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Philosophy of Literature (review)

Article  in  Philosophy and Literature · January 2009

DOI: 10.1353/phl.0.0032

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Jukka Mikkonen
University of Jyväskylä
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PENULTIMATE DRAFT

Philosophy of Literature, by Peter Lamarque; x & 329 pp. Oxford: Blackwell,

2009. $34.95 paper, $84.95 hardback.

Even to this day, analytic philosophical approaches to literature have a bad

reputation among some literary critics and aestheticians from other philosophical
traditions. This is largely due to analytic philosophers of language and metaphysics
who often have done excursions into literary fiction simply to illustrate their
theories of language and reality-for example, Bertrand Russell’s interest in Hamlet
as a group of false sentences. Fortunately, another group of analytic philosophers is
interested in literature as an art form, one of them being Peter Lamarque. Over
decades, Lamarque has immersed himself in studying the central issues in the
philosophy of literature, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he is perhaps
the most prominent contemporary scholar in the field.

Philosophy of Literature is divided into seven chapters covering ambitious subject

areas: Art, Literature, Authors, Practice, Fiction, Truth, and Value. The main
questions the book attempts to answer are: What is it to view literature as art and
what is it to approach literature philosophically? The first chapter is an
introduction to the philosophy of literature. The discussion of the nature of
literature in the second chapter includes a conceptual analysis and extensive
historical survey of the theories of literature and literary aesthetics. In this chapter,
Lamarque presents trenchant insights into problems underlying recent definitions
of art and all the major definitions of literature from belles letters to speech-act
theories, paving the way for his institutional account.

Lamarque argues that literature is an intentional and, unlike fiction, an evaluative

concept. He suggests that speech-act theories of literature remove works from their
contexts of origin, whereas the (Gricean) utterance theories, which he considers
plausible, focus on the origin of the works and the social practice of story-telling.
Nevertheless, by stressing the author’s literary intention-an aim to produce a work
of literature-as the definitive factor of literature, Lamarque perhaps goes too far in
downplaying characteristics of literary language. As he sees it, poetic devices such
as dense and unusual syntax, rhythm, alliteration, metaphors, and the like are not
usual or necessary in literary fiction. According to him, the language used in works
of literature does not essentially differ from that used in ordinary discourse, neither
is it any more dense with meaning than any other discourse. He argues that it is
easy to find a vast multiplicity of meaning everywhere in language use, if one just
looks for it.

Admittedly, although poetic devices are neither universal nor essential, they are
characteristics of literary fiction. Although I agree with Lamarque to a great extent,
I think that his intentionalist definition underestimates, for instance, the
role of suggestion and implication in literature. Further, literary works make use of
symbols which seldom occur in ordinary conversations-an argument Lamarque has
himself used when arguing against utterance models of literary interpretation.
Moreover, if literary usage were the same as in ordinary discourse, the translation
of literary texts would not be considered any more difficult than that of, say,
cookbooks.

Another thought-provoking issue is Lamarque’s conception of literature. Lamarque

argues, for instance, that works of literature are of interest because they offer
content “with depth, inviting reflection.” He calls this “mimesis.” Here, a literary
critic might argue that Lamarque’s broadly “mimetic” view of literature, although
it is argued to be distinct from connotations of realism or mirroring nature, is too
narrow and excludes, for instance, surrealist poetry. Further, it is suspicious that
Lamarque’s numerous literary examples are such conventional and facile picks.
For example, when arguing that appreciation requires knowledge of literary forms,
Lamarque uses as his example Edmund Spenser’s Epithalamion’s “unusual stanza
form, derived from the Italian canzone” (p. 138). If, as Lamarque argues, all
literary works, including the novels of Robbe-Grillet he mentions, “should be read
as structures wholes,” why treat school examples instead of the complicated works
which pose problems for the theory?

The center of the book is perhaps chapter four, “Practice.” Lamarque seeks here
the essential features of literary practice. His “analytical conception” of institution
focuses not on actual social relations between groups of people but “rather
principles and conventions governing social roles” (p. 60). As Lamarque sees it,
literary works are “institutional objects” whose existence “depends on a set of
conventions concerning how they are created, appreciated, and evaluated,” that is,
“on attitudes, expectations, and responses found in authors and readers” (p. 62).

When answering the historical argument which maintains that “literature” means
different sort of things in different periods, Lamarque contends that although the
word literature has evolved over time, the “concept of literature captured by the
institutional account encompasses what was called ‘poetry’ by the ancient Greeks
and up to the eighteenth century” (p. 64). Nonetheless, in addition to the aesthetic
function, Lamarque does not discuss whether the various social functions of
literature (and their hierarchy) change from one period and culture to another.
Consider, for instance, the ethical and social dimension of ancient Greek tragedy or
the French realist novel. Surely, the socio-political function of literature was
different in those societies than it is today.

The second objection to the institutional account Lamarque treats maintains that
there are actually various approaches to literature. However, Lamarque argues that
he is not prescribing how to read but describing the core of literary interpretation.
According to him, without the universal features of “literary” reading, there is
neither literary criticism nor perhaps literature either (p. 133). For Lamarque, the
literary response is to reconstruct the theme of the work and to appreciate it. This
implies that reading a historical novel in order to gain knowledge of past times is
not in itself a literary interest. The main vice of Lamarque’s otherwise broad-
minded study is his essentialism which limits literary fictions to aesthetic pleasure-
givers whose other social functions are merely some “incidental purposes” (p.
178). Moreover, by emphasizing the distinctiveness of practices such as
philosophy and literature, Lamarque ignores major cultural traditions in which
practices overlap, for instance, the melting together of literature and philosophy in
the Continental tradition.

Yet another central issue in the book is the relation between literature and truth.
For Lamarque, it is undeniable that people learn truths from fiction, but the
question remains of what sort of value should be attached to this learning. He
suggests that deriving “truths” from, say, Shakespeare’s works misses their literary
and dramatic nuances. Statements in the plays are made by characters and not
“directly asserted” by the author (p. 234). Hence, he claims, one cannot know
whether or not the author intends them as truths the reader should accept.

Lamarque also argues that as a thematic statement a statement in fiction is not

banal, for it connects to the theme of the work. But as a truth-claim it should stand
on its own feet. For instance, Lamarque argues that the value of Dickens’s novel
Our Mutual Friend is “in the working of the theme” (which, according to
Lamarque, is that money corrupts), not in the theme’s propositional content which
he considers banal (p. 239). Nonetheless, it seems odd to assume that the
proponents of “literary truth,” even those who argue for a propositional theory of
literary truth, want to reduce the cognitive content of a fiction to its generalizations
or literal statements, as Lamarque suggests, or that they would not take into
account the context of the assertions nor the tone and style of the narratives in
which they occur. Neither does he argue for his claim that truth- claims cannot
connect to the thematic content of the work.
 Moreover, Lamarque claims that critics “rarely move from identifying themes and
locating them in the structure of a work to debating their truth as worldly
generalizations” (p. 237). As he sees it, engaging in, say, a philosophical debate
about themes in a work of literature is not part of the practice of reading. However,
Lamarque’s appeal to academic criticism in denying the place for truth-assessment
in literary interpretation has been criticized by Peter Kivy, who suggests that
although the assessment of truths is not part of academic criticism, general readers
commonly do assess literary truths as a part of the appreciation of the work.

In its entirety, Lamarque’s book is a comprehensive study which is admirably

sensitive to literary art. His discussions concerning authors’ literary roles and the
nature of types of fictional characters show a delicate understanding lamentably
rare in the field. Lamarque also leans greatly on literary critical commentaries
which give his treatment both support and substance. His philosophical analyses
and the clarifying interplay between the philosophy of literature and literary
criticism have significance not only to philosophers but literary critics, too.

Beyond this, Lamarque has the gift of treating complicated and subtle
philosophical theories in a lucid and intelligible way, and his writing is eloquent
yet placid. Not to mention that besides introducing the central issues in the
philosophy of literature the book also gives an extensive historical survey on the
topics, which will make it very useful for teaching. Philosophy of Literature is a
work which advances strong theses and simultaneously pays respect to opposing
views. Whether or not the reader agrees with the main conclusions of the work,
Lamarque’s lucid arguments are nourishment for the brain.

Jukka Mikkonen

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