Weekly Reflection: Week 1, Importance in Literature

What is most important in a work of literature? This question was the focus of discussion last class. It is important first to recognize the absurdity of this question. It is akin to asking, 'What is most important in a painting?' Take Monet's The Stroll, for example.Where do you even begin? - The sky? The grass? The figures? I can't say. The loftiness of the question makes it as massive a question as, 'What is most important in life?' For, how can we know exactly what is important in literature if we can't even say what is important in all of life? Importance is something of a hierarchy in this respect, in that the importance of a greater idea may encompass the importance of a lesser idea. For example, if happiness is most important in life, then happiness should be most important in literature. And, if achievement is most important in life, then achievement should be most important in literature. I can see no way around this.

Murray seems to agree with me in the book Classical Literary Criticism, where on the first page she puts this quote by T. S. Eliot: "Our criticism from age to age will reflect the things that the age demands" (Murray vii). The accounts of classical literary criticism that follow make that quote seem a prophecy. In Plato's Ion, the importance is the way the audience understands a work - Ion understands Homer through divine intervention, not through any skill of understanding Homer's literature. In Plato's Republic, the importance is the utility of a work for society - literature should not put bad ideas into impressionable young minds, only good ideas, even if the bad are true; literature should not discourage fighters from defending their country by causing a fear of death; literature should not show the gods in demeaning light. For Aristotle in Poetics, the importance is in the distinction of construction in literature, such as the distinction between epic and tragedy. For Longinus in On the Sublime, the importance is on the audiences feelings about a work.

The multitude of views on importance in literature in the classical world shows an immense lack of consensus. Topics vary from construction to feelings to social utility. This makes for an endless list of topics that could come up. Then, is the initial question, "What is most important in a work of literature?," hopeless? Not quite. It's just that the literal answer is relative to the audience - it changes based on what else we consider important. In this, all of the topics discussed in the classical world seem equally important.

Works Cited_

Murray, Penelope. Introduction. From Penelope Murray and T. S. Dorsch. Classical Literary Criticism.