Identity of the Literary Text

A.T.J. Cairns was Associate Professor of English at the University of Calgary.

Much literary criticism today is primarily concerned with the question of what, precisely, a literary text is: “What in the literary work remains the same under different conditions, such as different readings.” Indeed, it is strenuously debated whether texts actually have any fixed, establishable identity or meaning.

Central to these debates is what part the reader plays in determining identity and meaning (“reader-response theory”). Here, critical opinion ranges from the traditional view that a text is largely a defined, stable structure with limited elements left for the reader’s response to establish, to an extreme (currently widely defended) which insists that it is the reader and his response which confer all meaning and structure — until, ultimately, “nothing can be deemed to be definitive in the text prior to interpretive conventions,” and, as Jonathan Culler notes, “Perhaps in the end the literary text is interesting because it doesn’t have anything as defining as an identity.”

This volume, prefaced by Owen Miller’s concise overview of the debate, presents a well-balanced survey of current positions and controversies in this field by 15 prominent scholars. They consider such topics as “Textuality and Intertextuality” (Owen Miller, Peter W. Nesselroth, Michael Riffaterre), “Textual Deconstruction” (Hillis Miller, Patricia Parker), “Hermeneutics” (Cyrus Hamlin, H.R. Jauss, Paul Ricoeur), and “Analytical Construction” (Lubomir Dolezel, Wolfgang Iser).

Cyrus Hamlin considers the reader’s role dominant, while Wolfgang Iser largely favors textual integrity of meaning; however, most contributors, though opposing a return to an exclusively text-oriented approach, think that dependence on reader response has gone too far and favor some form of compromise between the two positions.

This volume is by no means an “easy read”; the highly specialized academic vocabulary endemic to current literary theory is very much in evidence (for a lucid, thorough survey of the field, Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory [Basil Blackwell, 1983] is highly recommended). Nevertheless, for the professional or advanced amateur there is a good deal of valuable source material here. The whole debate constitutes a rather fascinating intellectual exercise which, when not carried to extremes, can make a genuine contribution — particularly regarding the previously undervalued role that reader-response does play — to the multiple valid methods of literary evaluation.

Ultimately, of course, the reading experience will continue to be a variable amalgam of what both author and reader, each conditioned by his or her historical environment, bring to the text.