New Criticism & Critical Rationalism

One of the primary dangers of any general theory of literature, and by extension its criticism processes, is the attempt to reduce all aspects of the field to one easily conceived entity. A Marxist might see any work he or she comes across as indicative of the author's and characters' relationship to economic condition and class consciousness, while the feminist examines the roles of gender and sexuality in the literary canon. One of my literature professors (American lit to be precise) compared literary theories to "philosphical lenses through which one can try to come to terms with the meaning and production of literary art." If so, the lenses are those of microscopes, and in the frenzied search for the Great Quanta from which All is spawned, the theory disciple's tunnel vision leaves them blind to occurrences on the larger scale.

As in these movements' relationships with other fields, frustration sets in with the inability to escape the limitations placed by the theories, and this holds especially true for the attempted critical process based on these conceptions. Any thematic interpretation of a work, no matter how far removed from the focus of an ideaology-specific theory, recurves back to the guiding principles. Simultaneously, any argument proffered against that particular interpretation finds its roots trapped in the same mire. Revulsion towards the proffered literary/world view is explicable by that world view, and so on and so on, ad infinitum.

A critical rationalist would recognize this claustrophobic cycle as a lack of falsifiability in the original theory. Like Plato's republic, it succeeds with its goals, then smugly closes the doors to progress or further comprehension, protecting itself with circumstantial ad hominems in lieu of guardians. As frustrating as it seems, when confronted with this sort of behavior, the best policy is generally to holster your guns and head to the saloon for a cooldown. A turtle may be safe within its shell, but I promise it won't be going anywhere while it's bunkered down.

So how can one safely interpret literature, as is the goal of most of the more widely accepted theories, without falling into doctrinal quicksand? First, know your criteria -- objective, falsifiable understanding of the work. Separate the 'why' of literature from the 'what' of literature. Explanation of the human need for literature belongs to other fields, hard and social sciences, not the interpretation of literature itself. If that doesn't suffice for you, you may want to look into those fields, or content yourself with the knowledge that art of any form has a goal, no matter how commonplace or lofty, whether interpretive, sheerly aesthetic, emotional, or any combination.

Next, decide which facts are cogent to meet the criteria. Here is where New Criticism tends to differ from other interpretive methods; for many, the text is the manifest will of the author. For the New Critic, the will of the author only matters insofar as it is displayed through the text, and can, in fact, serve as one measure of a particular writer's skill. While this may seem counter-intuitive, remember the dangers of other closed-circuit literary criticisms. When the author's intent is the final, divine stamp on the matter, falsifiability goes right out the window.

Consider a text as a universe in and of itself, and yourself as the scientist attempting an understanding of that universe. You are a religious person, and adhere to the laws and viewpoints of your particular doctrine, but you also desire practical exploration of the universe on which to build and develop. Now, imagine that in your experimentation or research, you come across facts that are directly contradictory to your religious doctrine. As a religious person, you may be tempted to ignore the findings, but this is outright rejection of an approximation of truth that has already been found, and if such a rejection were to come to light in the scientific community, your ethos as a scientist would be severely depleted. The best course is to attempt to determine how the doctrine and the findings came to differ; in this way, you can hone your understanding of the universe without contradicting your religious beliefs. While the analogy isn't perfect, consider the author as the text's God; he created the world, but now we are left to explore it and make sense of it in the best way we know to keep intellectual honesty intact.

So if we rule out authorial intent as the primary method by which we obtain literary objectivity, what is left? Quite simply, the text. There are laws by which language works, and we can utilize these to dissect and interpret meaning. Science tests hypotheses and arrives at conclusions based on data. Even so, application of our laws of language can lead to insight, or, in the extreme and delightful cases, the laws themselves expanded through the witnessing of a turn of phrase or syntactical device that leads to directions previously unexplored.

Any person has the capacity to interpret facts in different ways, but this is the beauty of reading what is rather than forcing outside preconceptions on the framework. Any interpretation based solely on text is already superior to others because it allows for disagreement, reinterpretation, and progress. In this way, literature becomes dynamic, rather than an exercise in ivory tower intellectuals discussing Truths from dusty tomes. In actuality, the text becomes dynamic even to the individual attempting the interpretation, as they're encouraged to read repeatedly and on many different levels -- the first time through for a general idea, again for interpretive purposes, again for aesthetic and emotional purposes, and so on. Fluidity of meaning provides greater accessibility, encouraging discussion and reevaluation of ideas, while avoiding the ultimate frustration of banging one's head against a doctrinal wall. Even better, one does not have to abandon one's literary theory in order to delve into a text using New Criticism. Evidence can still be found through the text to support your ideas, but the difference is that the text molds the idea rather than vice versa.

Once again, it should be noted that this is an interpretive viewpoint of art, and aims for objectivity and intellectual honesty in idea-transfer. Strictly aesthetic and emotional stances towards art do exist, and for a perspective on whether or not interpretation cheapens these aspects of art, look towards Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation. For myself, the two experiences are not mutually exclusive, and I tend to find Sontag's stance towards art as limiting as the other theories earlier mentioned. But that, as they say, is a story for another time.