Todorov the Notion of Literature

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The Notion o Literature*

Tzvetan Todorov

B

eore launching into the awesome question o the nature o literature, let us begin, as a precautionary measure, by examiningnot literature itsel but rather the kind o discourse which, like

this very study, takes literature as its object. The dierence will be one o approach rather than o objective; but who can say whether the courseo the inquiry is not o greater interest than its fnal results?

We must frst cast a doubt upon the legitimacy o the very notion o literature; neither the mere existence o the term, nor the act that a wholeuniversity system is based upon it, can o itsel justiy its acceptance.

The frst grounds or doubt are o an empirical nature. No completehistory o the word and its equivalents, in all languages and throughout

time, has yet been undertaken; yet even a superfcial inquiry into thequestion sufces to convince us that the term has not always been withus. In the European languages the word literature , in its present usage,is quite recent: it barely dates back to the nineteenth century. Couldit be that we are dealing with an historical and not at all an “eternal”phenomenon? Moreover, many languages (those o Arica, or example)still have no generic term to designate literature as a whole; and whileLévy‑Bruhl would have sought to explain this absence by the so‑calledprimitive nature o these languages allegedly incapable o abstraction

and hence devoid o any words designating the general rather thanthe specifc, the time when we could accept such an explanation haslong passed. Finally, we must also take into account the diversifcationo literature in our own countries; who would dare decide today what is literature and what is not, given the irreducible diversity o all the

written works which, rom infnitely dierent perspectives, tend to beregarded as literature?

This argument is not decisive: a notion may be legitimate even thoughno corresponding word may as yet exist to designate it; it does, however,

create a frst element o doubt as to the “natural” character o literature.Nor is a theoretical examination o the problem more reassuring. Whence



new literary history2

do we derive the certainty that an entity such as literature really exists?From experience: we meet literary works in school, then in college; wefnd them in certain specialized stores; reerences to “literary authors”

crop up constantly in our everyday conversations. That an entity called“literature” does unction on an intersubjective and social level seemsindeed unquestionable. Agreed. But what does this prove? That in alarger system—a society, a civilization—there exists an identifable ele‑ment reerred to as literature. But does it prove that all the individual

works grouped under this heading partake o a common nature which we can identiy with equal justifcation?

Let us call “unctional” our frst defnition o this entity—the defnition which identifes it in terms o what it “does” as an element in a larger

system; and “structural” our second, whereby we seek to test whether allthe individual works collectively regarded as literature in the unctionalmeaning o the word partake o the same characteristics. The distinctionbetween the unctional and the structural points o view should be rigor‑ously kept in mind, even though to pass rom one to the other is perectly permissible. In order to illustrate this distinction, let us take the exampleo advertising: its precise unction within our society is undeniably clear;but what o its structural identity? It can express itsel though the visualand auditory, as well as other media; it may or may not have a duration

in time; it may be continuous or discontinuous; it may use techniques as varied as direct inducement, description, allusion, antiphrasis, and so on.The unquestionable unctional entity—assuming or the moment that it is indeed unquestionable—does not necessarily have a correspondingstructural entity. The one need not necessarily imply the other, althoughthe afnities between them can be easily observed. The dierence is morein the point o view than in the thing itsel: i literature (or advertising) isdiscovered to be a structural notion, then the unction o its constituent elements will have to be determined; conversely, the unctional notion“advertising” can be seen to belong to a structure which is, let us say,that o society. Structure is made up o unctions, and unctions createstructure; but since it is the point o view which determines the object o knowledge, the dierence remains an essential one.

Thus the existence o a unctional entity “literature” in no way impliesthat o a structural entity (although it does make us want to fnd out

whether such is not the case). Now unctional defnitions o literature(in terms o what it does rather than what it is) are very numerous, al‑though they are not necessarily sociological: when a metaphysician likeHeidegger considers the essence o poetry, he too arrives at a unctionaldefnition. To say that “art is the concretization o truth,” or that “poetry is the creation o being through words,” is to say what the aim o art



3the notion o literature

it to ulfll that aim. The unction is here o an ontological nature, but a unction nonetheless. Heidegger himsel afrms that there is no struc‑tural entity corresponding to the unctional one when he says elsewhere

that his search is “concerned only with great art.” This defnition doesnot contain any internal criteria which would allow us to identiy a worko art (or literature). It is a mere statement o what a certain kind o art—the best—ought to do.

It is possible that literature is only a unctional entity. But we shall not pursue this line o thought. We shall assume instead—at the risk o be‑ing proved wrong in the end—that it also has a structural identity, andattempt to fnd out what it is. Many other optimists have preceded us inthis search: their suggested answers will serve as a point o departure.

Without concern or historical detail, we shall attempt to examine thetwo kinds o solution most requently proposed.From antiquity to the mid‑eighteenth century, roughly speaking, the

same defnition recurs, whether explicitly or not, in the writings o thetheoreticians o Western art. Upon close examination, this defnition isseen to consist o two distinct elements. Generically, art is an imitation

which varies according to the medium used; literature is imitation throughlanguage, painting through visual images. Specifcally, it is not just any imitation; or what is imitated is not real but fctional, and need not have

existed. Literature is fction : this is its frst structural defnition.This defnition was ormulated over several centuries and expressed in very dierent terms. It was probably this property o literature which led Aristotle to note that “poetry is more concerned with the general, history with the particular” (Poetics , 1451b; the remark has another meaning as well): a literary sentence does not reer to specifc actions, which alonecould occur in reality. Later generations will view literature as essentially deceptive, alse; Northrop Frye has drawn our attention to the ambiguity o terms such as “able,” “fction,” and “myth,” which apply with equalease to “literature” and to “alsehood.” But this is misleading: a literary statement is no more “alse” than it is “true.” The earliest modern logi‑cians (Frege, or example) have already pointed out that a literary text cannot be submitted to the test o truth. It is neither true nor alse but simply fctional—an observation which today has become a commonplaceo literary criticism.

But is such a defnition really satisactory? Aren’t we guilty o substi‑tuting or a true defnition what is merely one o the consequences o literature? There is nothing to prevent a story relating a real event rombeing viewed as literature; no changes in composition are needed, only the determination to disregard its truth and read it “as i” it were litera‑ture. Any text whatever can be given a “literary” reading: the question




Obviously, what is being oered indirectly here is one o the propertieso literature rather than its defnition. But can this property be observedin every literary text? Is it by chance that we reely apply the word “fction”

to some types o literature (novels, short stories, plays) but fnd it muchmore difcult to apply the same word to poetry—i indeed we ever do?It is tempting to suggest that just as the novel is neither true nor alseeven though it may describe an event, so poetry in turn is neither fctionnor nonfction. The question does not even arise, inasmuch as poetry does not relate any events, but is very oten limited to the ormulationo a meditation or an impression. The specifc term “fction” is not appli‑cable to poetry because the generic term “imitation” can remain relevant only by losing any precise meaning it may have; poetry is oten not at

all representational o an external reality, but sufcient unto itsel. Thequestion becomes even more difcult when we consider the so‑calledminor genres which are nevertheless present in all the “literatures” o the world: prayers, exhortations, proverbs, riddles, nursery rhymes (eachinvolving o course its own special difculties). Shall we claim that they too “imitate,” or shall we separate them completely rom the body o

what we call “literature”?I all that is usually regarded as literature is not necessarily fctional,

conversely, all that is fctional is not automatically literature. In Freud’s

“case histories,” or example, the question whether all the misadventureso “little Hans” or the “wol man” are true or not is irrelevant: theirstatus is exactly that o fction: all one is entitled to say o them is that they support or contradict Freud’s thesis. Or, to take a very dierent example: should all myths be viewed as literature, even i their fctionalcharacter is unmistakable?

We are certainly not the frst to criticize the notion o imitation inliterature or in art. European classicism continually attempted to modiy the concept in order to be able to retain it. For the term had to begiven a very general meaning i it were to remain applicable to all theactivities with which it had been associated. But this in turn renderedit applicable to other things as well, so that it became necessary to adda urther specifcation: imitation must be “artistic,” which amounts tousing the term to be defned as part o its defnition. At some point inthe eighteenth century the trend reversed itsel; instead o yet anotherrearrangement o the original defnition, an entirely new one was pro‑posed. Nothing illustrates the transition better than the titles o twobooks which mark the limits o two distinct periods. In 1746, a work onaesthetics appeared which sums up the opinion o the time: The Arts Re‑

duced to a Single Principle , by the Abbé Batteux; the principle in questionis the imitation o beautiul nature (“la belle nature”). In 1785, another




o Sel‑Sufciency , by Karl Philipp Moritz. The arts are again united, but this time in the name o beauty, understood as sel‑sufciency (“in sichselbst Vollendetes”).

The second major defnition o literature will thus be based uponthe concept o beauty; it will become more important to “please” thanto “instruct.” Near the end o the eighteenth century, the defnition o beauty will center around the belie in the intransitive (as opposed to theinstrumental) nature o a work o art. Ater having been equated withthe useul, beauty is now defned by its nonutilitarian character. “Truebeauty requires that a thing signiy nothing but itsel, that it be a unity complete in itsel,” writes Moritz. And art is defned in terms o beauty:“I a work o art existed only to point to something other than itsel, it

would become nothing more than an accessory; whereas in the case o beauty, it alone must always be the principal thing.” Painting is imagesperceived or themselves and not meant to serve any outside purpose,music is sounds appreciated or themselves. Literature is a noninstru‑mental language whose value resides in itsel alone, or as Novalis hassaid, “an expression or the sake o expression.”

Elaborated upon by the German Romanticists, this notion was todominate all the Symbolist and post‑Symbolist movements in Europe.

What is more, it was to become the basis or the frst modern attempts

to create a science o literature. Be it Russian Formalism or AmericanNew Criticism, the point o departure is always the same. The unction o poetry is essentially to emphasize the “message” itsel. Even today this isthe dominant defnition, although its ormulation may vary somewhat.

To be exact, such a defnition o literature does not deserve to becalled structural: we are told what poetry ought to achieve, and not how it proceeds to do so. But soon the unctional perspective was tobe complemented by a structural point o view: more than any othero its aspects, it is the systematic character o a work which allows us toperceive it in itsel. Such was already Diderot’s defnition o beauty; laterthe term “beauty” was to be replaced by “orm,” which in turn was togive way to “structure.” Formalist studies o literature will have the merit o being studies o a literary system (o the whole o literature or o theindividual work), thus creating the new science o poetics. Literature,then, is a system , a systematic language which draws attention to itsel,

which becomes autotelic. This is its second structural defnition.Let us examine this hypothesis in its turn. Is literary language alone in

being systematic? O course not. A rigorous organization can be oundnot only in areas usually associated with literature—some, such as ad‑

vertising, even use the same techniques o rhyme, polysemy, etc.—but also in some regions ar removed rom its province. Who could deny




rules? It is not by chance that until the Renaissance, and above all inGreek and Latin antiquity, Rhetoric was set alongside o Poetics and as‑signed the task o codiying those rules which were concerned with all

extraliterary discourse. One could even go urther and question the very validity o a notion such as that o “the system o a literary work,” giventhe ease with which any such system could be contrived. Language hasonly a limited number o phonemes, and even ewer distinctive eatures;nor are the grammatical categories in each paradigm very numerous;thus repetition, ar rom being difcult, is inevitable. Saussure is knownto have ormulated a hypothesis concerning Latin poetry, accordingto which the poet allegedly concealed within the body o the work thename o the person or whom, or about whom, the poem was written. I

the hypothesis leads nowhere, it is rom excess rather than rom lack o proo: any name can be ound in a poem o sufcient length. Besides, why limit the theory to poetry? “This practice was second nature to alleducated Romans, who put everything, no matter how insignifcant, into

writing.” And why the Romans? Saussure will go so ar as to discoverthe name o Eton in a Latin text used at that college in the nineteenthcentury; unortunately or him the author was a seventeenth‑century scholar rom King’s College, Cambridge, and the work was not used at Eton until a hundred years later!

A system so easily discovered is not a real system. Let us now considerthe complementary test: is every literary text so systematic that it may besaid to be autotelic, intransitive, opaque? The sense o such a statement is relatively clear when it is applied to poetry which, as Moritz wouldhave said, is a sel‑sufcient object; but what o the novel? Not that we

wish to reduce the novel to a mere “slice o lie,” devoid o conventionsand hence o system; but the presence o this system does not renderthe language o the novel in any way “opaque.”

On the contrary, such language serves (in the classical European novelat least) to represent objects, events, actions, characters. Nor can it besaid that the essence o a novel is not in its language but in its narrativetechnique; we are only amused by Shklovsky’s remark that the sole pur‑pose o the philosophical discussions in Dostoevsky’s novels is to slow thepace o the narrative. Perhaps what is opaque in this case is the worldrepresented; but could not such a conception o opacity (o intransitive‑ness, o autotelism) apply just as well to any everyday conversation?

Many attempts have been made in our time to bring together the twodefnitions o literature. But since neither o them, when taken alone,is really satisactory, there is little advantage in combining them; in or‑der to remedy their weakness, they should be ully articulated and not




ew examples will show, however, that such is unortunately most otenthe case.

In the chapter o Wellek and Warren’s Theory o Literature dealing

with “the nature o literature,” René Wellek seeks to defne “literature”by distinguishing the particular use made o language in literature, by contrasting it with the two other main uses: the everyday and the scien‑tifc. Unlike the scientifc, the literary use o language is “connotative,”that is, rich in associations and ambiguities; it is opaque (whereas in thescientifc use the sign is “transparent; that is, without drawing attentionto itsel, it directs us unequivocally to its reerent”); and it is multiunc‑tional: not only reerential but also expressive and pragmatic (conative).Unlike the language o everyday use, it is systematic (“poetic language

organizes, tightens the resources o everyday language”); and autotelic,in that its sole justifcation is within itsel.So ar Wellek seems to be a partisan o our second defnition o

literature. Emphasis placed on any kind o unction (be it reerential,expressive, or pragmatic) has the eect o drawing us away rom lit‑erature, where the text derives its value rom itsel (this is what will becalled the aesthetic unction, ater a theory propounded by Jakobson andMukarovsky in the 1930s). The structural consequences o this unctionalapproach are a trend towards systematization and an emphasis on all the

symbolic resources o the linguistic sign.There ollows, however, another distinction, apparently expanding onthe opposition between the everyday and the literary use o language.“But the nature o literature emerges most clearly under the reerentialaspect,” Wellek states, or in the most “literary” works, “the reerenceis to a world o fction, o imagination. The statements in a novel, in apoem, or in a drama are not literally true; they are not logical proposi‑tions.” This, he concludes, is the “distinguishing trait o literature”: that is, its “fctionality.”

In other words, we have passed, even without realizing it, rom thesecond defnition o literature to the frst. The literary use o language isno longer defned by its systematic (and consequently autotelic) charac‑ter, but by its fctionality, by statements which are neither true nor alse.

Are the two defnitions then the same? One would expect such a thesisto be at least explicitly ormulated (to say nothing o proo). Wellek’sconclusion, namely, that all these terms (systematic organization, recogni‑tion o the sign, and fction) are necessary to characterize a work o art,brings us no closer to a solution. For the question which we are raisingis precisely this: what are the relationships among these terms?

The situation is much the same with Northrop Frye, who deals with thequestion in the chapter entitled “Literal and Descriptive Phases: Symbol




a distinction between literary and nonliterary use o language (thereby combining Wellek’s “scientifc” and “everyday” uses into one category).The implicit opposition is between an outward and an inward orienta‑

tion (toward what lies beyond the signs and toward the signs themselves,or toward other signs, respectively). The oppositions between centriu‑gal and centripetal, between descriptive and literal phases, betweensign‑symbols and moti‑symbols are all related to the frst distinction. It is inward direction which characterizes the literary use o language. Inpassing, it should be noted that Frye is no more willing than Wellek toafrm the exclusive presence o this orientation in literature; he merely afrms its predominance.

Once again we are aced with a version o our second defnition o

literature and once again, beore knowing it, we have slid back towardsthe frst. Frye writes: “In all literary verbal structures the fnal directiono meaning is inward. In literature, the standards o outward meaningare secondary, or literary works do not pretend to describe or assert, andare hence not true, not alse. . . . In literature, questions o act or truthare subordinated to the primary literary aim o producing a structure o

words or its own sake, and the sign‑values o symbols are subordinatedto their importance as a structure o interconnected motis.” In this last sentence, it is no longer transparence but nonfctionality (that is, adher‑

ence to a true‑alse system) which is opposed to opacity.It is no doubt the ambivalence o the word “inward” which accountsor this passage rom one defnition to the other, or the term is present in both, being in turn synonymous with “opaque” as well as “fctional.”The literary use o language is “inward” both because it emphasizes thesigns themselves and because the reality evoked by the signs is fctional.But perhaps beyond mere polysemy (and thus beyond the elementary conusion) there is a mutual implication between the two meanings o the word “inward”: could it be that all “fction” is “opaque,” and that “opacity” is “fctional”? Frye seems to suggest precisely this when heasserts that i an historical work were to comply with the principles o symmetry (indicative o a system, and thus o an autotelic structure), it

would enter thereby the realm o literature, and hence o fction. But do the two meanings o “inward” really imply each other? An examina‑tion o this question will perhaps help to elucidate the nature o therelationship between the two defnitions o literature.

Supposing that a history book does ollow the rules o symmetry (andis thus literature according to our second defnition), does it thereby alsobecome fctional (and thus literature by the frst defnition)? It clearly does not. It may become a bad history book; but the change is rom“true” to “alse,” and not rom “true‑alse” to “fctional.” Similarly, a po‑




fctional. In terms o systematization, is there a radical dierence in theaccount o a real journey and that o an imaginary one—even thoughone is fctional and the other not? Neither the tendency toward system‑

atization nor the emphasis on inward direction is sufcient to rendera text fctional. Thus at least one o the consequences o the would‑bemutual implication proves to be untenable.

What about the other? Does fctionality necessarily imply a contextualorientation? Everything depends on the meaning given to the latter ex‑pression. Some o Frye’s remarks seem to indicate that it is a matter o simple recurrence, or o syntagmatic rather than paradigmatic orienta‑tion. I this be the case, it goes without saying that there are texts whichare clearly devoid o such properties: a narrative can be governed by the

logic o succession and causality alone (although examples o this typeare admittedly rare). I we understand the term in its broadest sense o the “presence o some sort o organization,” then it is equally clear that all fctional texts possess this “inward orientation”; but what text—o

whatever nature—does not? The second implication is thus no morerigorously true than the frst, and there is no justifcation or postulat‑ing that the two meanings o the word “inward” are in act one and thesame. Once again the two distinctions (and the two defnitions) havebeen merely combined without being ully articulated.

All that can be said is that each defnition can account or a great number o works usually called literary, but by no means or all; andthat they are admittedly linked by mutual afnities, but not by mutualimplication. The discussion has not proceeded beyond the stage o

vagueness and imprecision.The relative ailure o our investigation might perhaps be explained

by the nature o the question itsel. We have constantly asked ourselves:how can we distinguish what is literature rom what is not? What is thedierence between the literary and the nonliterary use o language?But to ask such questions about the notion o literature is to assume theexistence o another coherent notion, that o “nonliterature.” Perhapsthe time has come to examine this notion as well.

Whether one speaks o descriptive writing (Frye) or o everyday usage(Wellek), o practical or normal language, a unity is postulated whichupon examination turns out to be highly problematical. It seems obvi‑ous that this “usage,” which includes jokes as well as practical conversa‑tion, the ritualistic language o administration and law as well as that o the journalist or the politician, scientifc as well as philosophical andreligious writing, is not a single entity at all. No one knows exactly how many types o discourse there are, but it is easy to see that there aremore than one.




Another notion, generic in relation to the notion o literature, must at this point be introduced: that o discourse . The latter is the structuralcorrelative o the unctional concept o “use” (o a language). It is neces‑

sary to introduce it because the rules o language, which are commonto all who use it, constitute only a part o the rules which govern ourconcrete verbal production. They only fx the norm o grammaticalcombinations within a sentence, a phonology, and a common meaningor words. But between the set o rules common to all utterances and theexact ormulation o a specifc utterance there is a gul o indeterminacy.This gul is bridged by the rules o each particular discourse (thus anofcial letter will not be written in the same way as an intimate one), as

well as by the limitations inherent in the context o the speech act (the

identity o the speaker and the listener, the time and place o the speechact). The rules o discourse are more restricted than those o language,but less restricted than those o a specifc speech act.

A particular type o discourse is in turn defned by the list o rules which it must obey. The sonnet, or example, is characterized by extralimitations on its meter and rhyme. Scientifc discourse in principle ex‑cludes any reerence to the frst or second person o the verb, as well asto any but the present tense. Jokes have semantic rules lacking in otherdiscourse, while their metric construction is determined in the course

o the individual speech act. Certain discursive rules consist, paradoxi‑cally, o abolishing various rules o language; Samuel Levin in the UnitedStates and Jean Cohen in France have shown how certain grammaticalor semantic rules are put aside in modern poetry. But rom the point o view o the structure o a discourse, rules are always added, neversubtracted. The proo o this is that even in “deviant” poetic utterancesthe broken linguistic rule is easily reconstructed; rather than beingabolished, it was merely contradicted by a new rule. In literary studiesthe rules o discourse are discussed under the heading o “genres” (orsometimes “styles,” “modes,” etc.).

I we admit the existence o various types o discourse we must reor‑mulate our question on literary specifcity in the ollowing terms: arethere rules which apply to all orms o literature (intuitively identifed assuch), and only to those orms? The only possible answer, it seems to me,is a negative one. Numerous examples have already been noted o theoccurrence o “literary” characteristics outside literature (rom puns andnursery rhymes, journalism and travelogues to philosophical meditations).It has become equally obvious that there is no common denominator orall “literary” productions, unless it be the use o language.

The situation changes radically i we turn away rom “literature” itsel and ocus on its subcategories. There is no difculty in defning the rules




various Artes Poeticae , admittedly with much conusion between descrip‑tion and prescription). In other types the ormulation o rules is moredifcult, although our sense o “discursive competence” convinces us

that they do exist. In act we have already seen that the frst defnition o literature applies particularly well to narrative prose, and the second topoetry. The origin o these utterly independent defnitions can perhaps beound in the type o literature which was considered in their ormation.The frst is based on narrative (Aristotle discusses epic and tragedy, not poetry), the second on poetry (as is apparent rom Jakobson’s analyseso particular poems): in each case one o the two major literary genreshas been defned as i it were the whole o literature.

The rules o the so‑called nonliterary types o discourse can be identi‑

fed in much the same way. I thus propose the ollowing hypothesis: roma structural point o view, each type o discourse usually reerred to asliterary has nonliterary relatives which resemble it more than do othertypes o literary discourse. For example, a certain type o lyric poetry has more rules in common with prayer than with a historical novel o the War and Peace variety. Thus the opposition between literature andnonliterature is replaced by a typology o the various types o discourse.Frye can be quoted once again, this time without reservation: “our liter‑ary universe has expanded into a verbal universe.”

The results o this inquiry might at frst appear negative, since it es‑sentially denies the legitimacy o a structural notion o “literature,” andcontests the existence o a homogeneous “literary discourse.” Whetheror not the unctional notion is legitimate, the structural notion defnitely is not. But the result is only seemingly negative, since instead o thesimple notion o literature we now have a number o dierent types o discourse, each equally deserving o attention. I the choice o our object o study is not dictated by purely ideological reasons (which would thenhave to be spelled out), we no longer have the right to limit ourselves topurely literary subspecies, even i we are employed by the “Department o Literature” (be it French, English, or Russian). A coherent feld o study demanding recognition is at present hopelessly ragmented amongsemanticists and littérateurs , socio‑ and ethnolinguists, linguistic philoso‑phers, and psychologists.

An explanation might be ound, by the same token, or the dominanceo these two defnitions, rather than any other, throughout the history o literary theory. Viewed in their most general sense, which alone conersupon them their validity, they become afrmations o the signifcant nature o literary texts and o their systematic organization. But isn’t the defnition o any discourse—at once system and signifcation? At‑tempting to defne literature, the theoretician defnes instead a logically




tial and complementary aspects, whatever they are called: pleasure andinstruction, beauty and truth, gratuitous play and imitation, syntax andsemantics (although the variation in terminology is in no way unimport‑

ant: although they reer to the same thing, the various terms signiy it in dierent ways). What the theoreticians have ailed to do, however, isto indicate the “specifc dierence” which characterizes literature withinthe “genus proximum.” Could it be that no such dierence is in any way perceptible? In other words, that literature does not exist?

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifque—Paris

Translated by Lynn Moss and Bruno Braunrot




developed the concept o generative anthropology and has written ve otherbooks on the subject, including Originary Thinking (1993), Signs of Paradox (1997),and the orthcoming The Scenic Imagination: Originary Thinking from Hobbes to the

Present Day.

Garry L. Hagberg presently holds a Chair in the School o Philosophy at theUniversity o East Anglia, Norwich, England, and has or some years served asthe James H. Ottaway Proessor o Philosophy and Aesthetics at Bard College. Author o Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James, and Literary Knowl-

edge (1994) and Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory (1995),he is presently completing Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Autobiographical

Consciousness , an edited volume, Art and Ethical Criticism , and a series o articles(o which this is one) on literary experience and autobiographical understanding.He is joint editor, with Denis Dutton, o the journal Philosophy and Literature .

N. Katherine Hayles, John Charles Hillis Proessor o Literature at the Univer-sity o Caliornia—Los Angeles, teaches and writes on the relations o literature,science, and technology in the late twentieth and twenty-rst centuries. Herlatest book is My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts (2005).Her book How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Literature, Cybernetics, and

Informatics (1999) won the René Wellek Prize or the Best Book in Literary Theory in 1998–99, and her book Writing Machines (2002) won the SuzanneLanger Award or Outstanding Scholarship. She is currently at work on a study

o narrative and databases.

C. Jan Swearingen is Proessor o English at Texas A&M University and a past president o the Rhetoric Society o America (1998–2000). Her books includeRhetoric and Irony: Western Literacy and Western Lies (1991) and an edited collec-tion, Rhetoric, the Polis, and the Global Village (1999). Her work on the theory o rhetoric, as well as on rhetoric and religion, has been published in a numbero venues, including Rhetoric Society Quarterly , Philosophy and Rhetoric , Reclaiming

Rhetorica , and Rhetorical Argumentation in Biblical Texts . Her recent work examinesScottish enlightenment doctrines o philosophy, rhetoric, and religion in colonial

Virginia, and their infuence upon the Declaration.

Tzvetan Todorov is the author o many books on literary theory and intellec-tual history. His most recent publications in French are Les aventuriers de l’absolu (2006) and La littérature en péril (2007), in English Hope and Memory (2003) andThe New World Disorder (2005).

Phillip E. Wegner is Associate Proessor o English at the University o Florida.He is the author o Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial

Histories of Modernity (2002) and Life Between Two Deaths: U.S. Culture, 1989–2001

(orthcoming).



New Literary History, Volume 38, 2007 - Table of Contents

New Literary History

Volume 38, Number 1, Winter 2007

Special Issue: What Is Literature Now?

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CONTENTS

Todorov, Tzvetan, 1939-

q The Notion of Literature

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Subject Headings:

r Literature.

Todorov, Tzvetan, 1939-

q What Is Literature For?


Subject Headings: r Literature.

Abstract:

This article begins with a critical analysis of the way literature is taught in

French high schools today and attributes the shortcomings of this method to

the predominant conception of literature as a self-sufficient object without any

relevant relationship to the surrounding world. This conception is also

widespread outside of school among critics and even writers. This is an

unnecessarily restricted view; in fact literature helps us to better understand the

world and lead more meaningful lives.

Gans, Eric Lawrence, 1941-

q Qu’est-ce que la littérature, aujourd’hui?


Subject Headings:

r Literature.

Abstract:

ttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/toc/nlh38.1.html (1 of 6)6/16/2007 2:12:55 PM

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/v038/38.1cover_art.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/v038/38.1todorov01.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/v038/38.1todorov01.pdf



http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/v038/38.1gans.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/v038/38.1gans.pdf

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/v038/38.1gans.pdf

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/v038/38.1gans.html





http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/v038/38.1cover_art.html



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Todorov the Notion of Literature

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