lemongrass

One of the earliest literary conversations that you will ever enter is a discussion over the value of a piece. Is Moby Dick valuable because Melville is valuable? Is Victorian prose important because of its colorful aesthetic or because of its societal context?

Here is a brief and rushed attempt at demonstrating both what it means to enter into this conversation in the academic sense as well as an attempt at introducing the complex sides of this particular conversation.

How is the artistic value of a piece derived: is the social context of great import, or is the true value in the aesthetic?

Edmund Burke proposes that the value of art lies in each piece’s aesthetic quality. Countering subjectivity, Burke asserts that sensory sensation and observation is in concurrence across the board of humanity. Taste cannot be trusted to be concurrent, but in biologic consistency there is logic; because of this consistency, taste can be learned, eventually reaching similar levels within each well-honed critic and observer. Taste as a quality is not subjective but rather it is based in knowledge. Thus, the more familiar a person is with the inspiration of an image (say, human features, compared to a human statue), the better their taste and judgment the artistic value of the piece.

            Arnold takes this aesthetic concept and notes that the value of an artistic piece rests in the well trained judgment of the critic, even that the critic is of artistic value herself. Criticism ideally observes flexibility, curiosity, and “free play,” allowing openness to new experiences. The quality of the piece, again, is not subjective, but strictly centered around a strong base that can be utilized in the formation of quality criticism.

            Some critics move beyond the aesthetic and look at the text: critics all assert that the value of a piece comes from the raw text, but they present varying origins and points of significance for this stance. Eliot takes an approach to the text that emphasizes the inclusion of tradition in the process of critical analysis, while still sticking to the text and the text only. The quality of a text is determined in its clarity, its integration of tradition, and its ability to create and extend new tradition. A text should be looked at as a piece that uses, demonstrates, and reshapes cultural and written tradition. Eliot asserts that what is within the work, within the traditional framework, is what gives the text its value. (Eliot 1090).

Ransom maintains along with Eliot that the value of a piece lies in the conclusion of the critical examination of its contents, in the “technical studies” of a work. He takes on Eliot in his radical theory of “New Criticism,” where he asserts that the feelings, history, and background examination often assumed along with the process of criticism are not a part of a work, and therefore reduce the work. A work must be defined clearly in value by the styling of the text itself, NOT by its history (Ransom 1107).

Wimsatt and Beardsley set about defining common fallacies within the critical process that fail to address their definition of the true value of a work. Two fallacies exist. The intentional fallacy exists as too great an attribution to the “creator” of the work: “We argued that the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging success,” a confusion between the piece and its origins (W&B 1388). The affective fallacy presents a furthering illusion: confusion between the poem and its results. Observing that a piece elicits an emotional response does not increase that piece’s artistic value. There’s something more in the poem than just the intent. Noting the existence of a possible underlying psychology of the author is helpful, as is understanding the public nature of the language therein, but the value of the poem is in “the attachment of the emotion to the idea itself.” Eliot would judge Hamlet harshly, for example, citing emotion with a distinct “lack of objective correlative,” but as Wimsatt and Beardsley counter, Eliot would not see the expressivity to critique unless it were truly in the text, indicating that emotionality is not beyond valid, text based criticism (W&B 1399).Wimsatt and Beardsley noted that knowledge of an underlying authorial psychology could be helpful in interpreting a piece, which brings about the question of the role of the author in the value and evaluation of a piece. How much weight does the author hold?

            Foucault sets about defining “the author” for the sake of critical clarity. The author is always a classification of authenticity: he is never solitary, but always presented alongside his work. The moment we attribute authorship to a piece is the moment in which we change our stance towards the work: clearly, the author plays a role in our interpretation of the work’s quality and stance. We expect certain styles and certain qualities from particular authors. The author exists as a functional concept, whether in text or discourse: the author constantly remains. Foucault makes the careful distinction, however, that the author is not value itself: the author does not determine the eventual quality or value of a work. Rather, the author consistently and only exists and must be acknowledged as a function concept in the primary and cultural view of a work.

            Barthes takes the role of the author par definition Foucault and creates a demonstration of how the author creates value in a piece. Barthes asserts that genuine value can only culminate at the point of the Death of the Author: No one writes when they can speak- the death of the author is the removal of the voice from its origin. Once this separation is recognized, the death of the author begins, because voice does not belong to humanity: language can be used, not owned. Language will be multiple and carry a variety of meanings and intricate, intimate connections. The text itself is plural: its value is in its plurality, not in its author: “The text is not a co-existence of meanings but a passage, an overcrossing; thus it answers not to an interpretation, even a liberal one, but to an explosion…”(Barthes 1472). If the key is in the plurality of language, then how do we understand this plurality?

DeSaussure sees language as a system of comparative values that interact to manifest plurality. The “sign” in language is not arbitrary but linear; it links together in syntagmatic and associative ways. These connections are out of the range of the choice of the speaker, but constitute the personality of a language as a whole, beyond its pure base of rules and written forms. Language creates significance within a work by being a plural entity: after the death of the author, the text validates itself.

            Another phase in critical interpretation seeks the value of art and the critic in terms of social context: what historical and modern factors influence the value of a piece of art, and how? Marxism and Historical Materialism present an attempt on this question. Marx and Engels take the approach of a fully integrated technique of artistic critique. Contradictions in a social system will reveal themselves naturally in an artistic piece, because an artistic piece is an ideological reflection of a society. This is an ideological critique: it should be the clarifying exposure of how class seeps naturally into all forms of expression. The value of the piece is what can be exposed within the piece: Marx and Engels the critical method as the unmasking of ideologies.

            Williams takes on literature with a lens of cultural materialism. Contrary to text-only interpretation, Williams takes on the Text as an ever-changing historical product. Rather than transcendent, Williams sees the work as a human demonstration: each piece shows taste, drive, curiosity, but all within sociohistorical conditions. The reading is where value lies.

            Wilson asserts that Marxist statements in regard to literature have been misinterpreted. Art tends to be richer when political agendas are covert, as such, the value or substance of a text cannot be drawn from ideological formulas; Wilson would assert that Marx and Engels never presented it to be so: “Marx and Engels…never attempted to furnish social-economic formulas by which the validity of works for art might be tested”(Wilson 1243).

            Continuing with the theme of the social realm, Walter Benjamin notes the power and value of the work is still largely social: validity is not hidden within the actual materials, but rather in the social realm and the “aura” surrounding the piece. Art creates an aura and a sense of ritual that allows it value in a cultural context: the group ritual of viewing art, the rarity of a piece, the increase of power in a piece due to its hiddenness. Additionally, Benjamin stresses that the reproduction of art can strip it of its value because it can strip the aura. Even perfect reproductions lack the original unique existence of a piece.

            Althusser, continuing in this vein, notes that art has formed out of ideologies, but that it decidedly manifests and holds a distance from the particular ideologies to which it winks. Art is still fully integrated into culture, and culture into art: they cannot be free of each other. To hold the strongest value, again, the art’s aura comes into play. “Authentic” art pushes us further into cultural investigation and revelation.

            Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Englightenment allow for reproduction of art, stating that the modern world is sustained and built in part by the mass reproduction of these pieces. Contrary to losing value in this sense, as Benjamin might assert, art gains value with its role in society. “The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the cultural industry” (H&A 1226).

            Also in the light of cultural influence, Feminist critics discuss how culture can challenge the expressive nature of art, stifling or encouraging it.

Gilbert and Gubar note that in writing, men have overcome their fathers, challenging their past writings and thus moving history forward. Since women don’t have this option, can they write pieces of value? Women face a different battle, fighting socialization instead of their precursors. Can they create value with this stifling weight?

 Woolf addresses the “over sexing” of art and culture, a process which stifles true expression. Being overly conscious of sex, it is hard for men to write accurate female presentations, and it is hard for women to truly reveal their experiences. Woolf instead argues for the taking on of androgeny as a writer to create pieces of genuine value.

            Simone De Beauvoir discusses the myth of the woman: that one gender must always exist solely to counter the other. Where this myth exists in literature, it lessens value while lessoning the reach to the audience. Eventually, “For a woman to hold some ‘man’s position’ and be desirable at the same time…the irony have become blunted, and it would seem that a new form or eroticism is coming into being”(Beauvoir 1414).

            Adrienne Rich seeks to free the mind of the overly sex conscious by challenging the “innateness” of any sexuality. Women grow into male identification during adolescence, leaving their girlfriends behind. But if the innate sexuality here is questioned, then a woman or person can free themselves, and create value in their freedom.

Works Cited

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: New York, 2001.1466-1470.

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