Literature’s Theories

The assumption sustained in this article is as basic as it is simple: theory is an integrated dimension of any work of fiction, not a conceptual construct imposed on it from outside as a tool to be applied to the text. The genitive of my title is a subjective genitive. This approach is not primarily concerned with works having an artist as their protagonist, loaded with art discussion, exposing metafictional features; nor does it set out to thematize the ontological differences between art and life or to extract social and psychological theories that might have inspired the authors. Instead, the focus is that any interpretation or creation, even of the most unique work of art, calls upon generalized reflections beyond the confines of the cover if we want to claim that we have interpreted it or made it emerge at all, even in its singularity. This quest for generality—which Aristotle would have called its inherent formal identity—is embedded, nolens volens, in any work of art as its minimal inherent theoretical dimension. My paper will take the discussion in two directions. One leads us to the problem of genre, which is both exemplified and contested by the protean genre of the novel. As Mihail Bakhtin has succinctly pointed out, the novel has no stable form and, hence, shows an ambiguity with regard to generality; yet, nevertheless, and for that reason, the novel has mushroomed to be a genre with a global success in its experimental unfolding. In other words, by its mere existence each novel calls for a theory to define it as a novel. The other direction taken by my discussion points to the problem of interpretation. Having in mind Wolfgang Iser’s notion of Leerstellen, any text, and in fact any semiotic product, have cracks and cavities that require a theoretical engagement from the reader to be interpreted in a wider perspective without reducing their ambiguities. Thus texts, not least works of fiction like my examples from Henry James and Honoré de Balzac, both call for theories and resist their assumed generality.