What is Poetics?Author(s): Stein Haugom OlsenReviewed work(s):Source: The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 105 (Oct., 1976), pp. 338-351Published by: Wiley-Blackwell for The Philosophical QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2218864 .Accessed: 23/09/2012 13:38

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338

WHAT IS POETICS?

BY STEIN HAUGOM OLSEN

I The conception of poetics as an objective and systematic, or, indeed,

even a "scientific" study of literature has gained wide currency among theorists and critics since the last war. Primarily this has been due to the influence of the "semantic" poetics which followed upon the New Criticism, but more recently the structuralist poetics in France has developed similar ideas. Structuralism and semantic poetics do indeed draw their ideas from very different sources, but they share a common assumption which may be called the axiom of objectivity. This assumption can be formulated roughly as follows: the literary work is a piece of discourse (a text) possessing certain characteristics which make it what it is: a literary work. As a piece of dis- course it is accessible to all the speakers of the language; its qualities can be observed and classified by interested observers, and if, in a particular case, there is dispute about what these qualities are, it can be settled by reference to the text itself. Thus a systematic (the structuralists say "scien- tific") study of literary works is possible; a study which will ultimately lead to a full understanding of the qualities which make a text into a literary work. The text is accorded an object-like status. In the semantic theory it is labelled "artefact". In scientific (structuralist) poetics, texts are "pheno- mena" to be studied scientifically.

The axiom of objectivity manifests itself differently in the two different theories. The point of departure for the scientific poetics is that all discourse is structured. This structuring goes beyond the rule-governed combination of words into sentences. Larger pieces of discourse can also be seen to be structured. In particular, the sequences of sentences or texts which we recognize as literary works have characteristic structural properties. These properties are analogous to the structural properties of sentences, and they constitute a higher-order language with its own units and grammar. Poetics identifies the units of this language and describes the rules of combination. It becomes in this way a "linguistics" of this higher-order language.

For example, describing the structure of a plot, it is possible to use categories analogous to those of noun, adjective and verb used in linguistic description (the episode described is from The Decameron):

Prenons un exemple qui nous permettra d'illustrer ces "parties du discours" narratif. Peronnelle re9oit son amant en l'absence du mari, pauvre ma9on. Mais un jour celui-ci rentre de bonne heure. Peron- nelle cache l'amant dans un tonneau; le mari une fois entre, elle lui dit que quelqu'un voulait acheter le tonneau et que ce quelqu'un

WHAT IS POETICS? 339

est maintenant en train de l'examiner. Le mari la croit et se rejouit de la vente. I1 va racier le tonneau pour le nettoyer; pendant ce temps, l'amant fait l'amour a Peronnelle qui a passe sa tete et ses bras dans l'ouverture du tonneau et l'a ainsi bouche (VII, 2).

Peronnelle, l'amant et le mari sont les agents de cette histoire. Tous les trois sont des noms propres narratifs, bien que les deux derniers ne soient pas nommes; nous pouvons les designer par X, Y et Z. Les mots de l'amant et du mari nous indiquent de plus un certain etat (c'est la legalite de la relation avec Peronnelle qui est ici en cause); ils fonctionnent donc comme des adjectifs. Ces adjectifs decrivent l'equilibre initial: Peronnelle est 1'epouse du ma9on, elle n'a pas le droit de faire l'amour avec d'autres hommes.1

In the further analysis the theorist identifies two "verbs" in the plot which structure the action; and he can conclude "Ainsi l'analyse du recit nous permet d'isoler des unites formelles qui presentent des analogies frappantes avec les parties du discours: nom propre, verbe, adjectif".2 The formal units in question here are found in the text. Their presence is a given on which the theorist can build. Higher-order structures like these are not always found on the surface of texts. They may have to be reconstructed from the data which the text offers. The data, however, are given in the same way as the data for other scientific theories are given. The theory is "empirical".

The central insight which the semantic theory develops in some detail is based on a distinction between the primary and secondary meanings of words and sentences. The notion of primary meaning is taken for granted in the theory. It is the way in which one would normally understand a word. A word may have several primary meanings which make it useful in different types of context. It also has secondary meanings. These are the associations which it evokes; what it suggests to a receiver by virtue of its connections to certain types of objects, events, situations, or linguistic frames. Secondary meaning is also called "connotation" or "implied meaning", and it is held to be one of the semantic properties of a term. Like primary meaning it attaches to the word and will be discoverable by a competent speaker of the language.

In ordinary language such primary meanings and connotations of a word as may lead to misunderstanding or are irrelevant to the message are suppressed. Ordinary language is "transparent": it is used to attain a goal and attention is concentrated on this goal and never on the linguistic means. Literary discourse differs from ordinary language by making use of secondary meaning. Primary meanings which are not required by the context and connotations are allowed to come into play and enrich the meaning of the words and sentences employed. Ambiguities and paradoxes both of single terms and of whole phrases are used in literature to give language what has

1Tzvetan Todorov, "La grammaire du recit" (1968), in Tzvetan Todorov, Poetique de la prose (Paris, 1971), p. 122.

2Ibid.

340 STEIN HAUGOM OLSEN

been called "semantic density". To bring out the secondary meanings of a passage one uses the technique called "explication". Here is an example of how a theorist deals with some lines from Macbeth:

Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels trumpet-tongu'd against The deep damnation of his taking off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind.

Pity is like the naked babe, the most sensitive and helpless thing; yet, almost as soon as the comparison is announced, the symbol of weakness begins to turn into a symbol of strength; for the babe, though newborn, is pictured as "Striding the blast" like an elemental force-like "heaven's cherubim" .... The final and climactic ap- pearance of the babe symbol merges all the contradictory elements of the symbol. For, with Macduff's statement about his birth, the naked babe rises before Macbeth as not only the future that eludes calcula- tion, but as avenging angel as well.3

Here "pity" is described as ambiguous, involving the ideas of both helpless- ness and power. The ambiguity is built on the secondary meanings or con- notations which Brooks takes to be the properties of the expressions 'naked new-born babe', 'striding the blast', 'heaven's cherubim, hors'd upon the sightless couriers of the air'. Thus we have a classic case of semantic density, ambiguity giving rise to ambiguity.

Scientific poetics accepts structural patterns as given; the semantic theory takes the given facts to be secondary meanings of phrases and words. In both cases it is a question of an unargued assumption that these are objective properties of texts. When they meet with objections, the response of these theories is to produce arguments of the "look-and-see" type, i.e., more and more empirical data are collected which will show that literature does have secondary meanings or poetic structures. The basic question of the appropriateness and adequacy of this type of "look-and-see" response is not discussed at all. It is simply accepted that these features are there to be observed.

II Scientific poetics and the more purist versions of the semantic theory

do not look upon themselves as just another literary theory. They do not simply attempt to answer the traditional problems of poetics; they also want to define a discipline which has its own methods and poses its own

3Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn (New York, 1947), p. 45.

WHAT IS POETICS? 341

questions; they thus necessarily limit the theorist's concerns by prescribing both what are relevant problems and the appropriate methods for solving them.

Naturally, to accept the axiom of objectivity will have serious con- sequences for the conception of poetics which emerges. If literary discourse is distinguished from other types of discourse either by local semantic features or by structural properties which are objectively observable, then the task of the theorist will be to describe and classify these features and their internal relationships. The structuralist will be engaged in mapping semiological structures onto literary works. And semantic theorists will try to show in what ways language can be semantically dense. However, the most important consequence of the axiom of objectivity concerns what the theorist could not be doing if he wanted to keep within literary theory. He could not concern himself with the relationship between literary works and the world, between literary works and their authors or literary works and their readers. If he did, he would then be taking a step outside literary theory and into psychology, sociology, or history (of ideas, etc.). A poetics based on the axiom of objectivity will have no tools for dealing with these types of relationships, nor, indeed, will it recognize any questions concerning them as falling within poetics. This consequence is bound to bring poetics into trouble.

For while it is true that a literary work is a type of which the tokens are physical objects (the copies of the text) and which can therefore in some respects be characterized as an object, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the concept of a literary work also involves assumptions about value. To give something the title "literary work" is to place it within a region of our concerns which has an established claim on our time and attention. It is to see it as attempting to yield a certain pay-off which is conventionally ex- pected of texts classed in this way. The notion of pay-off can, of course, only be understood in terms of a relationship between literary works and the aims and purposes of a group of people. Literature as an institution of culture is founded on the perception that it is valuable. The achievement of this value is dependent upon there being performances to be appreciated; and performances are created by men and judged by them. It is on this interplay between creation and judgement that the concept of literary value depends. To cut off the literary work from readers and authors is to cut it off from any meaningful function it can fulfil. To treat it as an object rather than as a performance may help to gain objectivity of description but it means losing the chance of characterizing the aesthetic dimension of the work. Sever the connection between literature and value and you make the concept of a "literary work" uninteresting.

One must suspect, then, that the axiom of objectivity is radically in- adequate as a basis for a conception of poetics. I shall try in the next section to show that this is the case.

342 STEIN HAUGOM OLSEN

III If "the actual objects of poetics are the particular regularities that occur

in literary texts and that determine the specific effects of poetry",4 then there arises a problem of relevance. The question "Given a literary work, which features and patterns are relevant to the status of this text as a literary work?" requires an answer before the objective analysis can get off the ground. Some features are relevant to this status and others are not. How are we to choose a description which includes only the relevant features? If one accepts the axiom of objectivity the answer is that no decision is necessary because the structures are given. One does actually know what "particular regularities" give poetic effects and these are the intuitions poetics must build on:

A meaningful investigation that attempts to describe this system PS [poetic structure] must thus grow out of the effects and judgements that come about through the maximally adequate understanding of a poetic text.5

The question of how one arrives at a "maximally adequate understanding" of a poetic text, and what constitutes such an understanding, is not taken to be a question of poetics. And, furthermore, it is regarded as a question which will have no bearing on the possible conclusions of a poetic theory. Interpretation is given a place in literary activity but it is seen as theoretically innocuous. It is given the status roughly of pre-theoretical observations which may be given direction once theory is introduced but which will still remain observations.

There are in actual fact wide disagreements about the correct inter- pretation of most literary works. This alone is reason enough to reject the assumption that poetic structures are given through shared intuitions. Interpretative judgements are based on arguments and can be challenged through arguments. If an investigation into poetic structure is to be based on interpretative judgements, then the question of how such judgements can be evaluated must be brought to the forefront of literary theory, thus shifting its whole focus from objectively given structures to the process of inter- pretation. Otherwise the theory must resign itself to producing arbitrary results.

Perhaps, to get out of the corner into which he has boxed himself by insisting that he relies on interpretative judgements, the scientific theorist will now make the following move: though interpretative judgements con- cerning the same work are widely different, he may say, it remains a fact that all these interpretative judgements rest on sets of structural patterns and regularities which are independent of any one interpretation and which can be described by the theorist. ". . . une description scientifique doit

4Manfred Bierwisch, "Poetics and Linguistics", in Donald C. Freeman (ed.), Linguis- tics and Literary Style (New York, 1970), pp. 98-9. Originally published as "Poetik und Linguistik", in Helmut Kreuzer and Rul Gunzenhauser (edd.), Mathematik und Dich- tung (Munich, 1965, 1967).

5Bierwisch, p. 109.

WHAT IS POETICS? 343

pouvoir rendre compte de toutes les lectures coh6rentes possibles. Sans pour autant enoncer explicitement chaque lecture, elle d6finit les conditions de chacune."6 A scientific poetics is not based on interpretative judgements of different degrees of competence except in the sense that it tries to explain their source. The theorist "can and must explicate those consciously or unconsciously followed regularities that lead to the understanding of poetic structure and to a judgement of poeticality".7 These regularities, the theorist will claim, can be described in a consistent, coherent and comprehensive vocabulary which clearly identifies the properties of the structural patterns and regularities. And it is the task of "scientific" poetics to develop such descriptions.

In fact, this move leaves the scientific theory no better off than if it were to base itself on interpretative judgements. For while an interpretation cannot create the facts on which it is based, it does pick out which facts are artistically relevant and make clear in what way they are relevant by creating a description of these facts. Thus the artistically relevant structural proper- ties described in an interpretation become the product of that particular interpretation. There is no given structure of facts in a work which are artistically relevant except as they are given through an interpretation. This recreative aspect of the literary activity can be observed at every stage of interpretation and it is possible to illustrate it by choosing almost at random from the vast critical corpus which has arisen in connection with every branch of Western literature. Note, for example, how Auden in the following argument, which I quote in extenso, identifies a pattern of facts from Othello by connecting them in a description and how the description creates the pattern from a set of previously unconnected "facts" in the work.

In Othello, thanks to Iago's manipulations, Cassio and Desdemona behave in a way which would make it not altogether unreasonable for Othello to suspect that they were in love with each other, but the time factor rules out the possibility of adultery having been actually committed. Some critics have taken the double time in the play to be merely a dramaturgical device for speeding the action which the audience in the theatre will never notice. I believe, however, that Shakespeare meant the audience to notice it as, in The Merchant of Venice, he meant them to notice the discrepancy between Belmont time and Venice time.

If Othello had simply been jealous of the feelings for Cassio he imagined Desdemona to have, he would have been sane enough, guilty at worst of a lack of trust in his wife. But Othello is not merely jealous of feelings which might exist; he demands proof of an act which could not have taken place, and the effect on him of believing in this physical impossibility goes far beyond wishing to kill her: it is not only his wife who has betrayed him but the whole universe; life has become meaningless, his occupation is gone.

6Fran9ois Rastier, "Syst6matique des isotopies", in A. J. Greimas (ed.), Essais de semiotique poetique (Paris, 1972), p. 96.

7Manfred Bierwisch, op. cit., p. 108.

344 STEIN HAUGOM OLSEN

This reaction might be expected if Othello and Desdemona were a pair like Romeo and Juliet or Antony and Cleopatra whose love was an all-absorbing Tristan-Isolde kind of passion, but Shakespeare takes care to inform us that it was not.

When Othello asks leave to take Desdemona with him to Cyprus, he stresses the spiritual element of his love.

I therefore beg it not To please the palate of my appetite; Nor to comply with heat, the young affects In me defunct, and proper satisfaction; But to be free and bounteous of her mind.

Though the imagery in which he expresses his jealousy is sexual- what other kind of imagery could he use--Othello's marriage is important to him less as a sexual relationship than as a symbol of being loved and accepted in the Venetian community. The monster in his own mind too hideous to be shown is the fear he has so far repressed that he is only valued for his social usefulness to the City. But for his occupation he would be treated as a black barbarian.8

In the first part of this argument Auden remarks upon the fact that critics have simply not considered the double time-scheme in Othello to have a proper artistic function as distinguished from a merely dramaturgical one. He then goes on to place the double time-scheme together with other features of the play, showing how these facts together form a pattern. At the same time he rejects certain descriptions which would not allow the pattern to be formed (Othello is not "simply jealous", he is not simply guilty of "a lack of trust in his wife"); and he puts forward other descriptions which make the double time-scheme instrumental in bringing out the particular nature of Othello's jealousy. In the last part of the argument he supports his first description, which assigned a place to the double time-scheme within a larger pattern, by showing how further facts in the play fall into the same pattern. Again he achieves his end by offering certain descriptions and rejecting others. The quoted passage is described as having the function of making clear the spiritual nature of Othello's love. The description of Othello's love as sexual is rejected in spite of his use of sexual imagery to describe it, and it is described instead as being a craving for trust. All the incidents and linguistic features referred to by Auden are to be found in Othello, but they are identified as constituting an artistically relevant structural pattern only through this interpretative description.

The movement in all interpretative judgement is like this: from hypo- thesis to the evidence or pattern which supports the hypothesis. Such facts as do not form a pattern which can be described in the hypothesis are simply ignored. Different interpretations may, and do, identify different patterns in the same text, though, of course, there will be overlapping between interpretations in this respect. But overlapping does not mean that the

8W. H. Auden, "The Joker in the Pack", in W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (London, 1963), pp. 265-6.

WHAT IS POETICS? 345

patterns in question could be identified as artistic structures independently of any interpretation. This argument also works the other way round: when the critic identifies a pattern and assigns to it no description which ties it to some interpretative hypothesis about the work, then he has not described a poetic or an artistic structure, but simply an arbitrarily chosen one. The only way he can prove that he has singled out an artistic structure is by bringing together the collection of facts he wants to identify as a pattern under a description which will tie it to an interpretative hypothesis concern- ing the artistic purpose of the work in question.

To reinforce the argument for the logical primacy of interpretation it will be illuminating to consider a case of structural description which is not governed by an interpretative hypothesis and which is therefore critically uninteresting, giving no insight whatever into the artistic properties of the work which it describes. The following passage is the first paragraph in a linguistic analysis of three prose passages from three different novels written by John Braine, Dylan Thomas, and Angus Wilson:

(a) Nominal groups. In DT [Dylan Thomas], all 49 nominal groups have lexical item as head: there are no pronouns or other grammatical heads. Of these only 11 have any lexical modification or qualification, and of a total of 5 lexical modifiers only "empty" has the value "epithet" in the group structure. By contrast in JB [John Braine], which has 36 nominal groups of which 4 have grammatical heads, of the remaining 32 with lexical heads 16 have modifier or qualifier (or both) and 22 have deictics. Likewise in AW [Angus Wilson], with 37 nominal groups of which 9 have grammatical heads, 12 of the 28 with lexical heads are lexically modified or qualified and 15 have deictics. The DT passage is a heap of mainly simple nominal groups (that is, ones consisting of a noun only), with also some heaping of clauses; in AW and JB we have the compound nominal group as the centre of attention. All this is obvious; but the fact that it is obvious does not excuse us from stating it accurately. Nor is it useful to count items or patterns without a linguistic analysis to identify what is to be counted.9

In addition to this, two other descriptive categories are employed, the first concerning "lexical sets" and the second "cohesion".

The difficulty with this description is that it gives really no clue to the critical purpose of the comparison. It makes no judgement as to whether or not the identified patterns might possibly have an artistic function. The reason for this is that one cannot pinpoint artistic function through any sort of tabulation. Linguistic facts and patterns by themselves, as they are described here, are just linguistic, and not artistic facts. There is no clue in this collection of facts to what competent judgement can be made which will make us see them as part of an artistic pattern or about what poetic effect they can justifiably be said to contribute to. This is why the descrip-

9M. A. K. Halliday, "Descriptive Linguistics in Literary Studies", in G. I. Duthie (ed.), English Studies Today (Edinburgh, 1964). Reprinted in Donald C. Freeman (ed.), op. cit., pp. 64-5.

346 STEIN HAUGOM OLSEN

tion is critically uninteresting. A description like this must necessarily be generated and limited by linguistic interests as they are defined within the academic discipline of linguistics, and there is no reason to believe that this type of description should enable the theorist to pick out artistically func- tional patterns.

Now, the above description is given by a well-known linguistician with a full command of a coherent descriptive vocabulary made to serve in a general description of language; and who furthermore sticks closely to patterns identifiable with the tools of linguistics and who does not introduce covert interpretative judgements in order to make his description seem relevant in the context of literary studies. This is why the above description so glaringly shows the absurdity of the claim that artistic structures are given in a piece of literary discourse because such discourse is structured differently from other types of language. And in all fairness to Halliday one must say that he does not make any extravagant claims for linguistics in literary studies. However, when literary theorists of the scientific school describe poetic structures, they very often imply that this description is on a par with the type of description given by Halliday, while they really introduce covert interpretative judgements to make the description criti- cally interesting. Consider again the description given of the story from The Decameron quoted above in the first section. This description is of a more sophisticated kind than that given by Halliday. Before the structural description is even started Todorov has already served up to the reader a selective summary of the story, the interpretative implications of which he continues to develop throughout the so-called structural description. This interpretative move makes the description interesting for the literary student, but his interest is disappointed. For the initial interpretative move is not carried beyond the summary description of the passage and no justification for the interpretative description is offered. At the same time it is claimed that this is a description of formal units found in the plot. This double move of initiating an interpretation and then claiming for it the status of a straight description creates the appearance of objectivity while seemingly retaining the claim to critical interest for the description. In fact it achieves neither critical interest nor objectivity.

It is clear that the same problem arises for the description of secondary meaning as for structural patterns. Granting, for the sake of argument, the assumption that secondary meanings actually belong to a term or a sentence and are not generated by the context, there still must be some way of telling which secondary meanings are relevant in the context. One cannot just go ahead and describe all the secondary meanings of all the expressions in a piece of discourse and expect to have identified its poetic features, for among all the possible secondary meanings which may be described only some will be relevant in the particular context in which the expression occurs. To see this, it is instructive to compare Cleanth Brooks'

WHAT IS POETICS? 347

"description" of the passage from Macbeth (quoted above) with a "descrip- tion" provided by Helen Gardner. Gardner first takes issue with Brooks' assignment of the connotations powerful and avenging angel to the word 'cherubim'. These, she says, are just Brooks' personal associations. If the term 'cherubim' has any connotations at all, it is those of passive, contemplat- ing, beautiful, innocent. This new set of secondary meanings requires a different description of the passage from that which Brooks gives it:

The final image of the wind dropping as the rain begins is the termina- tion of the whole sequence of ideas and images. It is to this close that they hurry. The passage ends with tears stilling the blast. The final condemnation of the deed is not that the doer of it will meet with punishment, not even that the doer of it will stand condemned; but that even indignation at the murder will be swallowed up in universal pity for the victim. The whole world will know, and knowing it will not curse but weep. The babe, naked and new-born, the most helpless of all things, the cherubim, innocent and beautiful, call out the pity and the love by which Macbeth is judged. It is not terror of heaven's vengeance which makes him pause; but the terror of moral isolation.10

How can one decide which set of associations connected to the term 'cherubim' is the correct one? The hollowness of the "look-and-see" argument is apparent in a case like this, when two critics offer competing interpretations of the same term in the same context. No attempt to call to mind the connotations of the term will have any effect since the critics argue for the relevance of different connotations. This problem cannot be solved by refer- ence to further facts about the term itself. Therefore we need some reason for preferring one description to the other.

The natural course is to invoke the artistic purpose of the work and try to find out which connotations are relevant to this purpose. Brooks may insist that the connotations he mentions are properties of the term, but this is uninteresting if he cannot offer some argument to show that they contri- bute to the artistic nature of the work. In fact, the whole of Brooks' essay on "the naked babe" is an attempt to use the quoted passage as a convenient point "of entry into the larger symbols which dominate the play".1 Both Brooks and Gardner try to establish their descriptions by relating the passage to what Gardner calls the "imaginative centre'"12 of the play. For Gardner this centre is to be found in the vision that the murder of Duncan places Macbeth outside the feeling of pity, one of the strongest, profoundest and most distinctively human feelings, and thus places Macbeth outside humanity itself:

It is the judgement of the human heart that Macbeth fears here, and the punishment which the speech foreshadows is not that he will be cut down by Macduff, but that having murdered his own humanity

10Helen Gardner, The Business of Criticism (London, 1959), pp. 59-60. 11Brooks, op. cit., p. 30. 12Gardner, op. cit., p. 62.

348 STEIN HAUGOM OLSEN

he will enter into a world of appalling loneliness, of meaningless activity, unloved himself, and unable to love.13

For his part, Brooks finds that "the babe signifies the future which Macbeth would control and cannot control".14 In their different ways these hypo- theses provide a generalization of the import of the cherubim passage for the play as a whole, and thus each makes an attempt to integrate it in an overall artistic vision.

Gardner supports the "reading" she gives of the term 'cherubim' also by a reference to historical, non-linguistic facts:

Dionysius the Areopagite, who established the hierarchy of the angels, the source of the popular angelology of the Middle Ages, ranked the cherubim among the higher orders, as angels of the presence. They stood about the throne, contemplating the glory of God, not active, as were the lower orders, to fulfil his will on earth.15

Since the question of historical evidence in literary criticism has received a lot of attention, it is worth observing here that there is no special problem concerning the relevance of this type of information. Exactly the same type of problem arises in connection with the relevance of connotations of any sort. Only if one has already accepted the axiom of objectivity will one see historical information as of a different order from that of connotations.

An interpretative judgement is not the result of a mechanical decoding procedure which can be applied to any given structural facts. The judge- ment itself is recreative and involves an imaginative leap which consists in identifying a pattern by assigning it artistic function. Interpretative judge- ments are the sole means a critic has of identifying the artistic features of a literary work. This means that evaluation of interpretative judgements must ultimately be comparative, since there is no way of challenging an interpretative judgement except through another such judgement. A wide- spread comparative activity like this will sanction the use of certain rough and ready predicates which can be used in a given case to give an "absolute" judgement, but this should not lead the theorist to think that these predicates have any meaning except within the framework of the comparative activity. Evaluation of interpretative judgements being ultimately a comparative activity, it is logically impossible that there should be a final interpretation of a work. It is always possible that even an extremely good interpretation should one day be challenged and replaced by a completely different one. It is therefore logically impossible that there should be any set of structural properties or secondary meanings which are the properties of a work. The axiom of objectivity must therefore be rejected and one can expect to solve no problems of substance in literary theory by accepting structural features and secondary meanings as "given" facts.

30p. cit., p. 61. '40p. cit., p. 42. 10Op. cit., p. 56.

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IV The ultimate basis on which a reader's appreciation of a literary work

rests is not objectively given secondary meanings and structural patterns. It rests on a method (interpretation) of assigning artistic relevance to parts of a work identified through the method. Though the examples above have all been of one particular type of interpretation, so far I have made no attempt to characterize the method. Indeed, to describe it theoretically, to define its aims and methods (beyond saying that it is concerned with artistic significance), would be an attempt to work out a particular literary theory, a task beyond my present concerns. In this article I have considered not so much the inadequacy of two theories of literature as the inadequacy of the common concept of poetics they advocate. In line with this argument I shall now try to use the notion of interpretation to establish a requirement which any theory of literature must fulfil. The requirement concerns the place in literary theory of the concept of intention which was dismissed from poetics by the theories based on the axiom of objectivity.

Every interpretative hypothesis may be understood as an answer to a question "What are the reasons for the presence of . . . in the work?", where the blank is to be filled by a description of a part of the work. In actual criticism this question receives different formulations, but the one given above is adequate for my present purpose. An answer to this question cannot give just any reason, for literary interpretation requires that the hypothesis must ultimately be defended by reference to artistic significance or purpose. To approach a text as a literary work is to examine it for its artistic signifi- cance. This means that the interpretative question must be answered by reference to something beyond the element of the work identified by the description in the blank. It is not enough to describe the element as having such and such properties, for it is always possible to ask for a justification for seeing these as artistic properties. In some types of literary theory the reasons to be given in answer to almost every interpretative question are sought not only outside the identified element, but outside the work itself. Thus Dickens, defending in the preface to Bleak House his description of the Court of Chancery, says "everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth". Other, more sophisticated, theories require reference to the world outside the work only at some point. Aristotle goes to some trouble in the Poetics to describe what features of plot a good tragedy must have, and he brings in reference to the world outside only by setting up an ultimate goal of the artistic con- struction: ". .. the poet's job is to produce pleasure springing from pity and fear via mimesis" (1453b 12). Theories of this sophisticated type construe the answer to the interpretative question as an attempt to assign a place within a larger structure, postulated through an overall interpretation of the work, to the element identified through the question. Thus when a critic says about the opening of Twelfth Night that Orsino's famous first

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speech- If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it-

together with what follows in the brief opening scene, reveals his attitude in love as a blend of sentiment and artifice, true dedication and elaborate self-centredness; it is at once an eloquent statement and, by implication, a criticism of the play's courtly romantic theme16

he gives, first, a description of a part of the play ("Orsino's famous first speech . . . together with what follows in the opening scene"); next the reason for its presence by re-describing this part ("reveals his attitude in love as a blend of sentiment and artifice, true dedication and elaborate self- centredness"); and finally a reason for the presence of the features identified in the second description is given through a new description which connects them to the theme of the play ("it is at once an eloquent statement and, by implication, a criticism of the play's courtly romantic theme").

The method of answering an interpretative question by relating the identified element to other parts of the work through a series of descriptions of ascending order, subsuming more and more parts of the work, is widely accepted as illuminating criticism. There are, indeed, good reasons both of a logical and of a historical kind to think that this is what constitutes an illuminating literary explanation. But this fact should not blind the theorist to a further question which the critic is not bound to ask, but which the theorist cannot leave unanswered. Having reached an illuminating overall interpretation of a work, attributing certain properties to it, one may still ask "What is the reason why these properties are in the work?". When this question is repeated at this level, it is not a critical question but a question about the nature of artistic significance: why do these properties, ascribed to the work by this interpretation, make the work artistically interesting?

The reason why the answer to this question has to make some reference to the world outside the work has already been suggested. Artistic signifi- cance is a value. As a value it must necessarily be understood with reference to human purposes and ends. So the reasons which justify the assumption that certain properties of a work are artistically interesting must have to do with the way in which these properties are related to certain purposes and ends. This is a purely conceptual point. Nothing need be said about how these ends and purposes are to be specified. That is the task of literary theory. What literary theory is not free to do is to disguise or ignore the fact that it is involved in specifying purposes and ends. The question why certain features are artistically interesting is to be answered in terms of the purposes they can be seen as serving. Every interpretative question, even if it can be answered by a structural description or a description of "meaning", is in the end made significant only because it asks how an element serves

16Derek Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare, Vol. I: Henry VI to Twelfth Night (London, 1968), p. 303.

WHAT IS POETICS? 351

the intended artistic purpose. To understand a literary work is to under- stand a goal-directed effort made by a creating intellect. The subject of literary theory is the nature of the effort and the goal. This conclusion does not rule out any of the traditional theories of literature, but it does place literary theory under an obligation which objectivist poetics has sought to avoid. Poetics must deal with the role of intention and assign to it a proper place in literary understanding. Since the whole notion of literary interpreta- tion rests on the concepts of purpose and ends, it is impossible to exorcize the problem of intention from literary theory. Intention has a place in the understanding and appreciation of the literary work; the problem for literary theory is to assign it the correct place.

University of Bergen