My approach to reading literary texts is outlined in “How to Read Shakespeare (or anyone Else)”, which is published as an appendix to my book Through Shakespeare’s Eyes. In a nutshell, I insist that a literary work should be read, as far as possible, through the eyes of the author. My reasoning is that the author understands the work more authoritatively than do his readers. This approach has recently come under vociferous attack by a contributor to the excellent “Christian Shakespeare” website, which was established and is edited by none other than our own, Kevin O’Brien, who will be no stranger to visitors to the Ink Desk. The negative critique of my authorialism, to give it a name, was written by Andrew Lomas. Those wishing to read Lomas’ spirited attack on my position can do so here:
I would, however, like to address some of his arguments with a view to correcting his misreading of my position of his misunderstanding of it. Lomas’s words are reproduced in italics below; my replies are unitalicized:
The first thing to note about Pearce’s account, is that it is really tough on classical literary studies. We know nothing from extra-literary sources about Homer’s beliefs and the intentions behind his works, for instance; indeed, the existence of “Homer the man” has often been doubted. Authorial authority cannot possibly fix the meaning of Homer’s works. The same holds true, to a greater extent, for all the Greek tragedians, but also, moving forward, for the authors of Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, all those “anon” ballads, etc., etc..
The best way of answering this objection is to ask a simple question: Would we know more about the Iliad and the Odyssey if Homer walked into the room and told us all about the writing of it and his motives for doing so? Would it enlighten us and enhance our understanding of the work if Homer explained to us its meaning and the moral it sought to convey? Few would dispute that we would benefit greatly from such an eventuality, and the few who would dispute it should not be taken seriously.
Since Homer could tell us a great deal of great value about his work, were he alive to do so, it proves rather than disproves the authorialist position. Since, however, we do not know much about Homer, is the authorialist approach practical with regard to reading the Iliad or the Odyssey? The answer is an emphatic “yes”. We will know more about the works of Homer if we try to get as close to Homer as possible. Linguistically, this means reading the text in its original language, thereby avoiding the interpretative shadow that falls between the original work and any translation of it. Historically, we should endeavour to know as much about the times and culture in which Homer lived so that we can see his works, as far as possible, through his eyes and not through the eyes of Englishmen or Americans living in the twenty-first century.
In this context, I was excited to learn recently of the discovery that one of the most ancient manuscripts of the Iliad, written on animal hide, has been analysed using infrared technology. It has revealed marginalia written by someone teaching it to students in a culture much closer to Homer’s own. This relative closeness to the author will help us to understand the work more objectively and in a way that is not prejudiced by the zeitgeist in which we find ourselves.
The difficulties wrought by insufficient biographical information spread even to the examples Pearce cites in support of his theory, and indeed deepen here. As is well known, Wuthering Heights was first published under a pseudonym, “Ellis Bell”, in 1847; it was only in 1850 that Emily Bronte claimed authorship. So, on Pearce’s theory, early reviewers and readers could have legitimately interpreted the novel as a paean to “unbridled carnal passion”; it was only after the real author and her beliefs were known that this interpretation became illegitimate. On Pearce’s theory, interpretations can switch from valid to invalid without the text they are about changing a jot.
Of course interpretations can be shown to be valid or otherwise without the text changing! In this case, a misunderstanding of the text, based on the false belief that the author was a man of indeterminate religion, would be corrected by the realization that it was in fact written by a deeply pious Christian woman, a parson’s daughter.
Yet the disturbing fluctuations are not limited to the legitimacy of interpretations: they go to the very meaning of literary texts. Let us now turn to Shakespeare, and his biography. A.L. Rowse’s William Shakespeare is a fair representation of the state of Shakespearean biography in the middle of the twentieth century—as I think Pearce would concede, since he states that the facts which establish his different portrait are recent discoveries. For Rowse, Shakespeare was baptized, married, and buried in the Church of England, and consequently was an “orthodox, conforming member”(47) of this church. Interpreting the plays in the 1950s, then, according to the biographical method, we must have found a C.of E. meaning. Indeed, for three hundred and fifty years Shakespeare’s plays, construed in the light of available biographical knowledge, must have had non-Catholic meanings. It is only with the recent discoveries which prove Shakespeare a Catholic, as Pearce believes, that the plays take on a Catholic meaning.
As a point of fact, I would not concede the point about the evidence for Shakespeare’s Catholicism being more recent than Rowse’s biography. As I make clear in my book, the foundations of work in showing Shakespeare’s Catholicism were laid by the pioneering scholar, Richard Simpson, in the nineteenth century. This relatively minor quibble aside, the main problem is not with my authorialism but with Rowse’s illogical conclusions from the historical data. Everyone was baptized, married and buried in Anglican churches in Elizabethan England, even known and convicted recusant Catholics. As such, Shakespeare’s baptism, marriage and burial in an Anglican church prove absolutely nothing about his religious convictions. Rowse’s failures as an historian have no bearing whatsoever on the rectitude or otherwise of authorialism. In practical terms, his poor history will lead to a poor reading of the works based on a false presumption with regard to Shakespeare’s religious beliefs.
Is this Catholic meaning, though, really any more final than all the other meanings? A crucial piece of evidence in Pearce’s case for Shakespeare the Catholic is the playwright’s purchase of Blackfriars Gatehouse, which had been a centre for recusant Catholic activities, years before. But what if further searches of the records turn up that Shakespeare also owned a house known to be a base for Puritan agitators? What if, in some dusty Tudor attic, a poem by Shakespeare is found which eulogizes Good Queen Bess? The meaning of the plays would again metamorphose, by Pearce’s theory.
Of course they would! That’s my point! If it could be shown that Shakespeare was a German Jew living in the nineteenth century it would force us to reconsider our understanding of the plays. No evidence has been found of Shakespeare purchasing a house owned by Puritan agitators, nor has a sycophantic sonnet been discovered in Shakespeare’s hand that praises Bloody Bess. I think that Mr. Lomas would concede that an argument based upon non-existent evidence proves nothing. The evidence shows that Shakespeare was a believing Catholic in very anti-Catholic times. This evidence must be seen as crucial to an understanding of Shakespeare’s plays.
Still for Pearce this is not yet the worst. There is an even more fundamental objection to Pearcean interpretative theory, and it again shows up most spectacularly with Shakespeare. But I want to begin by identifying the issue in the most “water-tight” of Pearce’s exemplars. J.R.R. Tolkien once affirmed that The Lord of the Rings is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”: Pearce concludes that Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally Catholic work. Surely this is just simple commonsense? I recall, however, reading a non-Catholic critic who noted that the letter in which Tolkien made this avowal was written to a Catholic priest, Father Murray, S.J., and that in the letter Tolkien seems rather eager to please the priest, and perhaps to reassure him about the orthodoxy of the magnum opus. In hundreds of other letters to non-clerics, rather less stress is placed on religious significance. The conclusion was drawn that the letter to Father Murray is less central and decisive than Pearce would have it.
This is really clutching at straws. Tolkien states explicitly, in such a way that no ambiguity is possible with regard to its interpretation, that The Lord of the Rings “is, of course, a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”. Note the word “of course”. And yet Mr. Lomas suggests that we can ignore Tolkien’s explicit, unambiguous assertion or insistence that the work is Catholic merely because he happens to be writing to a priest. In hundreds of other letters to non-clerics he does not discuss the Catholic core of the work because this is not the topic under discussion. Whenever the topic is discussed, he has no hesitation in making the same point abundantly clear. On another occasion, in writing to a non-cleric, he states equally explicitly that the fact that he was a Christian and in fact a Catholic was the most important factor on the “scale of significance” relating to his relationship as author to his work.
It is interesting to note that Mr. Lomas seems to be conceding that Tolkien’s making of such a statement would indeed have been significant to our understanding of the work if he had said it to anyone except a priest. I wonder whether Mr. Lomas doth protest too loudly and that he is, in fact, a secret authorialist!
Drawing out the implications of Pearce’s theory, we arrive at a situation just the same as that produced by the theories of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. Yes, it pains me to say it, but the truth is unavoidable: beneath his conservative rhetoric, Joseph Pearce is just another doyen of postmodernity.
I have no reply to make to such arrant nonsense. Indeed it renders me speechless. It did, however, make me chuckle!
This alternative theory of interpretation may be formulated by considering literary criticism as a branch of scientific, experimental reasoning. The critic’s interpretation is his hypothesis, the text constitutes the factual matter he is attempting to explain. If in a critical “experiment”, a confrontation of interpretation and text, it is found that the interpretation does not account for elements of the text, or accounts for them inadequately, the interpretation must be modified, or abandoned. The validity of an interpretation is dependent, wholly objectively, on the text: it must conform to the text, as the ultimate authority.
Ignorance of the theology, philosophy and historical culture which is inevitably the informing principle of the work will invariably lead to woeful misinterpretation. A work is a product of the personhood of an individual author, the pouring forth of his deepest held beliefs and assumptions in relation to the culture in which he finds himself. As such, theological, philosophical and historical ignorance, and ignorance of the author’s own theological and philosophical assumptions must invariably lead to absurd misunderstandings about the meaning of the text. There is a reason that Tolkien has the Ring destroyed on March 25, the date of both the Annunciation and the Crucifixion. If one does not know the significance of the date, or the theological connection between the Annunciation and the Crucifixion, or that Tolkien, as a Catholic, knew the significance, one will miss the very key that unlocks the deepest meaning of his masterpiece. If one did not know or suspect that Shakespeare was a Catholic one might not notice the repeated references in his plays to the poetry of the Jesuit martyr, St. Robert Southwell, and its significance to the deepest meanings of Shakespeare’s plays. Et cetera.
In Wuthering Heights highly charged Romantic passion is front and centre, while the “deeply held Christian faith” of Emily Bronte is not conspicuously present. A critic attempting to demonstrate an underlying Christian structure to the novel has to work against the apparent meaning.
On the contrary, knowing of Bronte’s “deeply held Christian faith” will cause us to expect its presence in the work and will thereby help us to discover it. Any “apparent meaning” that contradicts the deepest held beliefs of the author is ipso facto an incorrect reading.
Then with the battle over Shakespeare’s proto or anti secularism, consider the example of King Lear. This play clearly contains Christian themes, such as Lear learning compassion through suffering. But it also contains elements that are far from obviously Christian—the murder of the innocent Cordelia, Lear’s agonized death—elements which even the great Doctor Johnson considered unChristian—Doctor Johnson who was neither a postmodernist, a secularist, nor a fool.
One need look no further than the Gospel to find the murder of the innocents. Is the Gospel, therefore, “unchristian”? The presence of sin in a work does not make it un-Christian – as long as the sin as seen as being sinful and its innocent victims are seen as being innocent. In this sense, Lear is a profoundly Christian play. And as for Lear’s “agonized death”, his last words indicate that he is deliriously happy, having seen a vision of the resurrected Cordelia. This crucial fact is all too easily missed if we do not see it through Shakespeare’s Catholic eyes. As for Dr. Johnson, he was not a good literary critic, for all his other strengths.
I wish Mr. Lomas well. I also wish that he would learn to read through the eyes of those who see more clearly than he. I refer not so much to myself as to the authors of the works that his faulty philosophy has caused him to read incorrectly.
What amazes is your own patience (mine was insufficient) to follow the convoluted illogic of his argument–which boils down to this: But if it were not so, it would not be so; ergo, it IS not so! Seriously, read his reasoning. That’s exactly what he’s saying.
Someone should explain the nature and proper use of the subjunctive to Mr. Lomas. It’s vital to sanity, not just to the interpretation of literature.
Dear Mr. Lomas,
I hope you’ll excuse me for commenting on your reply to Pearce’s response. I hope it’s not presumptuous of me.
It should be noted that Joseph’s criticism was not biographical in the strict sense of that term and in the sense in which you define it. I too disapprove of biographical criticism and have written on that topic more than once. (It’s my opinion that those who engage in it are usually too intellectually slothful to engage the work itself.) But that’s not what Pearce did.
I think a misreading has happened here. Pearce insists–and so would I–that the author is the source of authority on his work. That’s a position I have always maintained as well. What he means by “authorial” is misunderstood; your’re reading it as “biographical.” Unfortunately, your eagerness to condemn that type of criticism has made you err in your own reading of Joseph’s book.
I believe Leavis would agree with me here.
from Andrew Lomas,
Thanks for your well wishes Joseph Pearce. All the best to you, too! As for my philosophy of interpretation, it is actually based on the writings of F.R.Leavis. An “old-fashioned”, even “quaint” guide, but in my opinion still a good one, and one I intend to stick to. At the time I was writing my essay I could not locate the classic passage in which Leavis repudiates biographical criticism, but I have since found it. It in in “Henry James and the Function of Criticism”, from “The Common Pursuit”, and in my view is worthy of much reflection:
“The analysis and judgement of works of literary art belong to the literary critic, who i s one in so far as he observes a disciplined relevance in response, comment and determination of significance. He is concerned with the work in front of him as something that should contain within itself the reason why it is so and not otherwise. The more experience–experience of life and literature together–he brings to bear on it the better, of course,and it is true that extraneous information may make him more percipient. But the business of critical intelligence will remain what it was: to ensure relevance of response and to determine what is actually t h e r e in the work of art. The critic will be especially wary how he uses extraneous knowledge about the writer’s intentions. Intentions are nothing in art except as realized, and the tests of realization will remain what they were….These tests may very well reveal the the deep animating intention (if that is the right word) is something very different from the intention the author would declare.”
Also very interesting–though rather too extreme for me–is the rejection of biographical interpretation by G.K.Chesterton:
“The function of criticism, if it has a legitimate function at all, can only be one function–that of dealing with the subconcious part of the author’s mind which only the critic can express and not with the concious part of the author’s mind which the author himself can express. Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots” (from his introduction to “The Old Curiosity Shop”, quoted in Donat O’Donnell’s “Maria Cross”).
Well, those of you who are interested may choose to read my own response to Andrew Lomas, which is also on the Christian Shakespeare site …
http://christianshakespeare.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-text-whole-text-and-nothing-but-text.html .
I take a more philosophical and general approach in my reply – and I incorporate the question that Leavis brings up and that Chesterton alludes to – namely, is the author’s intention “realized” in the text? Sometimes we, as authors, communicate far more or far less than we had intended.
My position is that the author’s intention is certainly a key to understanding his work, but not the only key. I think all of us would agree to that. This is our common ground.
The apparent stridency that Lomas saw in Pearce’s position, which he read to be this: “the author’s intent in writing over-rides anything that is objectively in the text” is not what Joseph Pearce is saying.
Likewise, Lomas’ apparent stridency, “Knowledge of nothing outside of the text is necessary for us to read it properly” is also not what Lomas is saying – at least Andrew Lomas said so in a private email to me.
For if it were true that Joseph was going around saying, “Listen to the author, but ignore his text!” and Andrew was going around saying, “Ignore everything outside of the text, especially the author’s stated intent in writing it!” we would all be characters in a parody of scholarship.
And may we please, Lord, be anything but that!
Thanks to all involved for making the Christian Shakespeare a venue for this. I encourage others interested in the Bard to submit to the site. Email me – info@christianshakespeare.com
from Andrew Lomas,
I thank all the members of the StAR for their thoughtful responses. To Joseph Pearce in particular: as I noted to Kevin O’Brien when I submitted my article, I was very forthright in my criticisms of your position–maybe too much so–and so I can hardly complain if I get a forthright reply.
Obviously the discussion has raised many issues, and to consider them all would take another article, but I would like to make a couple of points.
To Joseph Pearce, I do think you somewhat misinterpreted my article. I construed “How To” to be making a philosophical point about securing meaning: that the postmodernists have reduced literary texts to indeterminacy, and that this can only be resolved by appeal to the author’s authority. I attempted to make philosophical arguments against this view, largely reductio ad absurdam arguments. With regard to the Tolkien letter in particular, my point was that as postmodernists can misinterpret literary texts, so even the most apparently clear statements of authorial intention can be misinterpreted. Therefore authorial intention cannot by itself save us from multiplicity of interpretations. Possibly I stated my argument badly, but Kevin O’Brien formulates what I was trying to get at very well in his summary of my position.
On “King Lear”: I would like to believe your interpretation, Joseph Pearce I really would, but I just can’t see it. I note that Kent and Edgar don’t see Lear’s ending as being a vision of heavenly bliss, and they were “on the spot”.
To Dena Hunt on Leavis: Leavis is particularly dismissive of general biographical interpretation, but he also has queries on “extraneous” authorial intention. I take Leavis’ position to be this: statements of intention are matters of intellect. But works of art are produced by the whole man: intellect, will, and emotion. And how an author feels about things in the concrete, as shown in his works of art, may come into conflict with his abstract intellectual position. This is what most critics think happen with Milton. It may also have happened with Emily Bronte. We know from the biographies of the Brontes that they were all fascinated and attracted by Byron, and his “Byronic” characters–though in my view this is obvious from the novel anyway. It is arguable that in the novel the emotional attraction towards and sympathy with the Byronic attitude comes into conlict with Emily Bronte’s Christian belief. And I believe it is this sort of conflict between “concious” and “subconcious” that Chesterton was referring to in his comment.
In conclusion I would say this: We have with “Lord of the Rings” more than a thousand pages of very carefully written, polished writing. It is my opinion too that this work is “fundamentally Catholic”. But why do we need to refer to a two page letter rushed off in half an hour to show this? We have the twenty or so plays of Shakespeare. Surely we should be able to work out what Shakespeare wanted to say from these without needing esoteric historical research. There are particular difficulties with interpreting literary works, but are also techniques which have been developed to resolve them. It is in a focus on what is actually there in the text that I see the main and important business of the literary critic.
But in any case, I thank all for having patience with me. I undoubtedly have much to reflect on and to learn
Andrew, I think you have not quite understood Chesterton. His belief in the authority of the author and the importance of the author’s intention is implicit in his complaint that it didn’t matter how much he made the point of a story stick out like a spike, the critic would always go and impale himself on something else!
Authorialism is simply the endeavor to see the work through the eyes of the author so that we can see his point of view and not impale ourselves on our own points of view by pointedly declaring that the author’s point of view is pointless.
I hope you see my point and that I haven’t expressed it too pointedly!
Mr. Pearce-
Having taken up the cudgels to prove that Shakespeare was a Catholic, do you see the thesis gaining grown in mainstream academia? I believe Stephen Greenblatt made the case for Shakespeare’s Catholic upbringing about fifteen years ago. Do you think that the central propositions for which you argue in your book show signs of achieving a general acceptance?
Best regards,
Thomas Banks
Thomas,
I’m pleased to say that the Catholic Shakespeare is indeed becoming more mainstream. Apart from Greenblatt, Michael Wood, a first rate historian, has also argued for the Catholic Shakespeare in his PBS series, “In Search of Shakespeare”. The director of the National Shakespeare Theatre in Washington DC, asked about Shakespeare’s religion, answered instantly that many people believe him to be a Catholic.
The problem is that many (most) critics refuse to acknowledge the Catholicism of the plays, resolutely seeing their own prejudices reflected in the plays, in spite of the playwright’s Catholicism.
Dear Mr. Lomas,
When modern critics discuss works hundreds of years old, like Milton, Shakespeare, and the Brontes, we have to remember that such works were written long before the word “psychology” was even coined. The term “biographical criticism” is very broad–too broad to be taken as a singular critical approach. It can be used in ways any ethically minded reader would consider inappropriate; on the other hand, an acknowledgement that a writer is–by logical necessity–a product of his time and his own life experience is not only appropriate but fundamental to understanding his work. There are instances of biographical criticism (including those which presume to psychoanalyze the writer) which are not only unethical but downright misleading. There are others, however–like Pearce’s “authorial” variety–which illuminate texts by relying on the author himself as the authority and thereby avoid the contemporary anachronistic heresy of “historicism.”
It’s a fine line, but Pearce manages it well. I believe you misinterpreted his approach by not distinguishing between generic “biographical” and his explicated “authorial.” Just as troublesome (for me) was the illogical leap in subjunctive reasoning: If it had not been so, it would not be so, ergo, it is not so. The entire error was one of failure to distinguish elements of criticism and of reasoning that are, actually, quite discrete.
Nevertheless, the points you make about generic biographical criticism (and Leavis) are generally sound, and it’s always good to question critical approaches. Such questioning doesn’t happen often enough these days. That’s a major reason for Pearce’s “authorial” approach.
Tone, however, always matters. Just as you point out its importance in understanding the primary works (Shakespeare’s), so also is it important to understanding secondary critical remarks (Pearce’s). I suppose it would be a good thing to remember that tone matters also in tertiary remarks (your own).