Introduction to Parallel Dimensions Studies
0.1. The Missing Body
If there is one notion upon which traditional historically oriented
literary scholars and cutting-edge, post-structuralist critics can agree, it is,
tragically enough, the un-defmition of our corpus of study. From the very
beginning, the discipline of literary studies has never appeared preoccupied with
clearly delimitating nor defining its corpus of study, and the term “literature”
itself still covers a wide variety of cultural artifacts, which are not even
necessarily written. It is fairly obvious by now that the etymological sense of the
word “literature,” which implied writing (from the Latin litera/littera, “letter”)
has never really applied to what we consider fair game in literary studies, and
the generally accepted reign of Shakespeare over the Occidental canon,
sanctified by an academic authoritative figure such as Harold Bloom, speaks for
itself: we have chosen a playwright1 as the emblematic figure of the art of
writing, bypassing the fundamental differences of transmission between a
written text and a theatrical performance.2 Similarly, renown Marxist critic
Terry Eagleton uses 17th Century French playwrights Corneille and Racine as
undeniable examples of fine literature, while summarily dismissing Raymond
Chandler’s novels as not being literature—“You may consider Raymond
Chandler ‘good of his kind,’ but not exactly literature (...)”— and ultimately
denying any possibility to define literature: “Anything can be literature and
anything which is regarded unalterably and unquestionably literature—
Shakespeare, for example—can cease to be literature” (Eagleton 9). Once again,
the figure of the illustrious bard is evoked, if only to illustrate the ultimate
fluidity of our always elusive corpus of study: if even Shakespeare himself can
be excluded from literature, then, indeed, no one is safe.3
Besides this elementary mediatic confusion, which has allowed from
the very beginning the inclusion of a performing art into the literary canon,
literary studies have been extremely flexible as to the different genres of
writings that deserve to be considered literature, accommodating religious
meditations, philosophical essays, funerary eulogies, sermons or letters without
any type of typological discrimination, and just as intolerant of other narrative
genres and forms, which, for no apparent reason other than their possible
populär origin, were never deemed worthy to be canonized.4 The arbitrariness of
the literary canon becomes all the more apparent when one considers it
diachronically: whereas 17th Century French philosopher Descartes and Spanish
theologian Teresa de Avila are considered canonical literary figures, 20th
Century writers such as Simone Weil5 or Brice Parain belong resolutely to the
canon of philosophy and do not appear in any literary anthology. It would seem
then that the literariness of a genre—be it theology or philosophy—would