Literature (L. littera, “letter”) is written or spoken imitation that demonstrates by the repetition and the transgression of formal conventions an acquaintance with a given tradition of writing or speaking.

Theory (Gk. qeasqai, “to look on, view, contemplate”) is the abstract contemplation of how something works.

I understand literary theory to be the philosophical discipline that postulates and investigates explicit universal truth-claims about how literature is composed and read. This definition sheds – for the better, I think – a number of the exercises that critics often carry out in the name of literary theory. Questions of class, culture, empire, gender, psyche, and race are important, but they are not properly theoretical questions; likewise, issues of device, figure, form, genre, and mode are indispensable, but they must be addressed under the banner of literary criticism.

There are two interesting questions that are asked in the name of literary theory, and the rest should be understood to be doing something else. First, How is sense communicated in a text? And second, What is the function of literature in society? It should be no surprise that these two questions – the one of sense, and the other of social-function – are connected. One’s theory on how sense is communicated will influence one’s belief on the role of literature in society, and what one thinks society should do with texts will influence one’s notion of how texts make sense.

A third possible question could be, How do/should we determine what makes for good literature? But so far, for me, this question always dead-ends in a “we just do.”

The first question of literary theory asks, What’s the meaning (OE mænan, “to tell”)? That is, how do texts communicate sense to readers, or specifically what is a certain text trying to tell its readers?

The second question of literary theory asks, What’s the use (L. uti, “to possess and employ”)? That is, how are texts possessed and employed by society, or specifically how is a certain text possessed and employed by a certain society? That’s to be found in the experience of the audience.

Interpretation (L. interpres, “an agent, explainer, expounder, translator”) is the articulation of meaning. That is, interpretation is the search the author’s intent.

Intent (L. intendre, “to stretch out” as with a bow that is aimed) is the direction an author hopes his or her text will travel (i.e. what the author wants the text to do).

Experience (ex, “out of” + periri, “to try or test”) is personal, precise, and repeated observation of the way a text works.

M. H. Abrams calls the collection of these concerns “the total situation of a work of art,” so that the total situation is comprised of four “elements”: the Work, the Artist, the Audience, and the Universe.

The work (OE weorc, “something done”) is the material literary artifact created through an orderly set of operations.

The artist (L. ars, “skill, craft”) is the person whose orderly set of operations creates a material literary artifact.

The audience (L. audire, “to hear”) is the group who experiences the material literary artifact.

The universe (L. unus, “one” + vertere “to turn”) is the whole of existence that conditions both the artist and the audience.

The four most prominent models in U. S. literary studies since World War II each correspond to one of the four elements in Abrams’ diagram of the total situation of art – the New Criticism addresses the literary work, psychoanalytic theory deals with the literary artist, reader-response theory attends to the literary audience, and the new historicism focuses on the literary universe – and each element, and therefore each intellectual movement, can be personified in a prominent U. S. theorist of the mid- to late-twentieth century.

Let’s imagine ourselves – at Yale in, say, 1962 – casting roles for an allegorical dramatization of Abrams’ diagram of the concerns addressed in literary studies. The role of the Work must be voiced by someone who believes that the proper concern of literary studies is the artistic structure and form of the textual object itself.

At Yale in 1962, this voice comes from the revered Professor Cleanth Brooks, whose mantra is that “the formalist critic is concerned primarily with the work itself,” and we’re all better for it.

As for the role of the Artist, this actor should believe that the text signifies the unconscious psychological condition and the fully-conscious authorial intent of its composer. Harold Bloom, an Assistant Professor at Yale in 1962, is perfect to play the Artist, as someone who would go on to argue that “a poem is always a person.”

The role of the Audience is to be played by someone who thinks that a text serves to produce a subjective response in its readers, and it is this response which ought to be the object of literary interpretation (instead of the text per se). The role of the Audience goes to Stanley Fish, who would be filing his dissertation at Yale in 1962, before going on to suggest that “there are no fixed texts, but only interpretive strategies making them.”

Finally, the role of the Universe must be acted by someone who feels that the proper object of literary interpretation is the relationship between a text and the culture that at once shapes and is shaped by the text. The Universe will be portrayed by Stephen Greenblatt, in the sophomore year of his undergraduate career at Yale in 1962, long before he would write that “there can be no art without social energy.”