Why Critical Theory Today Matters (IMHO)

The mere mention of “literary theory” struck me instantly as something with which I’d be unfamiliar. I’m not an English major, and a textbook with as conventional a title as Critical Theory Today seems so fundamentally “college-level English” – so esoteric, really – that I didn't think I'd care, that I believed I had no reason to be familiar with any of the concepts it addressed. Reading the introductory chapter, I realize now this was just a defense mechanism: in the event that I didn’t understand the majority of what I was reading, I could brush it off as being just the sort of rhetoric that had pushed me away from the study of English in the first place. (Tyson, after all, mentions “fear of failure” at the outset of the book as one of the two main reasons why theory is avoided [1].) As it turns out, however, the book (or at least Ch. 1) was downright comforting, written to gently highlight the advantages of using a informed, theoretical approach to reading -- approaches that the author appears to use and appreciate on her own time as well as in the classroom. I felt genuinely heartened by her appeals to learn theory, since, as she mentions, even our unsystematic, “raw” interpretations of text are informed by some sort of theory, whether we are aware of it or not (4). Thus it is empowering to understand and organize our opinions as they fall into certain ideologies. Further, armed with more “lenses” by which we can interpret texts, ourselves, and the world, we can articulate multi-faceted, fully realized, credible, and interesting literary opinions (not to mention great cocktail-party banter!) (10). This introductory piece perfectly “logic-ed” me out of the fears I had, making me genuinely wonder how much I’ve been missing all these years, reading occasional books for pleasure without any real means by which to analyze them.

It is worth noting, before I continue to heap compliments on Tyson, that the examples she used to exemplify the alienation felt by students left “out of the loop” by theorists struck a particular chord with me (1-2).

(This being a blog, I’m tempted to give boring personal backstory, so please bear with me.)

My 20th birthday resolution – inane, I realize, but the root of my renewed interest in English – was to become “culturally informed, “ to make up for all the ignorant teen years I spent holed up in my room, tuning out “boring” subjects like literature, art, and politics, and consequently losing touch with the world around me. (Moreso, this stemmed out of a sudden realization that I’m an adult now, and I no longer have my parents to ask whenever I’m curious about an unfamiliar reference. If I’m going to have valid opinions and truly feel intelligent, it’s up to me to do the research.) Thus I took it upon myself to start reading in earnest over Winter Break, and found myself with both classics and contemporary favorites, notably David Foster Wallace (very non-YAL, I am aware). I also began to soak up as many blogs and news websites as I could, including Slate, on which I found the attached article by Nathan Heller. Both a book review by DFW in his collection of essays, Consider the Lobster, on a biography of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and the Heller article, a review/analysis of a Zadie Smith book I’d been skimming, coincidentally found their way into my hands around the same time. While of totally different sources, both essays are firmly rooted in theoretical discussion – a discussion about which I was thoroughly uninformed as I began to read them.

The essay “Joseph Frank’s Dostoyevsky” (which I'm not expecting any of you to have read, but I’ll attempt to explain anyway) is presented in the context of a book that addresses all sorts of subjects: a lobster festival, September 11th, talk radio, and even the John McCain 2000 campaign. In no way was the book meant to be confined to the eyes of literary theorists, but that did not stop the author from including references to the “New Criticism” and the “intentional fallacy” – a concept that, needless to say, required a trip to Wikipedia. (I suppose having CTT would have simplified things a bit.) What I came to discover was that the “intentional fallacy” arises out of the same “death of the author” concept of which Tyson made special note (1-2). And with or without Wikipedia, I still felt quite alienated by this strange, pretentious language. I mulled over the article, which, I deduced, examined the concept as it pertains to biographers (if the author has no bearing on reader perception, is it ever worthwhile to study an author’s life as a manner of understanding their work?), but I couldn’t help but wonder, once I had finished, whether I’d actually understood any of what I just read.

Likewise, Heller’s article discusses how fiction should be read according to one author, Zadie Smith, whose newest collection of essays, Changing My Mind, showcases the many identities she’s taken on while pursuing different styles of writing. (This actually solidifies Tyson’s concept of one reader using multiple theories like multiple lenses, to shape many, often complementary literary critiques.) More importantly, the Slate article mentions the “death of the author” debate specifically, with reference to Roland Barthes, who first articulated this sentiment, versus Vladimir Nabokov, who believed that the author was in total control of the readers’ perceptions. Luckily, these particular concepts were somewhat clarified, but the article’s central premise – the idea of theorists contemplating, in depth, the nature of fiction – was utterly foreign to me. (Even more foreign to me was that regular Slate readers were seeing the same words as I was, but actually understanding them.) I obviously learned something (to the effect that I was able to backtrack, re-locate the article, and connect it to our class), but I had no idea of this at the time.

Long story short, I was elated to come across yet another mention of “death of the author” in Tyson, regardless of the fact that it’s a small, isolated element of literary theory, since its explanation in CTT was worded with the understanding of how scary these thoughts could seem to a new student. Her arguments for theory, and for reading her book to understand it, rang so true that the text came full circle. Moreover, realizing that a seemingly obscure notion of theory could find its way into so many popular sources emphasized how imperative it is, to me at least, that I use this book and this class to start “getting the references” within today’s literary (and greater cultural) dialogue.

I’m probably far over the required wordcount, but this post would be completely irrelevant without an attempt to justify how YAL fits into this mix. It appears that what we attempt to do in this class is further legitimize this genre of literature by applying the theories presented in Critical Theory Today, and further that doing so is only a natural extension of what I’ve observed in the essays mentioned above. If theory is indeed becoming mainstream, the most we could do to prove the literary merits of a particular style is to continue this trend, drawing theoretical analyses from the books that both adults and young adults are actually reading. This brings both into the spotlight, highlighting the most enlightening aspects of theory alongside the insightful, innovative nature of today’s best YAL.