” insofar as appropriation does not involve an attempt to camouflage difference. 59 57 Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 99. It is less about adaptation (trying to look like something else) than 58 Dyer, “Immigration, Postwar London, and the Politics of Everyday Life,” 109-10. 59 I am, of course, referring to Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” October 28 (1984): 125-133, a locus classicus of postcolonial studies which was later incorporated into Bhabha’s only monograph, the influential The Location of Culture (1994). M ICHAEL C. F RANK 304 about adoption (making something one’s own), less an attempt to disguise one’s presence as the “other” (and thus to suppress one’s identity) than to make one’s presence - and otherness - felt. This idea can be applied to Lord Kitchener’s calypso song itself. For in “London Is the Place for Me,” the “appropriation” of the city by the speaker corresponds with another kind of “appropriation” by Lord Kitchener, who also lays claim to London (or the right to transform London) in the form of his song. This is indicated by the chimes of Big Ben, which bookend the song - a sound so inextricably linked with London that it can be said to stand metonymically for the city as a whole. The idea of citing this famous melody at the beginning and end of “London Is the Place for Me” may have been borrowed from an earlier tune (“A Foggy Day” by George and Ira Gershwin, a jazz standard originally sung by Fred Astaire in the 1937 film A Damsel in Distress); yet, it still works effectively as a contrast to the Caribbean rhythm and melody of Kitchener’s calypso. As John McLeod observes, “[t]here is a sense throughout that Lord Kitchener is having fun with London signatures, its proper names and its famous sounds.” 60 60 McLeod, Postcolonial London, 29. By means of these names and sounds, Kitchener invokes iconic London landmarks and simultaneously places them in a new and surprising context. In this way, the song itself performs a transformation of London - or a concept of London - by confronting its listeners with a creolized vision of the British capital. Using the voice and perspective of a West Indian, it presents familiar landmarks in a defamiliarized way. The song’s calypso style, its slight deviations from Standard English, and its “translocal” imagery all contribute to this effect. This goes to show that the song is not only a response to cultural change (to the extent that it reflects the beginnings of mass migration from the Caribbean to Britain); it also promotes change by transcending real-life obstacles to change in a deliberately utopian fashion, creating a new and transcultural representation of London. And the same holds for many later writings by colonial migrants to London and their London-born children, from Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956) to Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000). Their characters similarly “appropriate” parts of the city - and thereby reflect their authors’ own creative uses and metaphorizations of London as an ever-changing, emerging postcolonial metropolis. Migrant Literature and/ as Cultural Change 305 Works Cited Ball, John Clement. 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