29 Words, Texts, Cultural Structures and Narratives: Roland Barthes, Arnold Kettle, Harold Bloom

Mr. Kashif Ilyas

Introduction

In the latter half of the Twentieth century literary theory was at its height. Roland Barthes was an important structuralist critic who analyzed signifying systems in mass culture and later on turned to post-structuralism to claim “The Death of the Author”. He wrote “From Work to Text”, theorizing the concept of the text which was an important advancement in the field of post- structuralism.

Arnold Kettle published his authoritative work, An Introduction to the English Novel, which traced the history of English novel from the Eighteenth century to the Modern period. He analyzed the canonical writers of the different periods through historical context and socio- economic factors.

Amidst the rise of other literary theories of Marxism, Feminism, New Historicism and Cultural Studies, Harold Bloom emerged in defense of traditional literary criticism. He presented a theory of poetry in his book The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry and defended the canon in The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages.

Section 1: Roland Barthes 

Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist who straddled the line between structuralism and post-structuralism. Early in his career in the work, Mythologies (1971), Barthes has analyzed the signifying systems in various forms of mass culture like fashion, wrestling, soap powder, etc. He aimed at showing how ideological propositions were presented as something self-evident and natural in mass culture. His book On Racine (1963) was a structuralist analysis of the works of Jean Racine, which angered the traditional critics for its focus on textual rather than biographical or historical analysis. His other works in this period include Elements of Semiology (1964) and Systeme de la mode (1967).

Even as a structuralist, Barthes had his suspicions regarding the representational sign. He believed that signs which presented themselves as natural and thus as the only way of perceiving the world were ideological in nature as ideology functions by naturalizing itself as self-evident and unchangeable. In Barthes’s view, realism is responsible for passing off representational signs as reality itself. Realist literature attempts to convince the readers that they are perceiving reality by concealing the fact that language is a construct itself. Barthes propounded a ‘double’ sign which would point at its own material existence while conveying meaning as well.

The Death of the Author 

In the latter half of his career, as Barthes became increasingly aware of the limits of structuralism, he moved towards post-structuralism. In 1967, he wrote his landmark essay “The Death of the Author” which focused on the author instead of the author’s output. He began the essay by taking an example from Balzac’s Sarrasine. He quoted a line from the novella on femininity which could not be attributed to either the author or the narrator. He argued that we can never know as – “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing”.

Barthes contended that the author is “a modern figure, a product of our society insofar as, emerging from the Middle Ages with English empiricism, French rationalism and the personal faith of the Reformation, it discovered the prestige of the individual, of, as it is more nobly put, the ‘human person'”. He further posited that capitalist ideology attached great importance to the ‘person’ of the author to commercialize literature. Other literary theories further cemented this idea by focusing all literary criticism around the life of the author.

According to Barthes, Mallarme was the first in France to see the necessity of substituting language for the person writing it. It is the language itself which spoke or performed instead of the author. Barthes takes the example of Proust, who was concerned with the relationship between the writer and his characters, and attempted to blur it in his writing. In the period preceding modernity, surrealism also sought to destabilize the prominent position of the author by disappointing the expectations of meaning while automatic writing challenged the authority of the writer through spiritual or subconscious writing.

Further in the essay, Barthes states that the act of removal of the author completely transforms the text. He draws a parallel between the author and the modern ‘scriptor’ (the term Barthes used for the writer after the removal of the author). While the idea of the author is permanently attached to the creation of the book, the modern scriptor is born with the text. Hence, writing ceases to be representational and becomes performative. The modern scriptor, “cut off from any voice, borne by a pure gesture of inscription (and not of expression), traces a field without origin-or which, at least, has no other origin than language itself, language which ceaselessly calls into question all origins”.

In the conclusion of the essay, Barthes discussed the concept of ‘the text’, which he elaborated later in the essay “From Work to Text”. Barthes states that a text does not have a single meaning but multiple interpretations, that blend and clash with each other. The text, for him, is constructed from multiple writings drawn from diverse cultures which enter into relations of dialogue and contestation. Hence, Barthes concludes his essay by discerning that the multiplicity of the text is focused on the reader instead of the author.

Barthes’s Concept of the Text

In the essay “From Work to Text”, Barthes posits his theory of the text. He begins by observing that a change is taking place in the conception of language and the literary work that is created with it. Barthes connects the change with the development of linguistics, anthropology, Marxism and psychoanalysis. The mutation of the traditional notion of the work and the overturning of categories led to the requirement of a new object which is termed as ‘the text’. Barthes laid down certain propositions (clarifying that they are not arguments but metaphorical enunciations) regarding the text:

1. The difference between work and text is not material. It is not a question of chronology either, as an ancient work may contain text while a contemporary work may not be text at all. The work occupies space and can be seen, while text is a methodological field and speaks according to, or against certain rules. You can hold a work in your hands, but the text is held in language.
2. Text cannot be contained in literature or a division of genres. The text resists classification and pushes the limits of enunciation.
3. While ‘in work’ the relation between the signifier and the signified is evident, in ‘the text’ the signified is deferred. There is a perpetual generation of the signifier in the text because of disconnections, overlapping and variations. While the work is moderately symbolic, the text is completely symbolic. The text is metonymic in nature- filled with the activity of associations and contiguities.
4. The text is plural. It does not have a co-existence of meanings but an explosion or dissemination of signifiers. The text consists of citations, references and cultural languages which cut through it in all directions.
5. The work is seen in filiations with the author. The author is regarded as the father of the work and we are taught to respect the intention of the author. While the work is imagined as an organism that grows by development, the text is to be imagined as a network. As the text does not have a father or authority figure, it can be broken and analyzed.
6. The work has become an object for consumption. The text is able to separate the work from its consumption by transforming it into a play, production or practice. The text requires the abolishment of the distance between writing and reading. While reading is simply consuming, playing with the text is a completely different experience. The text plays like a game or a score of music and demands collaboration with the reader.
7. The final approach to the text is that of pleasure. There is a pleasure in the reading of the work, but this pleasure is merely consumption as we can read the work but cannot re-write it. The text on the other hand, is bound to jouissance, that is, provide enormous pleasure to the reader. The text achieves transparence of language relations and works towards a social utopia.

Hence, Roland Barthes’s essays “The Death of the Author” and “From Work to Text” were regarded as the landmark essays that have changed the face of criticism. His essay “The Death of the Author” changed the focus of criticism from the author to the language of literature and his concept of ‘the text’ was an important advancement in post-structuralist theories which has led to the burgeoning field of cultural studies.

Section 2: Arnold Kettle 

Arnold Kettle is a Marxist literary critic known for his authoritative work, An Introduction to the English Novel (1951), in which he traces the history of English novel from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Period. His style of writing is simple and comprehensible as he does not believe in use of jargons in critical writing and aims to reach general readers. In this text, he analyzes the works of the important novelist like Defoe, Jane Austen and George Eliot through historical context. He believes, like all Marxists, that a work of art is the product of socio- economic factors, but he also defends the literary canon and the value of literature in life .

Introduction to the English Novel 

An Introduction to the English Novel is divided into two volumes. The first volume traces the English novel from the Eighteenth century to the Victorian period, while the second volume traces it from the late Victorian period to the Twentieth century. In the introduction of the first volume, Kettle differentiates two elements in the English novel which he finds the most important – life and pattern. He cites David Copperfield while talking about a novel which is more focused on life. The novel follows David, the protagonist, as he goes through his struggles in life and comes across many interesting characters. There is no discernible pattern in the novel but it has certain vitality as it represents the concerns of the ordinary people of that time in an entertaining manner. Pattern on the other hand is supposed to give the novel its form and meaning. The pattern is the thought behind the novel which gives it shape and structure. A good novel must have a balance between the elements of life and pattern.

Novels of the Eighteenth Century

Arnold Kettle divides the novels of the Eighteenth century into moral fables and picaresque novels. In moral fables, the writer of the novel begins with a vision, or a moral truth in his mind which he attempts to justify in the work. A good moral fable must be probing instead of static, and should be connected with the realities of life. The abstract idea which forms the moral was completely by passed in the novel. Kettle provides the example of Gulliver Travels as a moral fable, in which Swift criticizes humanity through his morals. Even though we may not agree with Swift’s philosophy, we feel the moral force prevalent in the novel.

Kettle continues his critical study of the novels of the Eighteenth century and discerns that while the moral fable evolved from the morality plays in the Middle Ages, the picaresque novels were the result of the breakdown of the medieval world. It is associated with the development of science and journalism. The origin of picaresque novels can be traced back to Fifteenth century Spain. The protagonist of a picaresque novel is an outcaste or a rogue who rejects feudal society and its morality. He is a man without roots, living on his wits and often falling into adventures. The picaresque novels do not have a consistent moral attitude to give them a proper structure but they contain a curiosity about the world which give them an interesting depth. According to Kettle, The Unfortunate Traveller is the most famous picaresque novel in English literature.

Kettle contends that in the Middle Ages, when people lived in a feudal society, rulers and landowners were the only ones who had enough leisure and education to develop an art form. As their main concern was to maintain their ownership and preserve the status quo, they ended up producing Romances. Romance entertained and delighted the rulers, while providing an escape for the poor farmers and workers from the drudgery of their lives. The literature of the age did not represent the sordid reality of the society, or attempted to enlarge the consciousness of the people; its aim was to distract the masses from their subjugation.

After the bourgeois revolution against the feudal society, Kettle writes, the novelists of the Eighteenth century explored the new world which opened up before them. The age was marked by a spirit of curiosity, an interest in the study of mankind and an urge to document the everyday reality of ordinary people. Kettle analyzes Robinson Crusoe as a “story in praise of the bourgeois virtues of individualism and private enterprise” (65). The novel stresses the importance of social living and highlights the struggle of man in the mastering of nature. Kettle praises the verisimilitude of Defoe’s writing and his attention to detail which bring to life Eighteenth century England in front of the eyes of the readers.

The Victorian Age

In the chapter on the Nineteenth century literature, Kettle paints a sobering picture of Victorian society. Kettle argues that the rise of the industrial capitalists led to the degradation of art as they were against realism and integrity in art. Thus, the great novelists of the time strove to write realist novels and expose the faults of society. They deeply felt about the degradation of humanity in an increasingly industrial world and rebelled against it through their writings. In the chapter on Dickens, Kettle writes how Dickens portrayed the poverty and corruption rampant in his time. He shed light on the systematic oppression of poor people through institutions and indifferent officials. In his analysis of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Kettle points to Eliot’s mechanistic and deterministic philosophy which leads to her characters being trapped in an immoral and unchanging world where individualism is harshly punished by the society.

20th Century Literature

Kettle locates the literature of the Twentieth century amid imperialism, war and concentration camps. The complexity and uncertainty of modern life was mirrored in its literature. Kettle broadly outlines some of the important changes in the Twentieth century:

1. A distinction arises between ‘good’ literature and ‘popular’ literature. The novels praised by the critics and the intellectuals are ignored by the masses while the popular best-seller novels are held in contempt by the critics. The commercialization of literature causes a lowering of the standard of books read by the public while the ‘good’ novels are seen as pretentious and snobbish.
2. Writers start focusing on specialized areas of their sensibility. A feeling of isolation in the society becomes a central theme and an attitude of pessimism and despair hangs over the novels.
3. Writers of the Twentieth century were unable to achieve a philosophy in their writing to tackle the dangerous issues of their time.

Hence, An Introduction to the English Novel is a defining work by Arnold Kettle which is studied by the students of literature all over the world. His detailed examination of the major writers of English literature through the analysis of historical context and socio-economic factors produced a Marxist interpretation of the canonical authors. The focus on one novel per author also gives Kettle space for an in-depth analysis and critique of their work.

Section 3: Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom is an American literary critic known for his important work on the Romantic poets, his theory of poetry as analyzed in The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1973) and his book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (1994). Early in his career, Bloom defended the Romantics and restored their reputation after Eliot’s criticism had sidelined their work. His book, The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry (1961), is one of the most extensive and detailed works written on the Romantics. Bloom presented his theory of poetry in the book The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry which cemented him as one of the most important critics of his age. In the book he advanced the theory that the writing process of poets is affected by the influence of the great poets before them. His book,  The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, published in 1994, is an exhaustive work on western literature. It was a strong defense of the western canon which had been under attack by the various theories of Marxism, New Historicism, Feminism and cultural studies. Bloom opposed these theories and clubbed them together as “the School of Resentment”. Bloom’s critical work remains important and his analysis of literature through the approach of universal humanism is still relevant to literary studies.

The Anxiety of Influence

In The Anxiety of Influence:A Theory of Poetry, Bloom theorized that poetry is a result of the anxiety suffered by the poets from the influence of great poets that have come before them. The contemporary poets of the age feel anxious that their poetry will never be as good as the poetry of their precursors and that they have written all that was there to write about. Bloom further writes that all poetry is in fact misprision – a revision and misinterpretation of the poets that came before them. He divided poets into “strong poets” or “weak poets”. The poetry of the “strong poets” is “strong misreading” of the poets before them, while the “weak poets” end up repeating the work of their precursors.

Bloom used Freudian theories along with the philosophy of Nietzsche in his work. He presented a process of six stages termed “revisionary ratios” which the “strong poet” goes through to free himself from the influence of his precursors and develop his own poetic vision:

1. Clinamen – In the first stage, the work of the poet results in misprision – that is, a misinterpretation of the poems of his precursors. The poet feels that his precursor had made a slight mistake somewhere in his poem and he adds a corrective movement to the poem.
2. Tessera – It is a stage of completion and antithesis. The poet completes the poem of the precursor, but this is antithetical because the poet thinks that the precursor did not go far enough even though he himself ends up retaining the terms of the precursor.
3. Kenosis – It is a stage where the poet attempts to discontinue from the precursor and empties himself from the precursor’s influence.
4. Daemonization – The poet believes that he has tapped into a daemonic power that informed the precursor’s poem but was beyond his reach. This belief explains away the uniqueness of the precursor’s work.
5. Askesis – This is a movement of self-purgation. The poet curtails his and his precursor’s imaginative endowment and feels a sense of independent achievement.
6. Apophrades – After the poet has achieved solipsism, he holds open his poem to the precursor’s poem. As this time he has engaged with the precursor’s poem instead of being simply influenced by it, an “uncanny effect” is created whereby it seems the poet had written the precursor’s poem instead of vice versa.

The Western Canon

The Western Canon: Books and Schools of the Ages was an attempt by Bloom to preserve the canon against the attacks of the theorists of Marxism, Feminism and New Historicism. It was also an elegy for the canon as Bloom could see that its destruction was close at hand. The book focused on twenty six authors that he thought were canonical and most representative of their nations. The twenty six writers are analyzed with respect to the qualities they possess that make them deserving of being included in the canon. Bloom divided the canon into four ages: The Theocratic Age, The Aristocratic Age, The Democratic Age and The Chaotic Age. While the first three ages were described by Giambattista Vico in his New Science, the last age, Chaotic Age, was an addition by Bloom to describe the 20th century.

Bloom writes that the quality which makes a writer canonical is strangeness. Their writing is original and uncanny, refusing to fulfill expectations. The writing of these authors is such that either it cannot be assimilated, or it ends up assimilating us. Shakespeare is a prime example of the latter as he assimilates the audience to such an extent that they become blinded to the idiosyncrasies on the stage. Shakespeare is considered by Bloom as the most important writer in the western world and the centre of his canon. Bloom goes so far as to say that Shakespeare actually invented us as he started proper character representation in his plays.

Bloom defends the canon against the theorists of Feminism, Marxism, Deconstruction and New Historicism – terming them, “the school of resentment”. Bloom is against the politicizing of the canon as he believes literature is a solitary endeavor and an exploration of the self-within. While the School of Resentment views the canon as a means through which the social elite suppresses the marginalized classes, Bloom argues that it is the aesthetic value of the works that grant them canonical status. He stresses on the analysis of the aesthetic value of literature rather than politicizing it. According to him, the prime concern of the literary critics should be the aesthetic value of literature rather than the historical or economic factors surrounding the work. The canon is dependent on the writer and the reader and their relation to the preservation of what is written.

Bloom’s uses this theory of the “anxiety of influence” in his analysis of these twenty six writers he mentions in this book. Shakespeare is the main cause of anxiety for all the Western writers according to Bloom as he is the greatest of them. As he critiques all the writers, Bloom analyses their influences and the ways by which they dealt with them. He traces the process through which these writers overcame their influences and gained canonical status themselves. The central concern for the writers is immortality through competition with the great masters who came before them.

Harold Bloom’s theory of the Anxiety of Influence is one of the most important works done on the theory of poetry. It had a powerful impact on literary studies on its publication and greatly influenced the criticism of poetry of that time. Bloom’s The Western Canon: Books and Schools for Ages was a strong defense of the Western canon against the School of Resentment who either wished to expand it or completely destroy it. Bloom’s arguments for the aesthetic value of literature and his ideas of universal humanism in the book are presented with great clarity of thought and breadth of knowledge. He defended the canonical status of the twenty six writers in the book with insight and in-depth analysis. The book was a fitting elegy for the dying Western canon by one of its strongest supporters.

Conclusion

Literary theory and criticism flourished in the latter half of the twentieth century with advancements in structuralism and post-structuralism. The concept of “the text” became prevalent and provided a new means of analysis of literature and cultural structures. Marxist criticism analyzed canonical literature through the lens of historical context and socio-economic factors, problematizing accepted notions. Harold Bloom rose in opposition to the theories of Marxism, Feminism and cultural studies. He attempted to preserve the canon against its detractors and wrote in its defense. Thus, even as new theories were being propounded, there was a conflict between critics of different fields in literary studies.

Reference 

• Allen, Graham, Roland Barthes. London: Routledge, 2003.
• Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Paul de Man, “Roland Barthes and the Limits of Structuralism”.Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism, ed. E.S. Burt, Kevin Newmark, and Andrzej Warminski. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
• Jacques Derrida, “The Deaths of Roland Barthes”. Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Vol. 1, ed. Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth G. Rottenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.
• Susan Sontag, “Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes”. Introduction to Roland Barthes, A Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.
• Bloom, Harold , The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Robert Frost. HarperCollins, 2004.
• Allen, Graham, Harold Bloom: Poetics of Conflict. New York, NY: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.
• Fite, David, Harold Bloom: The Rhetoric of Romantic Vision. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985.
• Moynihan, Robert, A Recent Imagining: Interviews with Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Miller, Paul De Man. Archon, 1986.