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
The debate of poetry
provided:
- the perspective on (formerly “poetic” now “literary”) genres, their different means to delight and instruct audiences, their different aesthetics leading to different forms of perfection, their different rules
- the debate of the poet, his craftsmanship, his genius (if not madness) in creating works without a perfect knowledge of the art, his or her readiness to violate rules (while aiming at special effects in his or her works)
- the debate of the critic who has to develop a poetological expertise comprising both knowledge about the rules of poetry and taste to judge how they are achieved
The debate of rhetoric
provided
- traditional means to speak about the effectiveness of speech whether verse or prose
