Arguing About Literature Is Futile

The more facts were learned about the ancients, the less creativity they inspired. The humanists started playing for small stakes. They recovered ancient texts and classical literary practices for the love of fame and of literature itself, not for worldly advantage. Like Poliziano, they tore the movement apart through disputes among themselves rather than working to influence the world, according to Burckhardt:

After a brilliant succession of poet-scholars had, since the beginning of the fourteenth century, filled Italy and the world with the worship of antiquity, had determined the forms of education and culture, had often taken the lead in political affairs and had, to no small extent, reproduced ancient literature—at length in the sixteenth century, before their doctrines and scholarship had lost hold of the public mind, the whole class fell into deep and general disgrace… Of all men who ever formed a class, [the humanists] had the least sense of their common interests, and least respected what there was of this sense. All means were held lawful, if one of them saw a chance of supplanting another. From literary discussion they passed with astonishing suddenness to the fiercest and the most groundless vituperation. Not satisfied with refuting, they sought to annihilate an opponent.[i]

Reading and writing wound up as more marginal disciplines at the end of the Renaissance than they were at the start. In the centuries that followed, even the prestige of literature has faded, trapping readers and writers in a vocation for which others have less and less need.

The humanists encoded their parochial ambition into the field of literature which they bequeathed to us. Modern literary culture has pioneered brilliant techniques for reading. We can understand a text through its formal properties, through its references to other works, through its place in a tradition, through the psychology of its characters, through its historical context, through its reception by readers, through its interaction with cultural norms, through linguistics, through philosophical approaches… And each of these categories encompasses several particular theories and schools of criticism. These approaches can crack open a text so that it divulges rich, new meanings over and over.

Unfortunately, literature specialists seldom use these critical reading techniques as a way to re-imagine the world; rather, they serve as tools in scholarly arguments about the texts themselves. Here are the titles of the four main articles in the January 2012 issue of PMLA, perhaps the world’s most prestigious journal of literary criticism: “Why Milton Is Not an Iconoclast,” “Beckett after Wittgenstein: The Literature of Exhausted Justification,” “Holding On to 9/11: The Shifting Grounds of Materiality,” and “Myth, Morals, and Metafiction in Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes.” Three of these four articles seek to explain books. Only the 9/11 piece even attempts to use literary theory to discover something new about the way people engage the world.

Furthermore, the argumentation used in such articles indulges in the fantasy of the engaged yet disinterested reader eager to be persuaded by facts and reason. In practice, literary criticism persuades almost no one about anything. One reason is that articles ask very little of readers; they only invite the reader to adopt the critic’s intellectual position about a given issue. For example, Daniel Shore explains the purpose of his piece on Milton this way:

“For thirty years the scholarly consensus has been that John Milton was an iconoclast, an idol breaker. I argue that instead of destroying idols, Milton’s poems capture and preserve them under judgment.”[ii]

The article marshals a detailed argument in support of the critic’s view of Milton’s position on icons. Unlike Ficino, the author does not expect readers to act differently as a result of reading the article, to view the world differently, or to change themselves. Therefore, most readers will have nothing personally at stake. They will merely read for information about Milton if they are interested in him.

Nor will this kind of purely intellectual argumentation move or compel the few readers who do have something at stake—those in the “thirty years” camp—to change their minds. They will play the game. They will reply in kind with facts and reasons of their own. The antagonists will plunge to their deaths in a mutual grip much as Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty wrestle each other over Reichenbach Falls in “The Final Problem.” Thus, arguments hardly ever succeed in settling issues, however small. People win arguments only when their opponents move on to something else or die.

[i] Burckhardt, p. 177.

[ii] Daniel Shore, in abstract for “Why Milton Is Not an Iconoclast” cited from MLA website (http://www.mlajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1632/pmla.2012.127.1.22, 29 February 2012). Full article in PMLA, Volume 127, Number 1, January 2012, pp. 22–37.

Humanism’s Golden Opportunity

Unworldliness and isolation from daily life were not accidental byproducts of the literary canon. The humanists deliberately chose to turn away from the world and to redefine “literature” in a narrow sense.

Literature could have gone a different way, for the Renaissance delivered a unique opportunity to readers and writers. Only at this moment has the modern state felt the need for their skills as a matter of national security. As Italy’s city-states and Western Europe’s incipient nation-states vied with one another in war and business, rulers turned to humanists to help pull their governments and societies toward modernity. Progress depended on reforming medieval ways, and the newly rediscovered ancient Greek and Roman authors contained the greatest available stock of “new” ideas. Those who could read and write Greek and Latin held the keys to this treasury of knowledge.

As a result, literature regained its place at the center of public life, which it held in antiquity. Many humanists resumed the managerial role that the ancient city-state scribes once filled by becoming government officials. The early modern state needed managers and bureaucrats to organize things, and only the literary man, the humanist, could fill these roles as Jacob Burckhardt explains:

There were two purposes, however, for which the humanist was as indispensable to the republics as to princes or popes, namely, the official correspondence of the state, and the making of speeches on public and solemn occasions.

Not only was the secretary [we would call him chief of staff today] required to be a competent Latinist, but conversely, only a humanist was credited with the knowledge and ability necessary for the post of secretary. And thus the greatest men in the sphere of science during the fifteenth century mostly devoted a considerable part of their lives to serve the state in this capacity.[i]

In fact, Burckhardt understates the importance of humanists at this time. Their knowledge of Greek and Latin texts gave Europe old ideas that had been lost and spurred the invention of new ideas. The Renaissance turned to ancient authors to learn strategy and tactics and thereby gain an edge on the battlefield; to improve the built environment for the growing importance and population of cities; to update legal and medical practices; to experiment with different forms of government, and so on. The writings of the Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen furnished medical textbooks. The Romans Vitruvius and Fronto taught Renaissance architects the secret of building domes and aqueducts. Military leaders could study the tactics of ancient generals in historians such as Thucydides, Xenophon, or Caesar. Livy and Polybius tutored politicians on the principles for gaining and wielding power and setting up governments.

Thus, humanist learning became a prerequisite for success in most other areas during the Renaissance. If you weren’t proficient in Latin and Greek yourself, you at least needed to know what the humanists and the ancient authors had to say about your field of endeavor. You had to employ humanists, know humanists, or read their books.

[i] Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, tr. S.G.C. Middlemore (London: Penguin Books, 1990), pp. 151-152.