Are We Surprised English Literature Students Can’t Read Books?

In a recent article in the Spectator, ‘We’re all doomed if English literature students can’t read books‘, Sam Leith laments that many of today’s students have difficulty in reading “long difficult books” and that the way that literature is treated in schools, and especially universities (with modern literary ‘theory’) has contributed to the decline in the humane view of literature.

I was fortunate to be schooled in the early 1960s before the destruction of literary education. My A level English lit course introduced me to the study of Chaucer, Milton, Alexander Pope, Jane Austen, Ben Johnson and Shakespeare. The other course in practical criticism (which was then called ‘Appreciation’) was not a mere technical exercise but, among other things, helped one to distinguish between genuine and sentimental expressions of emotion. With the detailed study of two Shakespeare plays in particular I came to see in Shakespearean tragedy such depth of vision. The poetic drama put me in touch with some deep-rooted truths and insights into human folly, good and evil, and constancies in human nature that gave his works universal significance. The in-depth attention to all the books I studied was an initiation into collective wisdom, and inspired me to study literature and philosophy for the rest of my life.

Modern literary ‘theory’ (which has replaced practical criticism) has actively eschewed the idea that fictional characters are to be (imaginatively) regarded as human beings. First there was ‘Structuralism’, which rejected the idea that the meaning and value of a literary work lies in its representational content, and turned attention instead to pseudo-scientific notions of abstract linguistic features of its form or structure. ‘Post-Structuralism’ (equally known as ‘Deconstruction’) came about largely through the more radical French thinkers such as Barthes, Derrida and Lacan. So it became fashionable to believe that ‘texts’ can only have what meaning is imposed upon them, since in themselves they are meaningless marks upon a page. This was a useful conclusion for those who wish to depart from reading good or great literary works and instead to ‘deconstruct’ them in accordance with Marxist, feminist and other woke ideologies.

One example is that of Terry Eagleton, who in his book Marxism and Literary Criticism only mentions the idea of fictional ‘characters’ in derogatory terms as the product of the ‘increasingly bourgeois class’. Thus in his book William Shakespeare (which the preface describes as “an exercise in political semiotics”) we read that Coriolanus is the “study of a bourgeois individualist”. In Macbeth Duncan is a “symbol of the body politic” and Macbeth is a “floating signifier in ceaseless doomed pursuit of an anchoring signified”, while the witches are not evil hags but call for our approval since they “deconstruct the political order”. No doubt he would have described Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park as symbolic of mercantile racism.

If we turn our backs on the ‘old idea’ that novels and plays depict the thoughts and conduct of fictional human beings (and the term fictional characters is surely morally significant) then we drain literary works, which are a product of human intention, of their meaning. The act of imaginative writing is a creativity rooted in love (whereas evil is decreative). As Wittgenstein put it, “An observation in a poem is overstated if the intellectual points are nakedly exposed, not clothed from the heart.” But writers do not create in a cultureless vacuum; they are participants in the living spirit of traditions that inspire and give sense to such creative acts. Over the centuries, the achievements in science, literature and philosophy are not to be thought of as manifestations of mere individual ‘skill’ popping up out of nowhere like lamps shining in the dark. Achievement is achievement within a tradition and is related to that tradition even when it strikes out in a new direction.

This cultural inheritance is brought out by T.S. Eliot in ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, where he argues, for example, that if the poet has “the historical sense” he regards poetry as “the living whole of all the poetry that has been written”. This organic sense of art conveys a responsibility upon the artist and informs our perception of his achievement. “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation, is the appreciation of of his relation to the dead poets and artists.” It is what Michael Oakeshott has called a “transaction between the generations”. It is the medium through which the dead can speak to the living and through which we enact our duty to the yet unborn.

It would be a shallow conception of the educative power of fiction to think that it provides moral lessons as such, as though what we learn is a series of propositions. If Hamlet appears to criticise thought without action and Othello appears to criticise action without proper thought, we do not for that reason see those two plays as opposed. They no more oppose one another than the Brahms “Clarinet Quintet” with its autumnal sadness opposes Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”. The knowledge we gain from literary works is acquired through ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ which is different from ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing how’. In other words, good literary works ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’. Instead of providing abstract propositions they provide through imaginative engagement an experience. We imaginatively engage with a fictional world yet also stand outside it, knowing it is fictional. Although it engages our feelings and emotions, this dual aspect of our attention means that in another way we are also distanced from a fictional world so that it can provide a contemplative attitude to what is represented. This makes it different from the fantasy of ‘make-believe’.

One of the values of this contemplative attitude can be seen for instance in fictional depictions of evil, especially with Shakespeare. There is a strong tendency in modern life to shy away from the true nature of evil, which is so often evaded by considering evil people to be victims of ‘social disadvantage’ or as suffering from pseudo-scientific notions of ‘personality disorder’. But with the character of Macbeth we can face, with all the safety that fiction affords, a corrective to such anaesthetising of our moral sensibilities. We are shown the disintegration of soul that is entailed by stepping into evil. It is difficult to think of more evil characters than Regan in King Lear or Iago in Othello. Regan, with her motiveless sadism is a cosmic mystery. “Is there any cause in nature that make these hard hearts?” In his essay ‘The Nature of Evil’ Roger Scruton writes of the mysterious nature of an evil person who “is in the world but does not seem to be of this world”. “He is like a fracture in our human world, through which we catch glimpses of the void.” Evil negates and seeks to deprive others of their humanity (which is also true of Iago). King Lear is the most terrible picture that Shakespeare painted of the world, yet it is one of his finest achievements. Simone Weil remarked that this work is the direct spirit of pure love. The work does not lick its lips in enjoyment of the spectacle. Beneath the horrors there is some sympathy for ‘the little world of man’ and we sense beneath some glimpse of what we ought to be.

Works of literature are not disembodied ‘texts’ but works that speak with a human voice. But in our increasingly dehumanising age so many English departments have dehumanised and politicised art.

Dr Frank Palmer is a professional philosopher and author. His last book was Literature and Moral Understanding (Oxford University Press).