Literary Criticism – The Hopeless Academic

The Poetics

Image Credit: Kyle Head via Unsplash.com

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This month, we mark the one year anniversary of the Hopeless Academic! To mark this very auspicious occasion, I will be doing a summary of one of my favorite analytical works when it comes to literature, everyone’s absolute favorite: The Poetics by Aristotle. I referenced this work in almost every paper I wrote in college, and for good reason. In this work, Aristotle lays out several rules that are still followed (with several exceptions and improvements) by storywriters and even filmmakers today. If you studied literature at all in high school or college, you were probably introduced to the “story arc,” a diagram which reduced literature into a mathematical equation. (Exposition + Rising Action = Climax… or at least the graphical representation of that.) Aristotle is the great great great grandfather of that diagram, or at the very least, parts of it.

Obviously, I’m going to be leaving some things out, because… well.. it literally is Greek to me. (Seriously, the words are in actual Greek. At least I’m pretty sure they’re Greek.) Besides, I want to make this more fun, and if you wanted a chapter by chapter summary, you could go read sparknotes.

Now, in the Poetics, Aristotle makes a distinction between Tragedy and Comedy, but he focuses mostly on how a Tragic play should be constructed. Most people extrapolate his advice from tragic plays only to how stories in general should be constructed, including comedies, which is what we’re going to do today. Aristotle’s advice is solid regardless, so why not use it?

Most of what Aristotle has to say centers around plot, and how the elements of a tragic play can serve that plot. To him, the essence of a story should center around an action rather than a particular character, though modern filmmakers and authors might disagree. If we get down to brass tacks, though, I think that most people would choose to watch a movie where a bunch of boring people do something rather than a film where a bunch of interesting people do nothing. I think Aristotle knows this, too, but he sort of insulates himself from criticism by saying that a plot needs characters in order to accomplish anything. Even if he says that plot is the most important thing, he knows that plot almost by definition relies on characters.

In order to have a good plot, Aristotle also lays out what he thinks are the most essential structural elements to said plot. Two of the structural elements that he thinks every good plot should have are a peripeteia and an anagnorisis. Which are… what?

For those who know their Greek, a peripeteia is a reversal of the situation — in other words, that’s when things go from good to bad, or from bad to good. For example, in Cinderella’s story, her peripeteia is when she puts on the glass slipper — at least, that’s officially when her situation reverses. Before, her life was full of misery and abuse, but after she put on that slipper, her fate was sealed as the bride of Prince Charming, or whatever his name is. “But what about before, when Cinderella’s life was wonderful and then her father died?” you ask, and rightfully so. Didn’t her situation reverse then, too? Because this happens so early on in the story, most people would qualify this as exposition, or simply setting up the story. In fact, the animated Disney version has this part in voiceover, giving you only the necessary details so you know the facts of the story — the story itself doesn’t really begin until after her father dies.

So much for a peripeteia. What about anagnorisis? An anagnorisis , or recognition, is when somebody goes from ignorance to knowledge — honestly, it’s just when someone recognizes something. (Quite the fancy term for such a basic thing.) Aristotle apparently likes a bit of suspense in his stories. There are a bunch of movies and stories with recognition scenes, like the animated movie Anastasia. Anastasia has amnesia and doesn’t remember if she is the Duchess of Russia, but she recognizes the perfume on her grandmother’s hands, and the memories come flooding back to her. Her grandmother recognizes the necklace she had given Anastasia before they were separated, and the two reunite.

The other elements of the plot are a lot more basic — the complication is basically the rising action, or setting up the conflict in the story. The unraveling is the falling action in the story; this comes after the climax, and wraps up the story in a neat little bow.

“Great,” you think, “I have all of the basic structure in order to write a story that Aristotle would love.” Not so fast. Those are just some basic plot elements — he has a lot more rules.

Aristotle also has some thoughts on the length of the story. To him, the perfect plot follows along with an action that is roughly twenty-four hours in length. While it may seem overly restrictive, Aristotle’s idea is that the human brain can only handle so much — remember, people are remarkably lazy. Once you hit two days or longer, the plot gets too complicated for people to handle. Or at least, Aristotle thinks so. This is one of the rules that I’d chalk up to preference, personally, instead of doing a Jack Baur-esque type plot where everything you watch is shown in “real time.” Sadly, Aristotle wouldn’t even appreciate that type of television show, because it’s episodic. According to him, episodic plots are “the worst” (translation from the Greek.) His argument would be that it would be too difficult to keep up with all of that action. And honestly? This is actually kinda fair. Before the Netflix binge culture we somehow created, episodes were shown a week apart — who remembers all of the details of a show from three weeks ago? This is why most of the time, the only thing that remained consistent were the characters, and each episode was a story unto itself. With shows that aired on network tv, like The Office or Friends, you could skip most installments, and just watch that one singular episode. Even with shows that do have a continuous plot, there’s a quickie “Previously On…” recap. Maybe the ol’ man was onto something.

Ok. So we’ve got a complication, a peripeteia, an anagnorisis, some falling action, and a singular story with that takes place within twenty-four hours. Great! But you’re not done yet. This next rule is probably one of the most important rules.

You gotta keep it consistent. Aristotle calls this rule the “rule of probability and necessity.” It basically means that all of the characters have to be consistent unto themselves, and the plot can’t just randomly jump to a conclusion because… plot. Let’s take a character like Captain America, for example. He has been built up as a caring, noble character who would go to the ends of the earth for his friends. Above all, he’s seen as loyal, especially to those he views as family, and he’s been pretty consistent in every MCU movie he’s been in over the course of a decade. It would make no sense if, oh, I don’t know, he decided to make an entirely selfish choice and leave all of his friends behind just because he had a crush on some girl. Especially if he abandoned said friends after nearly killing himself to save said friends from brainwashing. That would make no sense at all.

Aristotle also wants to make sure that your story makes sense. You can’t have Superman showing up at every twist and turn just to save the day. Superman has a schedule to keep, and honestly, having him show up at every twist and turn is unimaginative and unexciting. Imagine watching a Batman movie and Superman just shows up at the very last second to save Batman from Joker. Sure, you’re happy Batman was saved, but wouldn’t it have been a bit more fun to watch Batman use his own ingenuity to save himself? Pixar actually has a rule for this, and they are famous for their quality storytelling. Their rule: “Coincidences that get characters into trouble are great; coincidences that get them out of it are cheating.” Aristotle, however, explains that sometimes, you have to cheat. It’s inevitable. Tony Stark needs his suit, but the nearest warehouse is thousands of miles away, and in order to get there in time, his Iron Man suit would need to break the sound barrier, which would be nearly impossible. That’s ok! Just don’t make us watch the suit traveling across the country. Just have it show up — CinemaSins can nitpick it later.

Obviously, Aristotle talks a lot more about what goes into a good story. There’s how you present everything, and the set design, and even the meter of the songs. (Which I suppose is the Ancient Greek precursor to sound design.) He has a lot of rules, not to mention his own philosophy on what tragedy is for and how it fits into the human experience.

Maybe some of his rules are outdated. Clearly, the episode thing is going to stick around for a long time to come. And stories told within only twenty-four hour periods don’t really exist that much anymore either. We’ve grown in sophistication since the days of Ancient Greek plays, too—almost everything that we depict onscreen in the twenty-first century looks incredibly realistic. The movie industry is worth billions, and actors praised like the gods Aristotle worshipped. But he certainly got something right, if studios like Pixar share his ideas. Every aspiring playwright, author, and screenwriter should memorize The Poetics. Maybe then Hollywood might start turning out some original films.

The Interpretive Ring

When you read a book, do you spend all of your time dissecting the intentions of the author, using his historical and cultural context? If you said no, you’re like most people. If you said yes, you’re probably in college.

Most people read books however they want. They ignore the intentions of the author, historical and cultural context, and sometimes they can even ignore the other books surrounding the one book they are currently reading. And to be honest, as long as someone isn’t going around and publishing their reviews while pretending to be some great scholar (though there are plenty of those people), I think that can be perfectly fine. Why wouldn’t it be? (Okay, sometimes people twist it and ignore the author’s intent entirely—cancel culture, anyone?—but I’m talking about benign reinterpretation.) A book, article, or blog post has two sides to it: first, the author writing the thing, and then the reader, who has his own cultural and historical context. No one has a brain exactly like the author, and because of that, no one will interpret his ideas exactly the same way.

Readers of generally similar backgrounds, however, will interpret things in generally the same way. Students at secular universities might read The Iliad and decide that Achilles and Patroklus are gay, students at private Christian schools might read the same book and decide the relationship between the two men is platonic. And then there might be a third party who doesn’t care about Achilles and his sexuality and just wants to get the darn book over with because if I have to read yet another horrible death sequence. . .

I digress.

This brings me to our topic for today: Reader Response Criticism and its (possible) pitfalls.

When we last talked about Reader Response Theory, there was a pretty extensive discussion about Ideal/Informed Readers. Today, we’re going to be talking more generally about something called an interpretive community, one of the main points in Stanley Fish’s Reader Response Theory.

The basic idea of the interpretive community is that the readers, not the author, create the meaning of the text, because every single statement is contextual and will be interpreted different ways by different people. Interpretive communities are made up of people who share the same general interpretation of a work of art. To illustrate, let’s take the following sentence: “I never said she stole my money.” This sentence can mean several different things if different words are emphasized, but it would easily be understood if it were read in the context of a conversation. In the case of the interpretive community, it’s not the surrounding conversation that provides the context for specific works of art (e.g. novels and poems), but the reader’s own personal background and experiences. Remember those Christian students who think the Achilles/Patroklus bond is platonic? That’s right—they’re an interpretive community. Those students who believe that Achilles and Patroklus are totally gay? They’re an interpretive community too. Interpretive communities can be very small, like a group of friends who discuss literature together (the Inklings comes to mind), or it can be as big as a university, and everyone is in one.

I hear an objection. “Sometimes things are just easily understood without cultural context,” you say. “You don’t need to always be in an interpretive community.” After all, people of all kinds of different backgrounds tend to understand poetry written by soldiers in WWI—it doesn’t take any special ring of people to show you how that poetry is supposed to work. Fair enough. I may have been a bit misleading in my previous paragraph. Interpretive communities can be very small, but they can also encompass an entire language. Sure, these poems are easy enough to understand to the vast majority of people who can speak and write English. That’s an interpretive community, too, since they actually do have a relatively homogeneous background (at least, the native English speakers do). Obviously, there is diversity to this interpretive community, and it can become almost like a Russian nesting doll situation. See, for me, I’m part of the English speaking interpretive community, then the American interpretive community, then into a further subset that I would call “Christian,” and then. . . well, you get the idea. Basically, the communities have the potential to become concentric rings or venetian diagrams, with some bleed-through and overlap.

And this is where I see the potential for a problem, but this is also where I have to ask you to hang tight while we discuss one more idea. C.S. Lewis has an essay titled “The Inner Ring,” where he discusses the possible dangers of becoming exclusionary and closed off from others. He explains that every person has a special ring of friends, but the everyday politics that go on between people can create rings inside rings. Inside jokes and experiences can bond people in special ways, starting to make people feel like they belong to a special “club,” though the edges of the ring aren’t as defined as all that. There is nothing wrong with having friends—and even, to some extent, having a closer circle of friends within that ring. Besides, everyone wants to feel as if they belong. The problem is introduced when that Inner Ring preys on that desire. For a quick (and stupid) example (that Lewis definitely wouldn’t approve of, seeing as it’s way too obvious), in Mean Girls, Cady Heron becomes Regina George’s double. Cady ditches khakis and starts wearing miniskirts in an attempt to fit in with the “Plastics,” the popular girls who supposedly run the school. She changes who she is and gives up essential parts of herself to be in that group, which is the biggest problem of the Inner Ring. The ring of “Plastics,” however, is clearly defined. With life, you rarely find circles that obvious.

How does this relate to the interpretive community? Interpretive communities are pretty harmless, yeah? Well, usually. In my four years in college, though, I did pick up on a very subtle hint of “inner ringedness” while combing through scholarship and even when talking with friends. Scholars always tend to pontificate as if they’re right, which makes sense considering all the research and time it took to get where they are. The problem is, there are a few strains of academia that have difficulty with criticism, and the pesky thing about humans is they seem to have problems with criticism in general. Those kids who assume Achilles and Patroklus are gay? They’re missing out on an analysis of platonic friendship. Those Christian kids who argue they’re just friends? Well, they’re ignoring the fact that the Greeks didn’t mind a bit of homosexuality. Perhaps they aren’t so much interpretive communities as an interpretive ring.

But does that mean that every single person who belongs to multiple interpretive communities has to pay attention to what everyone else? No, of course not. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton: don’t be so open-minded your brains fall out. There are going to be some interpretations that are more correct than others, and there are going to be some interpretations that are so wrong that they should be dismissed completely. There’s no reason to accept everything everyone else says. How can one person go about being a part of an interpretive community and avoid the interpretive ring that begins to form later?

Perhaps we can pull a solution from Jordan Peterson, a popular psychologist and author. In his book 12 Rules for Life, Rule 9 states: “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.” This approach acknowledges that each person has their own preferences for their very own ideas and with the people who agree with them. It does, however, leave a bit of wiggle room for new thoughts—the small epiphany of, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that before.” Inner rings are basically inevitable and can be relatively benign, or they can force people to change their souls in order to be considered part of the group. Interpretive rings can be the same way, but with the added academic veneer. If they are allowed to form, interpretive rings can encourage people within to gaze sneeringly on the people without, as if they are too stupid to understand the “correct” point of view.

Now, obviously, the interpretive ring doesn’t exactly exist in scholarship. As far as I know, most people don’t pay much attention to Reader Response Theory, so they’re not very inclined to apply the ideas elsewhere. This might be completely misguided, but I have noticed a growing trend to close oneself off from people with whom they disagree, especially among the upper echelons of academia. In my own mind, this signals a shift from communities to rings, and it seems nearly inevitable. Don’t fall prey to the Inner Ring—there is no need to change your soul for others who don’t want to accept you. But don’t fall prey to the Interpretive Ring, either, by looking down on others and their ideas. Part of being human is being a lifelong learner.

Even if you dismiss others’ ideas outright, at least you know they exist now. In order to avoid shutting oneself off from other people and their ideas, it would be wise to listen to their arguments as arguments; don’t just listen in order to strengthen your own ideas. Remember, there’s no reason to stifle yourself just because the world wants you to remain inside an echo chamber. You’re just one person, after all, and it’s very unlikely you’re right about everything.

Connecting Dots like Batman and Sir Percy Blakeney

The human brain is remarkably lazy, in part because it is very easily overwhelmed. This is why the field of clear vision in humans is so limited. If you’re reading this post on a desktop, then your eyes are filtering out the ribbon on the edge of the screen and even the other words in this paragraph. Even if you’re reading this on a cell phone, your eyes can really only pay attention to one line. If your brain were actually able to process all of the information in the ultra-HD resolution your focused vision has, your skull would have to be significantly larger. So, our smaller brains prioritize and try to create shortcuts to make things easier.

One of those shortcuts is pattern recognition. Patterns are basically cheat codes that help people get through life. Obviously, some people are better at recognizing patterns than others. (There are those genius children who just somehow know the prime numbers, for instance.) Even if you aren’t one of those instant pattern recognizers, your brain still operates on patterns. Your body (theoretically) has a circadian rhythm that works with sunrise and sunset, and people repeat their morning routines over and over through habit. Following the pattern means the brain doesn’t have to think as much. Our brains are hardwired to find order and make connections, even if there are no real connection to be made.

All of that is a long-winded way to say: we’re talking about T.S. Eliot and his idea of “tradition,” from his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” For those who know their Tolkien, tradition vaguely similar to Tolkien’s theory of “the pot of story.” The (very basic) idea of tradition is that all stories and related things (like poems) are connected to each other. Every time something new gets added to the mix, it slightly alters the meaning of everything that came before it. For you visual types, this metaphor might be helpful: all of the books are on one big library shelf. Every time a new book gets added, all the other books have to shift around a bit to accommodate the newcomer. Obviously, not all of the old books are affected in the same way by the new books–some will have to shift around more and some will barely move a millimeter. But how exactly does this idea actually work in a non-metaphorical way, and what does it have to do with patterns?

Perhaps the easiest way to understand the idea of “tradition” is by looking at it in action–through the eyes of just one individual. And to make it really simple, let’s take a stupid example. Let’s say Jane watches Disney’s Pocahontas and she loves it. The characters in that movie are stable and mean certain things: Pocahontas is a brave Native American who teaches a white man what the earth means to her people, and John Smith is a hero who learns how about another culture with an open mind. Now let’s say Jane has a serious lapse in judgement and watches Pocahontas II: Journey to the New World. (Spoilers, but seriously, don’t watch this movie. It’s a travesty.) In this movie, Pocahontas goes to England, and John Smith is no longer a curious hero; he’s. . . well. . . he’s a bit of a jerk, and Pocahontas finds another man to marry. Now, let’s apply the idea of tradition. If Eliot is right, Jane won’t be able to watch Pocahontas again without her view of the film being influenced by her knowledge of the second movie, even though the first movie was made without a sequel in mind. Nevertheless, it would be very difficult to watch the relationship in the first movie again without it being soured by the knowledge of what happens later. That’s what tradition looks like in action–new things influence the old canon. But . . . how does this apply to patterns?

The idea of tradition is actually at the root of people finding random connections (patterns!) between ideas in books. Things don’t have to be as closely related as the two Pocahontas movies and often aren’t. For example, if you read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school, then maybe the ideas you picked up about race relations from that book would carry over and influence how you would read Shakespeare’s Othello, a story about a Moor in a cast of white characters. Your brain might say, “Oh, these two books have race as a theme. They aren’t historically connected, but maybe I can take what I learned about race from this 1960s book and apply it to the Shakespeare play.” Our brains like to lump things into categories in order to make sense of them; patterns make it so much easier. And that’s how the two ideas relate: Eliot’s idea of tradition is what legitimizes people finding those patterns and themes across books in different genres.

Eliot’s idea was somewhat revolutionary. The idea that old stuff influences new stuff is obvious. The old is the muse for the new–for example, Batman is heavily inspired by the vigilante justice found in The Scarlet Pimpernel. After all, people really only can be inspired by what already exists, because they can’t use the future as a reference point. Eliot, however, asks a different question. What if Batman could influence Sir Percy Blakeney–“that demmed elusive Pimpernel”? Now isn’t that an interesting thought. Obviously the woman who wrote about Sir Percy didn’t have Bruce Wayne in mind, but imagine Jane read the Batman comics first and then read about Sir Percy. She would probably expect certain things of Sir Percy because her brain found a shortcut between the two men with pattern recognition: socialite hiding vigilante operations. And that’s just one example; there are hundreds more. Eliot captured in one word how the human mind operates and its love for patterns.

Many times, the connections drawn between works are really only useful or meaningful to the people who’ve found them, and in my last post, I implied rather heavily that historical context should always be taken into account when reading literature. Patterns are not sufficient for literary analysis. But I can’t force people to turn off their brains and stop making connections. The insights people have actually can be useful in helping other people better understand their metaphorical bookshelves. So who am I to tell people not to connect the dots? The picture is different almost every time–connect away!