Traditions in our discourse about literature

An awareness of different and not always compatible discourses pervades the field of literary studies: You cannot speak of a “first person narrator offering a monologue” referring to a poem. The first person narrator is “narratology”, the “monologue” dramatology”. Referring to a speech you can speak of an “exordium”, referring to a play you speak about the “exposition”.

The different discourses mix, yet do not completely mix within the discourse of literary criticism. A metaphor is rhetoric – it can, however, be found in a political speech, a commercial advertisement, a Shakespeare play, or a Hemmingway story etc.

The complex situation (how do I know what word to use in what context?) is the result of the complex history that created our modern discourse of literature:

• The debate of literature – till around 1750 the debate of “learning”, “scientific publications” – provided

• the institutions: i.e. literary journals, literary histories, the continuing academic and at the same moment public debate of publications, and
• the discursive modalities: literature is “discussed” in fundamentally scholarly debates in an exchange of competing judgments which have to be supported by arguments one can defend in a discussion