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Title: The theory of literary criticism: A logical analysis by John M Ellis ISBN: 0-520-02547-4 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 1974 Format: Unknown Binding

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

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Summary: Literary Theory From a Wittgensteinian Viewpoint
Comment: I had to read this book in college. What I appreciated was how it developed its argument based on a different notion of definition. The conventional view, coming from the Greeks, modeled definition on physical characteristics reducible to given structures, e.g., triangles are 3-sided figures with angles adding up to 180 degrees. Ellis suggested definition based on usage. He gave as an example the term "weed." Weeds are plants. Therefore, they have physical characteristics. However, physical characteristics are not important in defining the term. What is important is that we understand the role of gardening and gardeners. "Weeds" are those plants that gardeners don't want in their gardens. In A's garden, crabgrass is a weed because it takes water from his perennials. In B's garden roses are weeds, because they have thorns and B will not tolerate any plant with thorns in his garden. It is the "use" of the plant by the gardener that defines a plant as a weed, not some physical structure or abstraction common to the entire category. This is Ellis's Wittgensteinian move, and it sets up some very interesting consequences when he suggests that literature should be analyzed as if it followed the definitional pattern of "weed" rather than "triangle".

The first consequence is that realist theories of criticism are wrong. They search for the basic characteristic common to all novels. It doesn't exist. Rather, each novel has its own characteristics that the community of readers over time brings to the fore. And, Ellis notes, the characteristics that the reading community admires at one point in time may not the the same as what the community admires at another point.

A second consequence concerns the notion of evaluation. You cannot make the value/fact distinction stick because the the community of critics develops the facts of the structural characteristics base on interpretive values important to the community. Another community could focus on different characteristics.

Finally, one should note that the notion of the interpretive community is central to Ellis's position. He takes this from the pragmatists: Peirce and Kuhn. I have read some of Ellis's other books and I notice that some reviewers consider him a conservative literary theorist. But that is wrong. His politics is conservative. His literary theory is not. Conservative theory is generally neo-Platonic or -Aristotelian, searching for general characteristics and rules of development. Ellis's theoretical approach combines Wittgenstein with Peirce. Its attitude toward the logic of presentation has more similarities with Rorty and Davidson than with metaphysical realists.