Liberal Democracy, Liberal Arts, and Literary Studies

To teach, to delight, and to move to action—this is the goal of all poetry that matters. That this tripartite aim belonged to and legitimized poetry, what we might now call literary fiction, was a commonplace in Renaissance thinking and clearly set down in Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poesy, a work that marks the beginning of the English tradition of literary textual criticism. In the Renaissance, just as in the preceding Middle Ages, Grammar was conceived as an art not only of reading and writing, but of ethical living as well. In other words, the study of literature was traditionally directed towards practical action and—conditioned by its early flourishing in the direct (as opposed to representative) democracy of the Athenian polis—political participation. Consistent with this orientation of literary study, classical conceptions of the liberal arts held that they were essential for every free person entitled to informed participation in civic life. In this connection, the “Liberal” in “Liberal Arts” is etymologically related to the Latin “liberalis” an adjective that means “befitting a free person.”

From its beginning with the Homeric epics, the study of poetry (eventually the discipline of literature) has concerned itself with the ethical action of citizens actively and meaningfully participating in the political and economic life of the state. The liberal arts that have grown out of these first studies have been and continue to be formative instruments of liberal democracy. For all this, modern literary study often seems to lack the practical ethical impulse empowering poetry’s third traditional aim, the movement to action.

The apparent lack of critical concern, in contemporary academia, with the practical ethical and intentional dimension of literature is consistent with the arbitrarily narrow definition of “literature”, “literary criticism”, and “literary studies” as disciplinary constructs. Within the discipline of English literary criticism, “literature” is separated from key areas of writing and discourse even in the case of the most highly acclaimed literary figures. As an example of this, very little time is spent within literary curricula upon the political pamphleteering of Milton or, for that matter, upon the tremendous store of interpretive works of the early Church Fathers, the Medieval Doctors, and the Renaissance theologians who followed them in a cultural Reformation empowered precisely by humanist text-critical practices.

The unofficial scope of literary studies is narrowed in part through a prioritizing of scriptum over voluntas, that is, of the signification of words over the intention of authors. For the modern literary critical tradition follows upon one particular branch of the art of rhetoric which, as Kathy Eden instructs us, characterizes meaning differently in its different sections: “under invention as intentionality–what moral and legal agents mean to do or say–and under elocution as signification–what words mean” (10, 11).

The exclusionary opposition manifest in literary criticism’s priority of signification (scriptum) over intention (voluntas) reflects a “profound division fundamental to the [classical] treatment of rhetorical material–a division reflected… in the traditional separation in the manuals of matters of proof (Gr. pistis, Lat. probatio) from matters of style (Gr. lexis, Lat. elocutio).” As it appeared in the classical rhetorical tradition, this was an essential division within an integral body of understanding–a division that manifested, as it happens, a priority entirely contrary to that demonstrated in modern literary critical studies: “Aristotle’s Rhetoric, the anonymous Ad Herennium, Cicero’s De oratore, and Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria… all turn to matters of style only after treating matters of proof, a priority reflected equally in the traditional ordering of the five rhetorical partes, with invention in first place and elocution [style] in third” (Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition 10,11). By accepting the tailoring of literary critical concerns such that they align predominantly with elocutio–the part of rhetoric concerned with the style of oratorical/textual delivery–the discipline of literary studies has gradually lost sight of its traditional and practical relationship to practical moral philosophy or ethics.

It would seem, then, of great personal and societal benefit to restore–first in our understanding and eventually in the institutions that belatedly reflect our understanding–the full scope of inquiry and relevance proper to the traditional study of bonae litterae or good letters to the modern study of literature. Towards this end, and taking our cue, as it were, from the ancient Roman orators and the rhetorical tradition they consolidated, we will do well to expand the unofficial canon of our literary study to include a genre of texts all too often neglected within the modern discipline of English literature. Here, I am referring to the authoritative texts of international human rights treaties, resolutions and other instruments, as well as upon the genre of reports, opinions, commentaries, and recommendations which revolve around these crucial articulations of the rights and freedoms essential to liberal democracy. The values and judgments  that these writings express emerge from and elaborate upon the utopian premise that all people must have the opportunity to enjoy and take active responsibility for the things befitting a free person. This genre of writing speaks to the heart of liberal democracy, to the heart of our liberal arts education, and to the heart of the practical, ethical potential of literary studies.  Such texts are both exemplary products of the liberal arts education, and the means by which the project of liberal arts and liberal democracy, labouring towards an art of living well, may be clarified, illustrated, and defended.

Eliot has reminded us already, “in our end is our beginning”. The goal of our labours towards literary understanding lies in the original and felicitous impulse of poetry: to teach, to delight, and to move to action.