Hillis Miller Literature Matters Today

Literature Matters Today
Author(s): J. Hillis Miller

Source: SubStance, Vol. 42, No. 2, ISSUE 131: Does Literature Matter? (2013), pp. 12-32
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Literature Matters Today
J. Hillis Miller
"Matters"! This is an odd word when used as a verb. Of course

we know what it means. The verbal form of "matter" means "count for
something," "have import," "have effects in the real world," "be worth
taking seriously." Using the word as a noun, however, someone might
speak of "literature matters," meaning the whole realm that involves
literature. The Newsletter of the Maine Chapter of the Appalachian
Mountain Club is called Wilderness Matters, punning on the word as a
noun and as a verb. We might say, analogously, "Literature Matters," as
my title does. In medieval Europe learned people spoke of "the matter of
Rome," "the matter of Arthur," "the matter of Greece," meaning the whole
set of stories that lay behind Aeneas's story, the Arthurian romances, or
Odysseus's, Achilles's, and Oedipus's stories. The verb "matter" resonates
with the noun "matter." The latter means sheer unorganized physical
substance. Aristotle opposed unformed matter to form. This suggests
that if something matters its import is not abstract. What matters is not
purely verbal, spiritual, or formal. It has concrete effects on materiality,
in the form perhaps of human bodies and their behavior. Does literature
matter in that sense today?
It matters quite a bit, however, what we mean by "literature" when
we ask whether literature matters today. I am assuming that "literature" in
this issue of Substance means printed books that contain what most people
ordinarily think of these days as "literature," that is, poems, plays, and
novels. Just what is "literary" about poems, plays, and novels is another
matter, to which I shall return. It is often taken for granted that what most
matters about literature, if it matters at all, is the accuracy with which it
reflects the real world or functions as a guide of conduct for readers liv
ing in that world. The 2500-year-old mimetic paradigm—going back to
the Greeks—in its multitude of permutations, has had, and still has, great
power, at least in the Western world. A little reflection, however, will show
that this paradigm is extremely problematic. It is easily contested or easily
made more complicated, as I shall later on briefly show.
The reader will recognize that adding "today" to the name of this
issue of Substance, as I have done, is a move that matters. Literature's
© Board of Regents, University of Wisconsin System, 2013

12 Substance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013
Literature Matters Today 13
import differs in different times, places, an

the question of whether literature matters now
here in the United States (since I know that
here-and-now within which all we human b
rest, more and more live from moment to mom
outset that this issue of Substance and dozen
would not be necessary if the mattering of
doubt. All who love literature are collectively an
literature matters. Surely no such issue of
necessary in Victorian England (my origina
example. To middle- and upper-class literate
that literature matters quite a lot was taken
never a matter for interrogation.
"Literate" and "literature" have the same r
ters." You are literate if you can make sense of
"lettered." Literature is made of letters—ma
writing technology or other. The primary tech
from the seventeenth century to the present. T
we Westerners generally mean by "literatur
for granted that printed literature—especial
them the everyday social world in which th
taught them how to behave in courtship and
other regions of everyday life. That way of
ters may explain the continued power of the
Literature, however, was also the chief w
could enjoy the pleasures of entering into an
for them by someone more gifted than they
Those pleasures were often seen as guilty an
young women, but also for young men. Thin
heroine of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, or
bert's Emma Bovary is the paradigmatic exam
corrupted by reading literature.
These two assumptions about why literat
sion in Victorian culture and in European cu
defined the social role the Victorian literate
sumed literature to have. Think of it! The Victo
no television, no video games, no DVDs, n
technological impoverishment! They had only
and magazines to satisfy their need both for
enjoying the imaginary.
SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013
14 J. Hillis Miller
I shall now dare to sp

to me. Though I am no
the only forms of tele
radio, telephone, record
a small village in upsta
read much as a child, t
than for any presump
to behave correctly in
I also took spontaneous
in the word play of Lew
of A. A. Milne's Winni
high school English tea
who held a PhD in psy
my literary knowledge
College, planning to be
I shifted from phys
literature," but also be
erature seemed a challe
from a galaxy, from a
many students there k
I had never heard of T
school. But mostly he
American literature. S
de Crèvecœur in the 18t
American Farmer, but I
works in that class, as
my home library. At O
did involve much readi
found when I shifted t
the whole range of En
like 18th-century poetr
I wonder how many su
seem pretty old-fashio
In spite of that train
works. I remember th
still does so. This is a s
Princess, called "Tears,
this poem when I was
strange use of languag
truth straightforward
uncomplicated a way a
things. The poem begi
Substance #13
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
(Tennyson, "Tears")
I asked myself, "What in the world does t

nyson mean by calling his tears idle? In wha
Why did he write, "I know not what they mean
mean either. The poem is very beautiful. There
so what? And "tears from the depth of som
"divine despair" mean? It must mean despai
Gods are not supposed to despair. What is th
are the autumn fields happy? I thought they
In short, I had dozens of questions about jus
me that simply to read the poem out loud to
do, and to say how beautiful it is, is not eno
ful. But what does it mean? I think we are ju
degree of "explicability" from literary work
teachers help students in this hermeneutic w
Why, I continued to wonder, should it ma
and understand this poem or not? I wanted t
questions, to account for the poem in the wa
data from outer space. Decades after my shif
I wrote an essay trying, belatedly, to answer
"Tears, Idle Tears" (Miller, "Temporal Topog
headed about my original project took me s
still discovering—still trying to come to term
of hermeneutics and poetics, meaning and th
(de Man 87-8). A shorthand description of m
that data from the stars and the linguistic "m
require fundamentally different methodologies
spent my whole life trying to account for v
ary" works. That is my vocation: reading, teach
about print literature. Literature matters a g
Well, how much does literature matter i

day? It is easy to see that literature in the se
and novels are mattering less and less. We a
twilight of the epoch of print literature, an
four centuries ago and could end without b
Substance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2,2013
16 J. Hillis Miller
civilization. Though of
the world, in different
and less to many peopl
of allowing the pleasur
about the real world an
to new technological d
television shows, popu
sion news broadcasts as f
create imaginary world
important part of mos
and less adept at doing it
difficult novel, Henry
more easily watch the
The new telecommu
rapid and complete cha
has been radically and
on a computer screen o
march or any of the pro
in cyberspace is in obv
different from reading
because the digital vers
because its material bas
"Forcener") is so diffe
different surrounding
cyberspace as against t
partly because of its di
location, the non-space
screen as against a prin
object you can hold in
The process of inven
changed. The underlyin
revolutionized. No mo
with a pen or pencil, th
a final draft ready to b
setting happened letter
with successive proofs
again. Composition of
that. The ease of revision
is never really finished
this essay at this very
are, for the most part,
out of business: the stu
Substance #13
of literature exists from the beginning in a

O's and l's on a hard drive or in some "cloud
may ultimately take print form, that printing
a computer file, often as a "PDF." More and
out simultaneously in print form and as "e-t
who read literature at all any more choose t
the "prestidigitalization" of literature.
"The medium is the maker" (Miller, Medi
alization of a given literary work fundamen
and its performative force. The matter of
computer "medium" makes literature radic
self—different, that is, down to its roots. "
in the sense both of a new material base and
tualist, mediumistic, telepathic means of tra
to me through the medium.
Strangely enough, one thinks with one's f
not a "creative writer," just someone who w
literature, in endless circumlocution. Never
experience of the difficulty of changing from
in my hand, as I used to do, to inventing the
puter keyboard, as I do habitually now. That
the words that are flowing through my finger
my nervous system onto the keyboard and
my computer screen. Some impersonal inner
as they are keyed in. They come into being b
that is more "discovering" than deliberately
bifurcated meaning of "invention."
Jacques Derrida long ago identified litera
with the several centuries of print culture a
with the appearance of modern democrac
and with the concomitant rise of a literate
(I stress "nominal") freedom to say and write
and not be held accountable for it ("Passion
[French] 64-8). An author could always say, eve
or of the speaker of a lyric poem she or he
speaking but an imaginary person created o
long ago prophetically foresaw, in a notabl
tion of La carte postale, that computer techn
along with a number of important other cul
One of Derrida's imaginary postcard writers
so-called (ladite) literature, if not all of it, c
nological regime of telecommunications (régi
SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2,2013
18 J. Hillis Miller
munications) (in this r

can philosophy or psy
197; "Envois" [French]
political regime, as we
repressive regimes mad
Derrida elsewhere writ
15), about how psycho
tion, would have been
been able to communic
postal system and the t
Suppose Shakespeare or
to compose on the com
Facebook! The mind bo
The signs that Derrid
vanishing of print lite
in different degrees an
United States is the red
ties in recent years fro
majors to 1%, the hug
in literature, the failur
their noble speeches ab
transformation of so m
into departments that
attention to literary te
cultural form among m
much as mention litera
emphasis, and even th
Levin of Yale, is all on im
ing so the United State
Richard Atkinson said t
University of Californ
its president. The old m
preparation for life as
by a concept of higher
math, in preparation f
ample in computer pro
read Shakespeare for s
Moreover, worrying
seems a trivial pastime
world of financial m
woes, rising poverty r
to this political chaos
SubStance #13
climate change, with ensuing natural disa

widespread species extinction, including p
wise (but self-destructive, autoimmune) c
not have time, today, it might well be arg
literature any longer matters. Who cares?
to care about something so trivial, someth
I have elsewhere argued for an anachro

ary works. I mean by "anachronistic" a readi
of our situation today, not by way of som
inside the mind-frame of a Renaissance man or woman in order to read
Shakespeare, or of a middle-class Victorian to read Dickens or George
Eliot ("Anachronistic"). The concept of a uniform period mind-set, as in
The Victorian Frame of Mind (Houghton) or The Elizabethan World Picture
(Tillyard), is in any case extremely problematic. Victorian and Elizabethan
frames of mind, the evidence shows, were quite heterogeneous. Even if
a uniform period mindset existed, why would identifying oneself with
it be an attractive thing to try to do, except for literary historians, those
putatively impersonal and objective scholars? Why pretend we are still
Victorians or Elizabethans? The answer, I suppose, is to that it will make
us better readers of Middlemarch or of Tennyson's The Princess, but despite
historical footnotes, literary works create their appropriate frames of
mind in their readers—a different one for each text. In place of the virtues
claimed for the so-called "historical imagination," I argue that literature
matters most for us if it is read for today, and read "rhetorically," as training
in ways to spot lies, ideological distortions, and hidden political agendas
such as surround us on all sides in the media these days.
I give one example: NBC evening news on television in the United
States ends almost every day with another "Making a Difference" seg
ment. These are typically moving "human interest" stories about how
some person or group is helping neighbors. A recent one told of a family
in Texas that is sending $2,000 a month to a family in Alabama in which
the breadwinners have lost their jobs and had their mortgage foreclosed.
The father is also being aided in his job search. Who would not admire
the charity, the human sympathy, of that family in Texas? However, the
hidden political message, drummed in implicitly by ever-new versions
of such stories, is that we do not need higher taxes on rich people and
large corporations, better education, or regulation of banks, other finan
cial institutions, and credit card companies, or stimulus spending by the
federal government to create jobs, universal health care, control of carbon
Substance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013
20 J- Hillis Miller
dioxide emissions, and so

Texas or elsewhere will a
Teaching people how to
and novels could also tra
I mean teaching literatu
between hermeneutics an
way that meaning is expre
from Paul de Man, who bo
Hermeneutik und Poetik series of conferences and conference books from
the University of Konstanz (de Man 87-8; Benjamin, "Task" 78; Benjamin,
"Aufgabe" 65). De Man claims, correctly, that hermeneutics and poetics
are incompatible. Of course this incompatibility can also be taught by way
of items in the new media, for example by explaining the hidden message
in the way the spokespersons in oil, gas, and coal television commercials
are consistently women, "minorities," or bearded intellectuals, not the
more or less ruthless and greedy white men who actually run Chevron,
Halliburton, and the rest. Many of the best "rhetorical" readings, however,
are of literary works, or of philosophical and theoretical texts, for example
readings by Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida. Literary works, moreover,
offer more concentrated and complex examples.
Teaching how to read in the light of the distinction between poet
ics and hermeneutics is a way literature can still be brought to matter.
This way of teaching how to read literature is, alas, unlikely to become a
widespread program. It is a Utopian dream. This dream may become a
reality in isolated cases, but most teachers of literature are not taught to
teach that way. Literature, as I have said, is in any case taught less and
less in any way at all, at least in the United States.
Now it might be argued that satisfaction of human beings' insatiable
desire for the literary—for the imaginary, for a certain figurative or fictive
use of words or other signs—has simply migrated to other media (films,
including animated films, video games, or even punning newspaper head
lines or television advertising). "Acertain figurative or fictive use of words
or other signs" is an extremely problematic definition of the "literary,"
by the way, warranting extensive commentary. Derrida is right, I believe,
to assert, in the interview with Derek Attridge in Acts of Literature, that
there is no text which is literary in itself. Literarity is not a natural es
sence, an intrinsic property of the text. It is the correlative of an inten
tional relation to the text, an intentional relation which integrates in
itself, as a component or an intentional layer, the more or less implicit
consciousness of rules which are conventional or institutional—social,
in any case. ("This Strange Institution" 44)
"Intentional" here is a Husserlian or phenomenological word nam

ing the orientation of consciousness toward something or other. News
SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013
paper headlines and television ads are ofte

imaginative. If Derrida is right, we might we
them as manifestations of "literarity." A televis
the viewer/listener instantly into a conspic
imaginary world, as in the one that shows a
forth trying to find a safe place to hide a bone
out, for human beings' search for a safe plac
It is an ad for an investment firm.
Such ads employ an extremely sophistica
They often use animations and other advan
such commercials, by the way, have a large c
at least of ideological distortions, as in my
Difference" series, or in the many ads on be
coal companies that neglect to mention that
ing about irreversible and catastrophic clima
form of the imaginary. If Shakespeare were res
creating video games or advertising spots, n
world is where the big money is.
This migration of "literarity" is certainly
ment happens at the expense of literature in
is meant in the title of this issue of Substance: "Does Literature Matter?"
Printed literature is gradually becoming a thing of the past.
Let me now get serious and ask again why literature (in the old
fashioned sense of printed poems, plays, and novels) ought still to mat
ter even in these dire times. In order to be more specific, to get closer to
the actual matter of literature, let me give a series of citations from the
openings of several works all in English (with one exception) that I claim
are literature. Most people would probably agree that my citations are
examples of what is commonly meant by "literature." I take openings
because those beginnings strikingly reveal the way each work shows
itself to be different, unique, even within the oeuvre of a given author.
The opening of each work instantly takes the reader into a distinctive
imaginary world cut off from the real world, though a transformation of it.
Entering such a world is what I mean by the "pleasures of the imaginary."
And an intense pleasure it is! I postpone for a moment explaining what
I mean by "the imaginary," a word so far taken too much for granted in
my essay. In order to illustrate one of my points, I shall call down all my
opening lines from cyberspace, downloading each by way of an almost
instantaneous Google search:
SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013
J. Hillis Miller
Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO
BERNARDO
Who's there?
FRANCISCO
Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

BERNARDO
Long live the king!

FRANCISCO
Bernardo?
BERNARDO
He.
FRANCISCO
You come most carefully upon your hour.

BERNARDO
'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO
For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
(William Shakespeare. Hamlet)
Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of EDEN, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse ...
(John Milton, Paradise Lost)
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession

of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
(Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)
A slumber did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
(William Wordsworth, "A Slumber did my Spirit Seal")
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair ...
(Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Tears, Idle Tears")
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely
— having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to
interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the
watery part of the world.
(Herman Melville, Moby Dick)
"I can never bring myself to believe it, John," said M

the pretty daughter of Mr. George Walker, attorney
Walker and Winthrop was the name of the firm, and
respectable people, who did all the solicitors' busin
to be done in that part of Barsetshire on behalf of t
employed on the local business of the Duke of Omniu
those parts, and altogether held their heads up hig
lawyers often do. They,—the Walkers,—lived in a g
house in the middle of the town, gave dinners, to w
gentlemen not unf requently condescended to come,
led the fashion in Silverbridge. "I can never bring m
it, John," said Miss Walker.
"You'll have to bring yourself to believe it," said Joh

taking his eyes from his book.
"A clergyman,—and such a clergyman too!"

(Anthony Trollope, The Last Chronicle of B
Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heave

That seemed as though ice burned and was but the
(W. B. Yeats, "The Cold Heaven")
Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure. P

bougie éteinte, mes yeux se fermaient si vite que je n
de me dire: «Je m'endors.»
(Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps pe
In Hydaspia, by Howzen
Lived a lady, Lady Lowzen,
For whom what is was other things.
(Wallace Stevens, "Oak Leaves are Hand
Well, there is literature for you, the real rig

the list indefinitely, in a litany of remembered
pleasures matter? What makes reading them
pleasure? I stress seven features my examples
1) Each is markedly different from all the
incommensurable, even though each in one wa
ordinary words that name things and actions
Those words are nevertheless here transform
to name imaginary worlds that have no refer
world." You can meet Lady Lowzen and visit
poem, even though "by Howzen" is a play on t
Dutch phrase "bei Hausen," meaning "next doo
to the real. All the informative, "realist" specifi
Barset's masterly opening lines is a sham, and
24 J- Hillis Miller
No Walker family and no

anywhere but in the pages
to which those words on
2) Each citation provide
world by the magic "O
words work like Alice's p
of Carroll's Through the L
3) This entry into the
Yeats's word. It happens
may have preceded the r
the reading of a previous
strange and alien ones, lik
4) Each opening passage
figurative transfers or p
uniform way.
5) The effect on the reader, on me as reader at least, is to create an
almost irresistible compulsion to go on reading in order to find out what
happens next. These inaugural instants are each in one way or another
enigmatic, puzzling, partly because leaping into the middle of things
seems in each case to presuppose all sorts of things the reader does not
yet know, for example the name of the presumably felonious clergyman,
"Josiah Crawley," in the opening of Trollope's Last Chronicle. You want to
go on reading to find those things out, to orient yourself. Each example,
moreover, is, in a different way in each case, clearly the beginning of some
kind of narrative, a story. Human beings, we know, love stories.
6) Though the reader knows perfectly well, or thinks he or she knows,
that each fictive realm is created by the language that tells of it, neverthe
less it seems, in my experience at least, that each realm has been there all
along. It has been waiting "somewhere" to be entered and described with
the "Open Sesame!" of so-called literary language. "Invention (inventio)"
as making up turns out to be invention as discovering, as the antithetical
Latin word, inventio, can mean.
7) Each inaugural passage, in a different way in each case (even
Shakespeare's Hamlet in its own way), creates the illusion of a speaking
or writing voice, a storyteller. Nevertheless, even when, as in many of my
examples, that voice speaks explicitly as an "I" ("A slumber did my spirit
seal"; "Suddenly I saw "Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne
heure," etc., my italics), the narrative voice is characterized by a certain
strange impersonality that is detached from any identifiable "ego," for
example that of the author. This speaking or writing enunciator is like that
strange voice that speaks within me, to a considerable degree out of my
control, the words I am writing down at this moment. The words come
SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013
from who knows where and are spoken wit

impersonal linguistic power. I take responsibilit
me speaking, any more than the real perso
writes, "Call me Ishmael." Maurice Blanchot,
strangely alien voice, a voice already coming
world, "The Narrative Voice (the 'it,' the neu
'il,' le neutre]") (Blanchot, "Narrative Voice";
Hegel, Benveniste, Paul de Man, and, most re
a wonderful essay contrasting Japanese and
as a topic in Yoko Tawada's "Eine leere Fl
("Ethnic Irony"), have in different ways bro
sal ambiguity, duplicity, or, better, "ironic
for the ego in different Western languages,
in openly literary texts, as in so many of m
example is Yeats's "Suddenly I saw ...." Th
ary text seems at first to be a person, a self, p
but reveals itself to be at the same time an e
Flasche") for anybody, in the end for nobody
literary speech, Blanchot's "neutral."
To develop this line of thought adequately
essay, but I break the line now by citing the
passages de Man cites and comments on fro
philosophischen Wissenschaften in "Sign and Sy
"so kann ich nicht sagen was ich nur meine
as meaning, among other things, "I cannot
cannot say what I think"; and "I cannot say
say what I only (or simply) mean." The othe
calls a "quite astonishing sentence," as inde
sage: 'Ich,' meine ich mich als diesen alle an
was ich sage, Ich, ist eben einen jeder." ("Wh
this I to the exclusion of all others; but wha
any I, as that which excludes all others from
97-8; Hegel 8:80; 8:74). The great Hegel, mast
stumbled into the abyss that lies beneath th
as into the way repeated phonemes call atte
sound: "wenn ich sage: 'Ich,' meine ich m
It is a universal feature of so-called "liter
of language taken as literature, "intended" as
different from one another as they all are, that
is transformed into an impersonal, anonymous
language, an empty flask. An everyday and see
this transformation is the familiar omniscient
26 J- Hillis Miller
tor of canonical English no

of Austen's Pride and Preju
illustrate this. The anon
evident in the pervasive
Ich, ist eben jeder." ("Wh
Of just what kind of m

this strange "literary" u
der and entering them m
"imaginary" interchange
Aristotle on, assume tha
real world and uses them
discovery, a virtual reality
real persons, places, and
Matters are not quite s
unlikely theoretical bedf
help my formulations. I
Imaginary" ("Les deux ve
the Sirens" ("Le chant des
The Fictive and the Imagin
Iser Fiktive). Both Blanch
are in unexpected resonan
two terms, real and fictiv
the fictive, and the imag
first chapter, "Fictionalizin
1-21) is complex. It is at
summarized as follows:
Iser contests the long tradition, with its many permutations going
back to Aristotelian mimesis, defining the fictive more or less exclusively
in terms of its oppositional or dialectical relation to the real. Iser asserts
that a third term, "the imaginary," must be invoked. The imaginary, he
says, "is basically a featureless and inactive potential" (Iser xvii; not pres
ent in the German "Vorwort") in human beings for dreams, "fantasies,
projections, daydreams, and other reveries" ("Phantasmen, Projektionen
und Tagträumen") (English 3; German 21, henceforth E and G), as well as
for activating fictions. The imaginary is, in a phrase not translated into
the English version, "diffus, formlos, unfixiert und ohne Objektreferenz"
(G 21): diffuse, formless, unfixed, and without objective reference. Iser's
imaginary must not be thought of as in any way a transcendent entity, a
divine realm of potential forms. Iser's thinking is resolutely a-religious,
anti-idealist. The imaginary is an exclusively human potential.
Nor are the real, the fictive, or the im

as purely linguistic entities. Though he re
embodiments of the fictive, are made of w
about "semantics," Iser appears to have
based literary theories. "Whoever wants t
understand more than just language" ("we
als nur Sprache verstehen muß") says Iser
plausible enough, but it tends to lead Iser to
of language in generating fictions. He say
text inevitably contains a selection from a
tural, and literary systems that exist as refe
("Daraus ergibt sich die für jeden fiktionalen
den vorhandenen Umweltsystemen, seien
oder solche der Literatur selbst.") (E 4; G 2
it is easy to see, does not contain items f
uses, rather, the names for them, as Iser's
"referential fields" does, after all, imply.
Iser in the German original cited above
the "Umweltsystemen," a word not easily
textual systems" misses the force of "Um
"Surrounding-world-systems" is a more l
systemen" but is not good English. The f
the surrounding world systems, however,
critical perspectives on the real, though Ise
that function of literature. Literature "br
by using elements from it to give form to
is its chief function. "Reality, then," says
fictional text, but it is there in order to be o
its being bracketed." ("So wird zwar Wirk
wiederholt, doch durch die Einklammerun
überragt.") (E 13; G 38) The essential funct
give quasi-materiality to the diffuseness
quent journey to new horizons translates
ence—an experience that is shaped by the
to the imaginary by the fictional 'as-if.'" (
übersetz sich das Imaginaäre in eine Erfah
durch den Grad der Bestimmtheit, den d
des Als-Ob gewinnt.") (E 17; G 45) The l
another quasi-technical term, is "a pragm
("die Pragmatisierung des Imaginären") (E
literary text is not the real and it is not f
plicitous availability of the imaginary" ("
Imaginären") (E 19; G 48). In giving pragm
28 J. Hillis Miller
less imaginary, the fic

of Iser's suspicion of l
of the text defy verba
says Iser in the final s
through these open stru
that the imaginary can m
one last achievement of
presence of the imagin
selbst überschritten). I
conditions it, the imag
text (als den Ermöglic
tive matrix" as a name f
of the obstetric image
This all makes perfec
original theory of fictio
either in work by other
wrestling to define the
Just what human go
beings need fictions? Is
give us new critical pe
pleasure in itself, its mo
"pragmatizations" of t
nary." That human bein
is Iser's fundamental a
human nature allows,"
culture-bound pattern
becomes a panorama of
either the limitations o
alized organizations wit
(E xviii-xix; not in the
of the limitless ways t
acts as a means of giving
is the best way to do th
This gives one answer
We should read literatu
the best form of limit
literature? By opening
make available. For Iser
matters, is the pleasure
It has its source ("genera
being influenced by it
ends in themselves. Iser
Substance #13
chapter of The Fictive and the Imaginary: Rena

critique and a pleasure to read.
The closest thing to Iser's idea of the i
Blanchot's concept of the imaginary in the
in many other essays too. A full reading of
nary would take many pages, no doubt a lo
to brief and somewhat oversimplifying rem
or less unproblematic word "fictive" as a nam
language, Blanchot puts a subtle theory of "
the imaginary as embodied in literary langu
in a characteristic torrent of paradoxes, of
two sensations coincided in a time out of tim
him to become a writer at last, Blanchot says:
becomes image, and the essence of the imag
without intimacy, and yet more inaccessible
the innermost thought; without significati
fundity of every possible meaning; unrevea
that presence-absence that constitutes the a
of the Sirens" ("Sirens" 14; "Sirènes" 22). A
celebration of fictive pragmatizations of th
filling limitless human plasticity, Blanchot
vanishing point within which one might be
This danger is figured in the threat to Ulysses
tends to identify the imaginary with death
dying. The imaginary also exists as "the nar
to the evasions of the novel (le roman). Blanc
have cited are Ulysses in his approach toward
real song behind the Sirens' infinitely luring
search for (recherche de) lost time, and Ahab
in Moby Dick. Here I let Blanchot, now a voi
himself, or "itself":
The narrative (récit) begins where the novel (le

but still leads us by its refusals and its rich neglige
heroically and pretentiously the narrative of one si
Ulysses' meeting and the insufficient and magnetic
[One might add as examples the ambiguous endin
novel and Ahab's climatic mortal re-encounter with
[... ] Narrative is not the relating of an event but t
approach of this event, the place where it is call
event still to come, by the magnetic power of which
can hope to come true (par la puissance attirante
espérer, lui aussi, se réaliser).... Narrative is the m
point—one that is not only unknown, ignored, an
that it seems, before and outside of this movement
30 J. Hillis Miller
reality; yet one that is so i

the narrative draws its at
"begin" before having rea
unforeseeable movement o
the point becomes real, p
slightly altered; "Sirènes"
You will see how clos

from one another they
somewhat sinister attr
death is for Iser a happ
both, however, a third
and to the fictive transp
literature is to put the r
that is "formless and d
"featureless and inactiv
foreign, dangerous poin
However, both Blanch
for two other ways in
reader critical perspectiv
and social realities: fin
for example) by means o
gives an irreplaceable p
with "the novel": "Wit
is foregrounded, that
This voyage is an entir
of men, it is linked to
passion?—JHM], it actu
enough to absorb all th
("Sirens" 5; "Sirènes" 11
is Blanchot's example h
myself except that it
Today all but a few luc
modern printed transl
The Odyssey and of Para
voice is experienced as
here is one more "Open
Fitzgerald's translation,
me tell the story/of t
The Odyssey is not Hom
ventriloquizing him, m
I fully endorse the B
ness of their non-con
Substance #13
pleasures of reading literature, along with

of printed literature. Literature matters b
human functions: social critique, the plea
a materialization of the imaginary or an
proachable imaginary. Though human c
an end if literature in the old-fashioned s
vanish in an age of what I call "prestidigit
that video games, films, television, and po
That is so even though these new media are n
conjoining in their dispersal the real, the f
University of Californi
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York: Schocken Books, 1969, 69-82.
Blanchot, Maurice. "Les deux versions de l'imaginaire." In L'espace littéraire. Paris: Gal
limard, 1955, 266-77.
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556-67.
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de Man, Paul. "Sign and Symbol in Hegel's Aesthetics." In Aesthetic Ideology. Ed. Andrzej
Warminski. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996, 91-104.
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Literature Matters Today

Author(s): J. Hillis Miller

"Matters"! This is an odd word when used as a verb. Of course

© Board of Regents, University of Wisconsin System, 2013

import differs in different times, places, an

SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013

I shall now dare to sp

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

I asked myself, "What in the world does t

Well, how much does literature matter i

Substance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2,2013

of literature exists from the beginning in a

SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2,2013

munications) (in this r

climate change, with ensuing natural disa

I have elsewhere argued for an anachro

Substance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013

dioxide emissions, and so

"Intentional" here is a Husserlian or phenomenological word nam

SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013

paper headlines and television ads are ofte

SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013

Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

Long live the king!

You come most carefully upon your hour.

'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession

A slumber did my spirit seal;

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Substance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2,2013

"I can never bring myself to believe it, John," said M

"You'll have to bring yourself to believe it," said Joh

"A clergyman,—and such a clergyman too!"

Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heave

Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure. P

Well, there is literature for you, the real rig

Substance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2,2013

No Walker family and no

SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013

from who knows where and are spoken wit

SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2,2013

tor of canonical English no

Of just what kind of m

Substance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2,2013

Nor are the real, the fictive, or the im

SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2,2013

less imaginary, the fic

chapter of The Fictive and the Imaginary: Rena

The narrative (récit) begins where the novel (le

SubStance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2,2013

reality; yet one that is so i

You will see how clos

pleasures of reading literature, along with

Substance #131, Vol. 42, no. 2, 2013

Hegel, G. W. F. Enzyklopädie der p

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