Instructor Notes

See the Additional Resources for Topics for Critical Thinking and Writing and reading comprehension quizzes for this chapter.

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A Literary Critic’s View: Arguing about Literature

Literary criticism [is] a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is reading.

— D. H. LAWRENCE

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

— THOMAS MANN

You can never draw the line between aesthetic criticism and social criticism. . . . You start with literary criticism, and however rigorous an aesthete you may be, you are over the frontier into something else sooner or later. The best you can do is to accept these conditions and know what you are doing when you are doing it.

— T. S. ELIOT

Nothing is as easy as it looks.

— MURPHY’S LAW #23

Everything is what it is and not another thing.

— BISHOP JOSEPH BUTLER

You might think that literature — fiction, poetry (including songs), drama — is meant only to be enjoyed, not to be argued about. Yet literature is constantly the subject of argumentative writing — not all of it by teachers of English. For instance, if you glance at the current issue of Time or The New Yorker, you probably will find a review of a play suggesting that the play is worth seeing or is not worth seeing. Or in the same magazine you may find an article reporting that a senator or member of Congress argued that the National Endowment for the Humanities wasted its grant money by funding research on such-and-such an author or that the National Endowment for the Arts insulted taxpayers by making an award to a writer who defamed the American family.

Probably most writing about literature, whether done by college students, their professors, journalists, members of Congress, or whomever, is devoted to interpreting, judging (evaluating), and theorizing. Let’s look at each of these, drawing our examples chiefly from comments about Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Interpreting

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Interpreting is a matter of setting forth the meaning or the meanings of a work. For some readers, a work has a meaning, the one intended by the writer, which we may or may not perceive. For most critics today, however, a work has many meanings — for instance, the meaning it had for the writer, the meanings it has accumulated over time, and the meanings it has for each of today’s readers. Take Macbeth, a play about a Scottish king, written soon after a Scot — James VI of Scotland — had been installed as James I, King of England. The play must have meant something special to the king — we know that it was presented at court — and something a little different to the ordinary English citizen. And surely it means something different to us. For instance, few if any people today believe in the divine right of kings, although James I certainly did; and few if any people today believe in malevolent witches, although witches play an important role in the tragedy. What we see in the play must be rather different from what Shakespeare’s audience saw in it.

Many interpretations of Macbeth have been offered. Let’s take two fairly simple and clearly opposed views:

  1. Macbeth is a villain who, by murdering his lawful king, offends God’s rule, so he is overthrown by God’s earthly instruments, Malcolm and Macduff. Macbeth is justly punished; the reader or spectator rejoices in his defeat.

One can offer a good deal of evidence — and if one is taking this position in an essay, of course one must argue it — by giving supporting reasons rather than merely asserting the position.

  1. Macbeth is a hero-villain, a man who commits terrible crimes but who never completely loses the reader’s sympathy; although he is justly punished, the reader believes that with the death of Macbeth the world has become a smaller place.

Again, one must offer evidence in an essay that presents this thesis or indeed presents any interpretation. For instance, one might offer as evidence the fact that the survivors, especially Macduff and Malcolm, have not interested us nearly as much as Macbeth has. One might argue, too, that although Macbeth’s villainy is undeniable, his conscience never deserts him — here one would point to specific passages and would offer some brief quotations. Macbeth’s pained awareness of what he has done, one can argue, enables the reader to sympathize with him continually.

Or consider an interpretation of Lady Macbeth. Is she simply evil through and through, or are there mitigating reasons for her actions? Might one argue, perhaps in a feminist interpretation, that despite her intelligence and courage she had no outlet for expression except through her husband? To make this argument, the writer might want to go beyond the text of the play, offering as evidence Elizabethan comments about the proper role of women.