The Cognitive Gain from Reading Literary Fiction As Literature
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Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Reading Between The Lines: An Account Of The Cognitive Gain From Literary Fiction Thesis How to cite: Phelan, Jonathan (2018). Reading Between The Lines: An Account Of The Cognitive Gain From Literary Fiction. PhD thesis The Open University. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 2017 The Author https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Version: Version of Record Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21954/ou.ro.0000d07c Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk Reading Between the Lines: an account of the cognitive gain from literary fiction. ‘It is only fair, then, that poetry should return, if she can make her defence in lyric or other metre.’ Plato Republic 607d Jon Phelan PhD thesis Philosophy The Open University September 2017 [1] Abstract My thesis defends the cognitive value of a close reading of literary fiction which I believe has been overlooked in the philosophical literature. I first outline an account of literary fiction in terms of the standard features of both literature and fiction. The diverse philosophical positions which hold that reading literary fiction ‘improves the mind’ attribute some significance to literariness but do not say how the literary features of literary fiction help to develop cognitive gain. An explanation is required in order to meet anti-cognitivist scepticism. I rule out the view that cognitive gain is irrelevant to our aesthetic appreciation of literature. My thesis locates cognitive gain in the Verstehen tradition and identifies five relevant senses of ‘understanding’ as the cognitive value at stake. The case is made that reading literary fiction as literature stimulates the relevant senses of understanding; in the course of the discussion I meet objections from elitism and subjectivity. I argue that a reader’s engagement with literary devices stimulates the five senses of understanding and supply examples from: irony, particular detail and precise phrasing, metaphor, play with perspective, ambiguity and repetition. Contrary to the contention that dominates the current debate, that a reader gains knowledge from fiction, I argue that it is the way readers gain understanding from literature that is more significant to cognitive value. Finally, I argue that the relevant senses of understanding may be transferred to an extra-textual context and so bridge the gap between understanding the text and understanding the world beyond the text. [2] Dedication: to teachers of literature and in memory of Dr. Philippa Sherrington Acknowledgements: Professor Derek Matravers and Professor Sophie Grace Chappell Kate Allen, David Atter, Alex Barber, Chris Belshaw, Jonathan Binfield, Ros Bouverie, Nadia Campadelli, Jane Chapman, Cristina Chimisso, Maria Contrino, Emma Dillon, Catherine Elgin, Nathan Fox, Stacie Friend, Jane Heal, Darrell Hinchliffe, Mark Hogarth, David Jacques, Nicholas James, Eileen John, Peter Lamarque, Jenni Lecky-Thompson, John Lennard, Alexander Lindsay, Raamy Majeed, Susanne Mathies, David McBride, Martin O’Donnell, Sarah Ormrod, Fred Parker, Jean Phelan, Jon Pike, Sam Plumb, Carolyn Price, Rory Rapple, Brandon Robshaw, Alison Schwabe, Paul Suttie, Ted, Jack Thompson, Bridget Walsh, Chris Warne, Clive Wilmer, Catherine Wilson and all the students on Cambridge University’s International Summer School who participated in my courses on the philosophy of literature. [3] Table of contents Preface The Philosopher of Literature’s Dilemma 6-7 Background 8-9 Chapter One Literary Fiction as a Subgenre of Both Literature and Fiction 1.1 Fiction 10-21 1.2 Literature 21-28 1.3 Literary fiction 28-31 Chapter Two Literary Cognitivism, Anti-cognitivism and Non-cognitivism 2.1 Literary cognitivism 32-53 2.2 Literary anti-cognitivism 53-63 2.3 Literary non-cognitivism 63-73 Chapter Three Understanding Others from Understanding Literary Fiction Introductory comments 74-75 3.1 Understanding human thought and action 75-88 3.2 Five senses of ‘understanding’ 88-104 3.3 Understanding literary fiction 104-114 3.4 The charge of elitism 114-118 3.5 The charge of subjectivity 118-125 [4] Chapter Four The Cognitive Gain from Reading Literary Fiction as Literature Introductory comments 126-128 4.1 Irony 128-135 4.2 Particularity and precision 135-145 4.3 Metaphor 145-156 4.4 Perspective 156-161 4.5 Ambiguity 162-166 4.6 Repetition 167-172 4.7 Aesthetic effectiveness 172-176 Chapter Five How Understanding Literary Fiction relates to the World beyond Literary Fiction 5.1 The standard account of checking literary fiction against the world 177-179 5.2 Concession to the standard account 180-181 5.3 Objections to the standard account 181-184 5.4 My thesis as an alternative model 184-186 5.5 Truth tracking v truth trailing relations 187-190 Concluding Remarks 190-192 Appendix (1) ‘it may not always be so; and I say’ by e.e. cummings 193 Appendix (2) ‘Affliction (I)’ by George Herbert 194-196 Bibliography 197-214 [5] Preface The Philosopher of Literature’s Dilemma It is widespread practice for philosophers of literature to draw on literary examples to illustrate an aspect of their philosophy. Here the philosopher of literature faces the horns of a dilemma: too literary an approach presents one set of difficulties while a deficit in literary examples presents another set. There are numerous problems with a philosopher of literature taking too literary an approach in addition to appearing unjustifiably self-indulgent in offering a lengthy treatment of one’s favourite literary work. One problem is that particular literary examples are hyper-specific and so cannot justify the general kind of analysis typical of philosophy. One cannot argue from the premise that ‘X is the case in a particular sonnet’ to the conclusion that ‘X is generally the case in literature’. It seems that the best literary examples can provide is evidence that there is at least one case where such and such is true. Another problem is that extensive work on a literary example brings the writing closer to literary criticism and increases the chances that the philosophical point is lost. My main contention in what follows is that the cognitive gain in reading literary fiction comes from the process of closely reading a literary fictional text rather than in gaining any specific propositional content from the work. As this is my philosophical thesis, one grounded in my own experience as a reader, I hope I may be excused some sojourns into particular literary examples by way of evidence. The choice of specific examples is not always relevant in technical papers in aesthetics. David Lewis’s argument in his paper ‘Truth in Fiction’ (1978) is not affected by his choice of Sherlock Holmes rather than another fictional character about which there is something true in a given fiction. Yet when an investigation becomes broader and concerns reading practices then specific examples from one’s experience as a reader become more important. Taking too theoretical a line in these studies makes the philosopher of literature removed from the subject matter under discussion where his or her argument may work in theory but bear little relation to widespread reading practices. I do not intend to brighten the night sky with insights on any given literary text - only to show that, in at least some significant cases, the process of close analysis is fruitful and equips me with cognitive [6] skills that prove useful in an extra-literary setting. In grounding my thesis in what I take to be common reading practices of literary fiction, I seek to avoid the overly theoretical horn of the dilemma. Overall, I seek instead to offer an in depth and systematic account of one aspect of reading literary fiction. Philosophers of literature tend to draw on the work of Dickens, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Proust or Musil but such works do not lend themselves to a convenient digest. I draw on Shakespeare in much of the text that follows because it is readily available and many people are familiar with the works. There is also helpful concision which enables me to make the point without excessive quotation. That Shakespeare wrote plays to be performed rather than to be pored over does not detract from the fact that these texts yield to close analysis in the same way that other literary texts yield to close analysis. I take the following examples of effective practice in the philosophy of literature as guidelines. There will be times when I only need to cite an example of a certain kind of literary work, without exegesis, to make my point. Stacie Friend uses this approach to good effect in her paper ‘Fiction as a Genre’ (2012): Many works of New Journalism, or creative non-fiction more generally, use true stories for their purposes, such as entertainment. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965) provides a good example, since Capote was clear that his purpose was to show that journalism could deploy literary forms… (Friend 2012: 184) On other occasions, I may need to quote a passage in full and draw the attention of the reader to an aspect of the text or context. Catherine Wilson quotes two verses from Meng Chiao’s poem ‘Apricots Die Young’ in her paper ‘Grief and the Poet’ (2013: 80-81) as an example of an elegiac work that has the capacity to move the reader without the reader knowing whether the poem refers to imaginary or actual loss. In this case, the reader of literature is left to do the literary work in his or her own time, that is to read the whole piece and gauge whether they are moved by the poem or not.