Do We Care?

Do We Care?

Many different forms of critical theory focus on the text, the circumstances surrounding the text, or the author, without acknowledging the subjective nature of literature. New Criticism proclaims that the “essential components of any work of literature, whether lyric, narrative, or dramatic, are conceived to be words, images, and symbols, rather than character, thought, and plot” (Abrams 246). New Historicism “is grounded on the concepts that history itself is not a set of fixed, objective facts, but, like the literature with which it interacts, a text which needs to be interpreted” (249). Psychological criticism “deals with a work of literature primarily as an expression, in fictional form, of the state of mind and the structure of personality of the individual author” (263). In these forms of critical theory, the response of the reader is less important than the author, the text, and whatever symbolism might be found in the text. While ignoring the importance of reader-response may be justified in academia, it also holds true that without the reader, the need for literature would not exist.

What specific properties lend value to literature? Though style and structure are important components and should not be completely disregarded, the meaning of the text is dependent upon the individual reader, and as such, is highly subjective. In her essay, Contingencies of Value, Barbara Herrnstein Smith states, “the value of a work – that is, its effectiveness in performing desired/able functions for some set of subjects – is not independent of authorial design, labor, and skill . . . that what may be spoken of as the ‘properties’ of the work – its ‘structure,’ ‘features,’ ‘qualities,’ and of course, its ‘meaning’ – are not fixed, given, or inherent in the work itself but are at every point the variable products of some subject’s interaction with it” (Richter 148). This brings up an interesting point: if the reader’s interaction with the text proves to be less than what the reader expected or wanted, does it negate the value of the text as literature? And does the educational and cultural background of the reader have any kind of effect on this process? Smith believes it does:

. . . there are many people in the world who are not – or are not yet, or choose not to be – among the orthodoxly educated population of the West: people who do not encounter Western classics at all or who encounter them under cultural and institutional conditions very different from those of American and European college professors and their students.