Oral Literature: Protecting the Planet

"Folklore is, therefore, tradition based, collectively held, orally transmitted, and a source of cultural identity. When looked at closely, it can be deduced that folklore defines the people's norms and taboos on the use of resources: when to use, what to use, and how to use them."

~Peter Wasamba, "Conservation for Sustainable Development: The Unexplored Potential of Kenyan Folklore"

From both reading Benjamin's "The Storyteller" and looking ahead to the upcoming visit of Peter Wasamba, I decided to research a little more on oral literature, and I am amazed as some of my findings. The above quote from Wasamba was included in this essay which sought to explore the role of folklore in the promotion of indigenous environmental conservation in Kenya, and how Western influence and the decline of oral literature due to such influences has not only destroyed the value of oral literature, but also begun a destruction of the nation's biodiversity and sustainable development.

In a nutshell, it goes like this: the myths and legends of the African people have served for centuries as "practical ecological, socio-economic, and spiritual functions. Emotional ties with nature and legends are two of the most powerful incentives to conserve and respect forests [and the land]" (Wasamba 2). Living in direct contact with the land day in and day out, the people knew it intimately and therefore knew how to care for and preserve it. But in walked Western civilization, who spread (or imposed?) both Christianity and their "modern" environmental planning to the African nations. They viewed the indigenous ecological belief systems as "backwards" and started their own system of land "preservation," and as the people's religious beliefs changed, they themselves "disintegrated the traditions on which the folklores were based" (Wasamba 4).

And the result has been bordering on the disastrous: land is eroding, and violence is breaking out as a result of the loss of bio-diversity which has exposed people to chronic poverty.

All because folklore was taken away.

I have heard of this before... not only from Africa, but also Asia and South America, too. We, the "civilized" West, have conquered their land, and in an effort to "civilize" the people and the land, we have not taken into account the richness of the indigenous people's knowledge of the land that they have so long lived in harmony with and preserved far longer than we could imagine. Because their folklore is so tied to nature and how to care for it, they knew how to use the land... and, in effect, love it. But that was contrary to the scientific rules we set up as Westerners to care for land. As Christianity spread through the land, the death of traditional religious beliefs and practices that supported indigenous conservation initiatives was accelerated, as these practices again were looked upon as heathen and "backwards."

This brings up a few issues for me: first off, the importance of oral literature. In my last post, I talked about oral literature and the storyteller vs. the novelist, as spoken of in Benjamin's "The Storyteller." And I wasn't entirely sold on his assessment of the two. But after reading Wasamba's article, I can see the importance... even the need... for oral literature. Not only does it preserve the history of a people, but as seen above, it preserves the land and way of life of a people. And I actually find that fact alone quite fascinating. The literature of the West may preserve history and ways of life, but I don't recall much of it being so tied to the land in its stories that it promotes environmental safety (a big issue now because we have been "destroying" our earth while we advance in technology, etc.).

Second, I wonder what this says about Christianity and Western civilizations. As Christians, we are called to be good stewards of our resources. But we chose to ignore (is that what we did?) the richness of the indigenous people's lives and stories, even pronouncing them as heathen (in the end, perhaps not being good stewards of the land). And in doing so, we have made them ashamed of their heritage (is this what we have done?), which in turn has made them forget the stories that have preserved the land (i.e. "be good stewards" of the land in our Western Christianized terms). To be honest, this makes me angry. Who were (are) we to do that, esp. without first seeing the goodness in their own ways of life?

I'm looking forward to Wasamba's lectures on Monday... I am anxious to hear more about oral literature in such societies, and anxious to see if I can reconcile my discomfort with my Western history and Wasamba's illumination of the importance of recapturing the essence of folklore...

The Storyteller vs. the Novelist: A Battle to the End?

"The storyteller takes what he tells from experience - his own or that reported by others. And he in turn makes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale. The novelist has isolated himself. The birthplace of the novel is the solitary individual, who is no longer able to express himself by giving examples of his most important concerns, is himself uncounseled,and cannot counsel others."
~Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller"

Benjamin begins his essay by lamenting the decline in storytelling, brought about by our dying ability to exchange experiences. He says that "experience has fallen in value" and that as the years have moved forward, we have become poorer, not richer, in communicable experience. Interesting. How are we declining in experiences? We are living the same lives - longer, even - than our ancestors. We even have more knowledge of the rest of the world. We take communications classes now to improve said skills. And yet, according to Benjamin, those experiences - and the ability to communicate them if we have them - are dying rapidly. He further goes on to say that this decrease in communicability of experience means that we are losing the ability to seek counsel as readers/hearers or give counsel as writers/storytellers. Counsel and the wisdom it imparts are dying.

And the novelist perpetuates the continuance of this decline, as Benjamin throws in the shocking news that the novelist as the solitary individual is"no longer able to express himself by giving examples of his most important concerns, is himself uncounseled,and cannot counsel others." He seems to be saying that the novel - and its author - are not worth much.

Ah, but the dying breed of the storyteller. Now, he is the one we need. He has listened to the stories, has remembered them, and now tells those stories as the continuation of the grand story of life. And let's just admit it: oral literature is not highly regarded in our society. And even the written word is losing its audience. Good storytelling IS diminishing in our technological, fast-paced society.

Let's start with oral literature. At holidays, my family sits around the table and tells story after story about their past, their experiences, what made them who they are today. And I sit there fixed to their every word. I want to know the stories of their lives, the stories of generations past that I will never know. But that happens maybe three or four times out of the year, and I know for other families, it is even less than that. We have moved away from the family and into 60-hour-a-week jobs, movies, computers, and in effect, have lost much contact with other people, and even more with the stories of our elders. Stories used to be told around the fire at night, and those stories would be passed from generation to generation. Stories, legends, myths... they came down to us and we have internalized those stories until we don't even remember that they were from the storytellers of old, so much are they now part of our lives.

But as the storyteller (the familial/communal and the individual) diminished with the rise of technology, the novelist grew in stature. But how can the novelist not have counsel for others? How can he not express himself? How is the storyteller so far above the novelist for Benjamin? I am torn on this issue, and really don't think I agree with Benjamin here. Novelists and writers look at the world around them (their experiences and interactions with it) and put words to these. And with the dissemination of books now, their experiences - and their counsel - can be potentially shared with the entire world rather than just with one community. And in doing so, his experience and story - like that of the storyteller - also becomes the experience of those reading the tale. And yes, perhaps the novelist has isolated himself to write his text. But he has still lived in life and heard the stories and had experiences. And he stores them in his memory until he can write them out.

So, I think both oral storytellers and those storytellers of the written word both have wisdom to impart. But Benjamin may argue that the novel may have truth, but it is not continuing the greater story of society , as the novel must always be "new" if it is to be good, while the oral story builds upon legend and myth. Perhaps that is so, but perhaps also novelists are bringing new versions of the same story to their readers. Perhaps they too are continuing the greater story of a people, albeit a singular, individual one. Perhaps storyteller and novelist can remain side by side, telling different but profoundly similar tales of the story of humankind.

Now to work on reviving the art of reading in society...

What Matter Who's Speaking (Take Two)

"The name of the author remains at the contours of texts - separating one from the other, defining their form, and characterizing their mode of existence."
~Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?"

I know we read Foucault a while ago, but something happened the other day that made this essay very real to me. This will just be a short excursion into the Author, one that I have taken up before, but one that I'm finding is changing, in Barbara Herrnstein Smith's terms, with the changes in my personal economy.

Let me give you some background... I love quotations. I have spent hours searching the internet for the most profound ones. I love finding just the right quotation to fit into a paper or to fit what I'm feeling. And because I am inextricably connected to technology, I have compiled a "database" (a Word document of 65 pages at present) filled with what I like to think are the "best" quotations, arranged both topically and alphabetically. (Yes, can you say English nerd?). And every evening, I search through that database to find a quotation to put on my Instant Messenger away message. The quote usually has something to do with what I'm feeling that day, or what I've gone through, or just something that the astute person would find is saying much more about me (i.e. my "personal economy") that day than my own words would say.

The other night, I was looking up quotes on love (yes, can you also say "hopeless romantic" and "one who still believes in fairy tales," and further believes that the art of telling them - and having them - is being lost, just as Benjamin briefly talked of in his essay "The Storyteller"?). I found one on a website that was listed as anonymous. But I liked the quote, so I decided to copy it and put it on my away message for the evening. One of my friends actually looked at the quote when I put it up, and decided to do some sleuthing of his own. He found that the quote was from the movie "Meet Joe Black." That was enough to challenge how much I liked the twelve sentences I had just copied and pasted to represent "me" for that evening.

I have never seen the movie. But something didn't "sit right" with me. Something about taking a quote from a movie - with Brad Pitt, no less - and adhering to what this movie advocated seemed wrong, or at least not "erudite" enough. I had hoped it was an anonymous quote from something "better," such as an Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet. Now, her name would hold clout for me... but from a movie? Nope, I didn't like the quote any more. I told my friend that I was going to find a different quote, a better quote, one that has more "status" behind it... because more status means that it's more true. Before I even thought of Lit Crit, my friend challenged my sudden change of heart towards the quote, saying he liked it, and in essence, he also asked, "What matter who's speaking?" Lit Crit discussions hit me like a wall of bricks. Here I was placing the author's name above the words, saying that if the author was not respected or well-known or from a popular movie and not from a long-standing, tried and true text, then I couldn't like the quote, and I couldn't think of it as having truth. It seems absurd as I think about it, but for me at that moment (and I suspect at many other moments in my life), it did matter who was speaking.

For me, the realization of the author characterized the quote's "mode of existence." And until my friend pointed this out to me, I didn't even realize I was ascribing such an importance to the author's name.

I do find it interesting, though, that I was "ok" with not knowing the name of the author originally, that an "anonymous" author was better than a "petty" pop culture quote penned by some screen writer (what does this further say about my view of literature and authors on film? Am I saying right now that they aren't authors? In any other circumstance, I would be the first one to say that playwrights and screen writers are most definitely authors... but in my subconscious mind I have ruled out their ability to "speak" to me and for me... which actually bothers me a lot, since my very mode of life in this instance is directly contradicting what I say I'm "standing for").

In the end, I did change the quote for that evening. I found one penned by an author I had never heard of, but who nonetheless seemed much safer - more truthful and in better standing - than the movie. (How I determined that last fact is also up for debate). But this demonstrated to me in my own life the ideas we covered in class, and how much I really do care about who's speaking. And I have a feeling that extends to many, many, many more areas of my life, for better, or for worse...

Finding the Potential

"The formalist critic knows as well as anyone that literary works are merely potential until they are read - that is, until they are re-created in the minds of actual readers, who vary enormously in their capabilities, their interests, their prejudices, their ideas. But the formalist critic is concerned primarily with the work itself. Speculation on the mental processes of the author takes the critic away from the work into biography and psychology. ...Such studies describe the process of composition, not the structure of the thing composed, and they may be performed quite as validly for the poor work as for the good one."

~Cleanth Brooks, "The Formalist Critic"

First off, there's a lot packed into that paragraph, so I think I will methodically (at least, in theory, do this methodically) attempt to make sense of it in shorter segments... beginning at the beginning, with literary works being merely potential until they are read. Part of me read this and said, "Well, of course that's true," while the other part of me wanted to ask, "What in the world do you mean by that?" Let's examine both sides. Someone writes an essay... or, let's even go with this blog. I am writing this blog. And it only has mere potential... it is nothing until someone reads it. Ok, I see that... right now, my words are just floating around, meaning nothing except something to me. They could have a potential to be profound and great (however minutely slight the chance), but they won't be profound and great to the world until someone reads my words and pronounces them as such. I understand that. But that is separating good writing from others reading it. I conjecture that there is a lot of good writing out there, many pieces that we have never read, that we will never read, that would change the course of humanity if they were discovered. Yes, they still have potential, but in all probability, they will never be discovered and read. But going back to my blog here, my words have meaning - and potential - to me. Does that count for anything? Obviously, I have a purpose behind writing here, and someone will be reading this, and however arrogant this is, I think some things I think are worth thinking. Yet, that would be putting emphasis on the writer, and looking at biographical and psychological issues related to the writing... which defeats the purpose of a Formalist approach...

So let's talk about the biographical and psychological considerations of the critic. Brooks states in the same paragraph from which the above quote was taken that "such explorations are very much worth making. But they should not be confused with an account of the work." That's good to hear from a Formalist... they are not discrediting the use of such information and studies, but they are saying it is separate from the actual text in front of them. I understand that too. But I am actually more interested in the ending of the quote above, that "these studies may be performed quite as validly for the poor work as for the good one." Yes, that is very, very true. Studying biographical and psychological information really doesn't always tell us much about the actual poem. I believe Brooks is dead on when he says that it aides in understanding the creative process that went into composition, even though I do not completely agree that it is irrelevant to the structure of the thing composed. And yet, what truly makes a good poem? Biographical and psychological considerations can be performed for both poor and good works. But how do we know which is which? This is where the Formalist stance comes in... the work will speak for itself, with its irony (Brooks believed all poetry exhibits irony, or rather, "pervasive incongruity") and subtleties. But who would bother reading something poor to begin with? Is there such a thing as a "poor poem" in the professional world? And since we all "vary enormously in [our] capabilities, [our] interests, [our] prejudices, [our] ideas," won't someone find some worth in a poem? And that goes back to the question, "Do we have a responsibility to appreciate something we don't like?"

It seems as if the questions keep coming and going in circles... and they are too in-depth for this one post... but stay tuned for more "profound" thoughts...

What Matter Who's Speaking?

"If it were proved that [Shakespeare] had not written the sonnets that we attribute to him , this would constitute a significant change and affect the manner in which the author's name functions."

"The name of the author remains at the contours of texts - separating one from the other, defining their form, and characterizing their mode of existence."

"The function of an author is to characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses within a society."

~Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?"

Remind yourself you are a twenty-first century critic. And then further imagine that you just discovered a piece of shocking evidence: the Shakespearean sonnets were not written by Shakespeare. No, not by that genius who wrote "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Instead, it was written by none other than... a woman!

The news has spread across the globe, the academic elite in an uproar over the news. Feminist critics pounce on the sonnets, beginning the Shakespearean critique from the eyes of its new writer. Everything has changed, hasn't it? The symbols are different, the language different, the meaning different. And all because of a name.

Foucault spoke about the nature of the name of an author, which is "not simply an element of speech." The name of an author, instead, separates works and groups of works from one another. And it's true. We know Emerson by his seeming long-winded, eloquent prose, the quasi-divine seer who transports knowledge to the reader. We can identify a Shakespearean sonnet any day through his speech patterns. And we do this with most art forms. Since I know music, let me take you to a Music History class. At the end of a music listening test (where we have to identify the composer and the work we hear), Dr. Dixon gives us a piece we didn't have to study for the exam, and for extra credit, we have to guess the piece and its composer. We search for defining characteristics of the great composers. We know them by their names, and we group their music into one category, distinct from any other composer. And it works with art, too. We can readily identify a Monet or Picasso painting by the generalizations we know about their work.

But what if the name changes, as in the Shakespeare example above? It destroys all our preconceived notions of the piece of literature. We can no longer say the author does such and such because that is what he or she normally does. We can no longer judge it against works by that same author... So, really, the name has a lot to do with it.

And now, I would like to bring this topic to the Bible. We have no collective author for this text (except God...). Instead, every book (or nearly every one) has been written by a different author, many of them also nameless. We can conjecture at names (and Biblical scholars often do), but that never changes the meaning of the text. Yes, an author can help us figure out context, but it never really affects meaning in this case. How does this fact fit in with Foucault? We have no authorial standard by which to judge the Bible (and some argue about the Bible as "literature." It is a sacred book, so how can it be literature at the same time?), no way to identify an author upon first reading. And yet this piece of inspired literature has lasted generations. And the Bible as a whole does "characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses within a society," in this case, Judeo-Christian discourses. And we have lasted without specific authorial understanding for all these centuries. And Barthes' authorial theory in "The Death of the Author" seems to work for the Bible: "a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination." We don't have an author, and we cannot necessarily find one, but the unity lies in the destination, the way God speaks to us through the nameless writers of the Bible. In Foucault's words, "what matter who's speaking?"

Makes you think about how we categorize authors in general...

Reaching the Destination

"The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted."
~Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author"

The Romantics valued the author: the poet was the representative of all humanity, embodying what every person was and is in part. And yet Emerson was suspicious of reading, for through doing this, someone else's imagination was in control of your own. Therefore, for Emerson and many of the other Romantics, books were good only if they inspired, but they were bad if you thought they were a record of pure truth. Usher in Formalism and T.S. Eliot, and you were instructed to look only at the poem, to read it for itself, without any view of the author's background or intent in mind. And then, the next player entered the stage, telling us the most radical story of all: that of the death of the author.

Roland Barthes does not say writers are unimportant... he instead gave birth to the reader. I would like to focus on the above quotation today, to see what it actually means for us as readers. Barthes is giving us a big responsibility here. He is actually allowing us to be writers ourselves, for through reading, we are really disentangling and rearranging the language in our minds to make sense of it. And we as readers are the words' destination. We are the final place it lands. We the readers - not the author - make the words come alive.

Ok, I can see that. I take my job as a reader very seriously, and I love the idea of disentangling and rearranging the words I read so that they make sense to me. I do this all the time, as I read something and write notes in the margins of what I like about the passage I just read, or what the words remind me of, or even what meaning I ascribe to the language the author uses. But doesn't that negate the second part of Barthes' quotation: "Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted"? I am very much so a person with a history, with a biography, and a psychology. I couldn't be reading if I wasn't me. I do not understand how we could in any way objectify reading to say that the reader is just as impersonal as the author (who for Barthes, really plays no role in this literary phenomenon). How can you extract yourself from reading? I can understand an attempt to read objectively, in an effort to look at all possible sides and reach an objective conclusion on the writing. This actually hearkens back to my last post and the question, "Do we have a responsibility to appreciate things we do not like?" And as readers, I think it is our responsibility. We can look at a piece of work and appreciate its craft (but then again, doesn't that point back to the author, who is the creator / location of the discourse you are reading? For it is the author himself who created, even though Barthes would say it is the language that speaks, not the author... more on that later...), even though we may not like the "message." But can we ever truly extract who we are from what we are reading? Can we ever truly take away all the history we have, all the events in our lives that would cause us to view a piece of literature through our own specific lens? I really don't think that's possible... I can't take any part of me away from myself. I can look as objectively as I can, but I cannot retract my history and my story. That would be going against the very essence of my humanity.

And the beauty of having a history, a biography, and a psychology is that you see something new every time you read something (be it a new piece of literature or one you've read over and over again). Take the Bible, for instance. Why is it timeless? Why can it speak to so many people in so many situations, millions of times over? Why can we read a passage and have it mean nothing, and then read it over five years later and have it transform our lives? It's because we have a story, and each time we read, we are bringing that history to the table.

Yes, perhaps that is making literature too personal. Perhaps I am giving the reader too much leeway. Perhaps I have taken Barthes' birth of the reader to a place he never meant it to be. And I will agree that part of the power of literature is in its destination, in what it means for the reader. But I will not allow reading to strip away the richness of my history... I will not allow my reading to always and only be an objective study of words on a page...

What We Don't Know

"The recipe for perpetual ignorance is:

be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge."
~Elbert Hubbard

I just want to mull something over with you today. On Thursday, the end of our class brought about the questions "Do we have a responsibility to appreciate things we do not like?" and "Do we have a responsibility to expand or multiply our pleasures?" In my last post, I was almost touching these questions, so let me revisit a few of my points at the end of it. Wimsatt and Beardsley believed that we are in no place to judge a piece of literature on the grounds of our emotional response to it. Yes, we will have emotional responses, but we must justify those through the medium of the poem itself. In essence, Wimsatt and Beardsley say that we must be critical readers, and it is the reader's job to "fit" into the whole... the immediate emotional response you find is not the only important thing in regards to the poem, and in regards to judging it as a work of art. In a sense, the reader is called to change, to look beyond what makes them feel happy or sad and see what the actual poem is doing and why it is producing those responses.

And that brought us to the two above questions. And in my last post, I brought up the Christian take on literature and art (in many cases)... it is judged as "evil" or "good" depending on the content, the way it makes us feel, etc., etc., etc. We are appalled at the sexuality or the language and do not look passed that to the actual work of literature itself. Is this saying we are not good critics? And does that also mean that we have shut ourselves off to works of literature that are truly "great" if we cannot get passed their vulgarities? Do we really have a responsibility to look beyond that and see the genius of the work, despite its moral flaws?

Let me just give you a small example, one that was actually brought up in my Writing Seminar the other day. We had a guest speaker, art professor Donald Forsythe, and somehow, we got on the topic of "good art," and what exactly that was. One of my peers asked about the Blue Painting that so many people come from miles to see (I can't really remember the artist's name), and Prof. Forsythe commented that it was an incredible painting. It looks something like this:
Yes, this blue piece of canvas by Robert Motherwell is labeled as one of the greatest works of art in the twentieth century. Prof. Forysthe went on to say that it was the background of the artist's life that made it so great (which would have me go into a lot more than the Formalists of literary criticism would ever wish me to do, so I will respect them in sticking with the topic at hand). Most of my peers wrinkled their nose or laughed, thinking how this could truly be one of the greatest paintings of the century. And I wondered the same thing.

But then I thought back to our class... do we really have a responsibility to appreciate things we do not like? I would not hang this painting up in my house, but can't I say that the subtle shades of blue Motherwell achieves are enchanting, and the lights spots in the middle give me the feel of a ship on the ocean? Can I not appreciate this work of art for what it is - a work of art? I don't have to like it, but I can still appreciate it.

I have found that I often do this with literature. And I truly think we do have a responsibility to appreciate things we do not like. Just as the above Hubbard quote says, we will remain in ignorance if we can't open up to things we do not know. And what implication does this have for Christians? No, I absolutely do not think we should condone overtly sexualized and vulgar topics in literature, art, theatre, music, etc. But I do think we should learn to look critically. Because really, if we just speak as "Christians," saying something is moral or not moral, and that's all we tell the world, how will they ever listen to our message? We need to give them concrete reasons why such a work is good or bad... and not just from a moral standpoint. Critically reading something ensures that we know how it works, and then we can go and tell people publically what we think of a piece of literature... armed with the intelligent ammunition of a "why."

The Value of Emotions?

"This paradox, if it is one, is the analogue in emotive terms of the antique formula of the metaphysical critic, that poetry is both individual and universal - a concrete universal. It may well be that the contemplation of this object, or pattern of emotive knowledge, which is the poem, is the ground for some ultimate emotional state which may be termed the aesthetic. ...It may well be. The belief is attractive; it may exalt our view of poetry. But it is no concern of criticism, no part of criteria."
~Wimsatt and Beardsley, "The Affective Fallacy"

So what, then, is the critic supposed to do? Wimsatt and Beardsley make it very clear that your emotive response cannot ever be the basis by which you judge a poem or piece of literature. Let me give you a (rather trite) example...

I searched for "concrete poetry" on the all-knowing Google search engine (insert big smile here), and found this. Now, I know this really is a trite example, but please bear with me. I think this poem is cute. If I had a student or a child come up to me and give me this, I would say I loved it and would go and put it on my refrigerator (again, please bear with this example...). And I would be completely genuine in saying I thought it was cute, because, come on, let's be honest... concrete poetry is usually cute, sometimes clever... but does that make it good poetry? Because it brings a smile to my face, or because I "like" it, does that mean it's the best poem in the world?

I would venture to say, absolutely not. This poem is not the greatest poem in the world. Far from it, actually. So, one example down... but what about a Robert Frost poem? Take, say, "The Road Not Taken." That poem, for me, is inspiring. The meaning, the call of the poem inspires me to take that road, to risk that path that so many others have rejected because of its seeming impossibility. And I do judge the poem as "good," good because it articulates a message that I have never heard before in such language. Good because it inspires me. Good because, yes, I have an emotional response to it. And according to Wimsatt and Beardsley, I have absolutely no authority by which to judge this poem because of that.

As I demonstrated in the "&" poem, I see their point. But when we read a poem and have some type of emotional response (whether or not the author intended us to have that response.... and wouldn't they intend something... they are poets, aren't they??), doesn't that mean we have read the poem deliberately, in some way that we see through the words to the meaning of the poem, which further produced a response from our emotions? And perhaps then we go back and study the poem, establishing what exactly caused that response. How does that not give us credibility to judge a piece of literature or poetry? If we go back, can we not justify our emotional response through the medium of the poem itself? And isn't that criticism? I think Wimsatt and Beardsley believed that you can have an emotional response to a poem... you just had to justify it. You have to become a student of the poem, and only then can you make your response public so others can talk about your it.

But what if you can't "justify" it? What if the meaning of a poem or piece of literature is just so important to you? Can you judge that piece of literature just on its own, for that alone? Wimsatt and Beardsley obviously didn't think so... but I wonder... in the Christian circles, I often believe we judge a piece of art / literature / music on the basis of the emotional response it produces, and if it produces something "against" our beliefs, then it must be bad art (and vice versa, of course). But does that mean that it's not good literature, just because it goes against what we believe? Perhaps that's what Wimsatt and Beardsley were getting at... our emotions often lie or are biased. But do we ever have a right to say that something is "evil" because the emotional response we felt was overwhelmingly "bad." (I'm thinking of overly-sexualized literature or music, etc....). Does that mean it's bad literature? And if we can't judge on the basis of our emotions in some sense, who can really judge literature to begin with? We all have emotional responses... how can you separate one from the other, saying you won't judge a poem on it's emotionally-producing response, when you have emotions for or against it yourself? And that begs the questions... when, and how, can we ever truly, unbiasedly, judge a piece of literature??