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Literary Change/Critical Exchange SCE REPORTS "i 0 FALL, 1982 RegiStor J Per SCE REPORTS # 12 FALL, 1982 "Literary Change / Critical Change" General Editor's Preface JAMES J. SOSNOSKI .............. i Guest Editor's Preface SUSAN MERRITT ELLIOTT ............ ii "A Propaedeutic for Literary Change" RALPH COBEN ................. I SCE1s 1982 MLA sessions .............25 -SCH Reports is published by The Society for Critical Exchange, a not-for-profit corporation organized to encourage cooperative research in criticism and theory. Editorial Assistants Barbara Biesecker Material published in SCE Reports is copyrighted Takis Poulakos by the Society with rights re-assigned to authors upon publication. For information write: James J. Sosnoski The Society for Critical Exchange P.O. Box 475 C Oxford. Ohio 45056 Susan Merritt Elliott GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE For two SCE special sessions at the NLA this year, I have formulated the topic "Literary Change/ James J. Sosnoski Critical Change, " inviting Professor Ralph Cohen, of the Univereity of Virginia, to preaent a posi- This will be the last issue of SCE Reports. tion paper on this subject. The resulting paper, Last December the Board of Directors- decided- to "A Propaedeutic for Literary Change," follow^. rename SCEts in-house journal. Starting this Winter, SCE will publish Critical Exchange [%I. I have invited responses to the paper from The first issue will be devotedto this year's Profeesore Mlchael Riff aterre, .of Columbia Univ- MLA session on literary change. It will reprint ersity, Murray Schwartz, of the State University Professor Cohen's essay and include the commen- of New York at Buffalo, and Hayden White, of the taries of Professors Riffaterre, Schwartz, White, University of California, Santa Cruz, for the first Flieger, Ford, Harkin and Jay. Originally intended to be SCE's newsletter, For the eecond session, I have invited responses -SCE -Reports has evolved into an "in-house" journal. and discussion f rout Prof essors Jerry Aline Flieger, The motive for renaming SCE-R is to acknowledge this of Rutgers University, James E. Ford, of the Univ- change. In order to signal that "there remains a eraity of Nebraska, Patricia Harkin, of Denison continuity" in this change, as Professor Cohen University, and Gregory Jay, of the University of has put it, we will number .the first issue of CEx Alabama. "13." From time to time SCE will publish a news- letter, -SCE -News -&- Notices, which will be edited by Professor ohe en's paper presents a theoretical Barbara Biesecker. conception of change in literary study, giving speci- fic illustrations of his conception from both lit- CEx 14 will publish the proceedings of SCE'e "A erature and criticism so as to consider interrelation- sympo'sT with Fredric Jameson" which was held this ships between them. At the start of the paper, he last Fall in Oxford. It will feature Jameson's observes that he finds no necessity to define "lit- "The Ideology of Space" and will include commentaries erary" in "literary change" for the purposes of his on Jameson's work. discuesion. The notions of what ie "literary" and what "critical," he seem to suggest, are themselves All future correspondence regarding -CEx should changing conceptims to which his notion of change be directed to: applies. James J. Sosnoski I look forward to hearing the responses to General Editor, Critical Exchange He will have an opportunity P.O. Box 475 Professor Cohen's paper, to to the responses given in session I, and Oxford. Ohio 45056 respond afterwards there will be a discussion period. I have aaked James Soenoski to chair the eecond session, in which Professors Flfeger, Ford, Harkin, and Jay will give their responses to the paper. Their comments may also include reactions to the remarks made ear- lier by speakers in the first session. A discussion period will follow this session too. i i A Propaedeutic for Literary Change successive differences, can change be said to have occurred."2 Nisbet is referring to social change, Ralph Cohen and differences in time are necessary for change in society to take place. But if, for example, one discusses changes in the meaning of the word I wish in this short paper to touch on three "wit" in the Essay on Criticism, the idea of time aspects of literary change: (1) the nature of is of trivial importance: change of meaning here change; (2) the kinds of change; (3) explana- is not governed by time but by context. Different tions of change. I do not wish to debate the contexts, different meanings. This steers us at meanings of the term "literary," and I shall, once to further discriminations. Semantic change therefore, assume that what is "literary" is need not imply change of concept. In fact, it what authors, critics, theorists have identi- indicates the variations that fall within the fied at the same time or at different times as range of a single word. It is quite another case "literary." The fact that such authorities may to consider period change or style change in which disagree about the significance of "literary" concepts undergo alteration despite the continuity will in no way affect the inquiry I propose. My that persists among parts of elements of a period aim is to offer a propaedeutic for a study of or a "style." To relate literary change to con- literary change. cepts of thought and feeling or to forms of au- thorial and reader consciousness is to realize that literary change is connected with larger I. The Nature of Literary Change frameworks of change in nature and in man. Change is one of the ways in which we describe natural Any discussion of literary change implies events: a seed "becomes" a seedling, a caterpil- that there is a stable entity which can be di- lar "becomes" a butterfly; water "becomes" visible into parts. If a part of this entity (changes into) steam. These are changes of shape changes, the gestalt can still be recognized; with underlying identities. In the first two ex- there remains a continuity which is necessary amples, we have a progress in which the change is for change to take place. Change is opposed to seen to be inherent in the seed or in the stages the concept of changelessness on the one hand and of growth. In the third, the transformation re- differentness on the other. Changelessness under- tains the same chemical properties though these goes no alteration of its parts. Differentness have turned from liquid to gas. Thus, the study (and'this applies to at least two events, situa- of change in all these cases involves frameworks tions, texts, etc.) refers to unrelated instances. from botany or entomology or chemistry. Robert Nisbet puts it this way: "Change is a succession of differences in time in a persisting Consider the problem of identity and form identity."l And he goes on to say that "Only change in mythological stories. Zeus, Hera, and when the succession of differences in time may be other Greek gods'and goddesses are constantly seen to relate to some object, entity or being changing shape. Such form change, whatever its the identity of which persists through all the aim, is governed by a consciousness of the god's power and the god's knowledge that whether he be- cations discredited, and I share their opinion. comes a bird or a beast, he can return to his ori- But I find no need to identify genre with such re- ginal form. In other words, the language, soul, ceived categories (those that Maria Corti identi- or spirit retains an identity. In literary texts, fies) as "abstract, atemporal," didactic, o,r transformations of shape that retain identity are those that are "historic, diachronic, ind~ctive."~ common. We can see this clearly in Apuleius' Maria Corti's semiotic approach is to relate genres story written in the second century A.D. of Lucius to the "universe of senders and addressees" and to who is transformed into an ass though he continues concern herself with the problems of the transfor- to think in the language of a human being: "though mation of genres. Other theorists, like Tzvetan I was no longer Lucius, and to all appearances a Todorov and Michel Bakhtin have also redefined complete ass, a mere beast of+burden, I still re- "genre" without accepting the older and defunct tained my mental fa~ulties."~Or consider the classifications. After all, terms like "trace," famous twentieth-century story which begins "As "discourse," "absence" have been.redefined, and Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams there is no reason to assume that genre need be he found himself transformed in his bed into a excluded from this process, especially since, as giant insect.lr4 Gregor's shape has changed but a critical formulation, it makes accessible an un- he continues to think in human language and to be derstanding of literary change. concerned about his human affairs. In this new sense, genre can be understood as My point is that change can be seen only a family term, constituted by elements or parts against continuity, and in literary study, con- such as meter, character, types of rhetoric, and tinuity can be studied only against or in con- discourse to produce certain effects. These ele- trast to change. The reason for this is that each ments can, of course, appear in different genres, literary text is always different from all others each genre being identified by the nature of their --no matter how slight the difference. However, combination and the effects produced. It is not the term "text" will not serve me in accounting surprising that genres differ in comprehensiveness for the kinds of change that I propose to discuss.
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