Introduction to Parallel Dimensions Studies
27
Eisenhower to win the election in 1952: “I Like Ike” (357) is indeed “literary” in
the sense that it produces an aesthetic effect, namely phonetic and associated to
the poetic devices of rhyme, rhythm and alliteration; however, it is not what we
could call the most representative manifestation of literature. Political and
commercial slogans usually exhibit literary traits which do not tum them
necessarily into literature, for their meaning is strictly limited to their
intentionality and precludes any type of ambiguity: an overly polysemic
Publicity would just defy its purpose.10 Furthermore, language can be used
literally and still produce literature, as in the case of the hard-boiled detective
and crime stories, such as those by Raymond Chandler or Donald Westlake,11
which would seem to imply that literature can indeed escape the boundaries of
“literariness.”
However, the formalists’ intent had at least the merit to attempt a
logical and functional definition of our corpus of study; since then, it seems that
we have all but given up on the idea, as if modern and postmodem critics alike
relished the notion of an ontologically un-definable object of study. Eagleton,
for instance reminds us of John M. Ellis’ conception, which compared literature
to a “weed,” without any specific essence or precise delimitation:
John M. Ellis has argued that the term ‘literature’ operates
rather like the word ‘weed’: weeds are not particular kinds of
plant, but just any kind of plant which for some reason or
another a gardener does not what [sic] around. Perhaps
‘literature’ means something like the opposite: any kind of
writing which for some reason or another somebody values
highly.” (Eagleton 8)
It is both surprising and significant to find the same quote under the feather of a
convinced post-structuralist practitioner as Jonathan Culler, who paraphrases
Ellis’ notion at length in his Very Short Introduction to Literary Theory: “Take
the question “What is weed”? Is there an essence of ‘weedness’—a special
something, a je ne sais quoi, that weeds share and that distinguishes them from
non-weeds? . . . Weeds are simply plants that gardener don’t want to have
growing in their gardens. Perhaps literature is like weed.” (Culler, Literary
Theory 22)12
The botanic view of literature has therefore the capacity to reunite
critics from very different, if not opposed, horizons, as can be a Marxist and a
deconstructionist, but it does not, however, help defining what is literature—and
Culler’s tasteful ‘je ne sais quoi,” if undeniably fashionable, is also a Statement
of defeat: rather than addressing the issue, we embrace our incapacity to resolve
it. Culler’s choice of a French expression to declare his ultimate impotence
when it comes to defining literature exemplifies both the choice of form over
content that characterizes postmodem trendy critical discourse and the
undeniable—if quite arbitrary—prestige of French language and thought that