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XXXII. The Validity of Literary Definitions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Charles E. Whitmore
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Extract

In an age of questioning like ours, literary definitions can as little as anything else escape being called to the bar to give an account of themselves, and of their right to exist; and some, no doubt, would say that the case has already been decided against them. Personally, after having engaged in framing a few of my own, I do not share that view; and what I wish to do here is to consider briefly what gives literary definitions their validity, and what considerations ought to guide us in framing them. The task will involve some attention to the general speculative background against which purely literary problems are relieved, and may bring together some aspects which will derive at least relative novelty from their juxtaposition.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 1924 , pp. 722 - 736
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1924

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References

1 On the Art of Writing, American edn., p. 20.

2 Ibid., p. 52.

3 Ibid., p. 18.

4 “Science expresses a quite specific endeavor to get phenomena under intellectual control, so that we can think of them economically and clearly in relation to the rest of our science, and so that we can use them as a basis for secure prediction and effective action.”—-J. Arthur Thomson, The System of Animate Nature, I, p. 8.

5 P. M. L. A. XXXVIII. 57.

6 I do not know how far it is significant that these three examples (not chosen with the point in mind) assume the form of an antithesis, not that of the typically mathematical form, the equation. Perhaps there is a clue here to a basic difference in method.

7 “The Doctine of Literary Forms,” in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, XXVII (1916), pp. 1–65.

8 See on his important point John T. Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, II, 200–204, 339–40, 46S, 552. The following passage is typical: “That the whole of nature, as well as all observable phenomena, are in reality only the result of such a composition of definite simple actions, and can be studied as such, may be quite correct; but that this method, however useful in isolated cases, and especially however fruitful in the application to artificial mechanisms, will never lead to a just comprehension of any large cluster of phenomena, or to an appreciation of the totality of things which surround us, must be evident to anyone who at once appreciates the rigidity and universality of mathematical calculations, and sees how soon they fail to become of practical use when we attempt to attack any complex problem through them.” (p. 340). Compare this remark of Professor W. H. Sheldon: “The full meaning of the scientific categories cannot be learned from their numerical values alone; they are concepts which apply to the sense-data, and their meaning must be learned also from their manifestation in those data” (Strife of Systems and Productive Duality, p. 126). For a view from a somewhat different angle, see R. F. A. Hoernle, Studies in Contemporary Metaphysics, pp. 31–32, 152–154.

9 Cf. James Wara, Psychological Principles, pp. 200 and 304.

10 Contrast Pater, Plato and Platonism (1st edn., 1893), p. 140: “The concrete, and that even as a visible thing, has gained immeasurably in richness and compass, in fineness, and interest towards us, by the process, of which those acts of generalisation, of reduction to class and generic type, have certainly been a part. And holding still to the concrete, the particular, to the visible or sensuous, if you will, last as first, thinking of that as essentially the one vital and lively thing, really worth our while in a short life, we may recognise sincerely what generalisation and abstraction have done or may do, are defensible as doing, just for that—-for the particular gem or fLöwer—what its proper service is to a mind in search, precisely, of a concrete and intuitive knowledge such as that.” The whole context (pp.138–143) deserves careful consideration.

11 In this section I am much indebted to Dr. J. S. Mackenzie's Outlines of Constructive Philosophy (1917), especially pp. 70, 72, 112, 139; a work, by the way, which can be strongly recommended to any who desire a clear and nontechnical exposition of recent philosophical tendencies.