Contemporary Fiction and the Uses of Theory: The Novel from Structuralism to Postmodernism

191 Pages·2006·0.716 MB·English

by  Michael Greaney (auth.)

Contemporary Fiction and
the Uses of Theory
The Novel from Structuralism to Postmodernism
Michael Greaney
Contemporary Fiction and the Uses of Theory
Also by Michael Greaney
CONRAD, LANGUAGE AND NARRATIVE
Contemporary Fiction
and the Uses of Theory
The Novel from Structuralism to
Postmodernism
Michael Greaney
© Michael Greaney 2006
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004 978-1-4039-9146-1
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First published in 2006 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-54274-1 ISBN 978-0-230-20807-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230208070
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greaney,Michael.
Contemporary fiction and the uses of theory :the novel from
structuralism to postmodernism / Michael Greaney.
p.cm.
This book examines the representation,or “novelizations”of literary
critical theory (structuralism,poststructuralism,postmodernism) in
contemporary fiction,and traces an alternative history of the “theory
wars”in the pages of contemporary fiction.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.English fiction – 20th century – History and criticism.2.American
fiction – 20th century – History and criticism.3.Criticism – History –
20th century.4.Literature – History and criticism – Theory,etc.
5.Structuralism (Literary analysis) 6.Postmodernism (Literature) I.Title.
PR808.C93G74 2006
823(cid:2).91409113—dc22 2006045217
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1. Introduction: Theory in(to) Fiction 1
2. The Structuralist Novel 9
Christine Brooke-Rose, Thru
Anthony Burgess, MF
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
David Lodge, How Far Can You Go?
3. From Structuralism to Dialogics: David Lodge 24
David Lodge, Nice Work;Small World;Thinks…
4. The ‘Culture Wars’ and Beyond: Theory on the
US Campus 41
David Damrosch, Meetings of the Mind
Percival Everett, Erasure;Glyph
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Masterpiece Theatre
John L’Heureux, The Handmaid of Desire
James Hynes, The Lecturer’s Tale
Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2
5. The Vanishing Author 59
Gilbert Adair, The Death of the Author
John Banville, Shroud
Malcolm Bradbury, Doctor Criminale;My Strange Quest for
Mensonge;To the Hermitage
6. Foucauldian Fictions 83
A. S. Byatt, The Biographer’s Tale
Patricia Duncker, Hallucinating Foucault
Hervé Guibert, ‘Les Secrets d’un homme’; To the Friend
Who Did Not Save My Life
Julia Kristeva, The Samurai
Toby Litt, ‘When I Met Michel Foucault’
v
vi Contents
7. Feminism versusPost-structuralism 99
A. S. Byatt, Possession
Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
8. Criminal Signs: Murder in Theory 123
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Norman Holland, Death in a Delphi Seminar
D. J. H. Jones, Murder at the MLA
Julia Kristeva, The Old Man and the Wolves;Possessions
9. The Novel in Hyperreality 140
Julian Barnes, England,England
Christine Brooke-Rose, Textermination
Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
A. N. Wilson, A Jealous Ghost
10. Conclusion: Fiction after Theory 156
Notes 161
Bibliography 172
Index 181
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding
the period of research leave during which this book was completed.
I would also like to thank Neil Bennison, Fred Botting, Arthur Bradley,
Jo Carruthers, Mary Eagleton, Alison Easton, Anne-Marie Evans, Sarah
Gibson, Tim Johnson, Richard Meek, Linden Peach, Jane Rickard, John
Schad, Catherine Spooner, Andy Stafford and Andrew Tate.
vii
1
Introduction: Theory
in(to) Fiction
Creative writers are scarcely renowned for their enthusiasm for critical
theory. ‘Novels come out of life’, says Julian Barnes, ‘not out of theories
about either life or literature’.1On the face of it, this seems like an emi-
nently reasonable claim, since fiction so frequently urges us to appreciate
that lived experience is infinitely richer and more complex than any-
thing dreamt up in the mind of a cold-blooded intellectual. From
George Eliot’s Casaubon to Woolf’s Mr Ramsay to Joyce’s Stephen
Dedalus, intellectuals tend to fare badly in fiction; they are usually too
busy grooming their pet theories to engage meaningfully with their fellow
human beings or soak up any of the practical wisdom that everyday life
might have to offer. The novel has always been a proudly anti-theoretical
genre, one that attaches more significance to the moral adventures of its
unpretentioushommes moyens sensuelsthan to the misguided intellectual
projects of its introverted system-makers and maladjusted bookworms.
Novelists never tire of sabotaging the mental labours of theorists, exposing
every ambitious new quest for some key to all mythologies as just
another journey down an intellectual blind alley.
Nor does the remarkable rise of critical theory in modern literary studies
seem likely to allay novelists’ long-standing suspicions of all theories of
literature and life. The terms ‘critical theory’, ‘literary theory’, or just
plain ‘theory’ have served in recent years as more or less interchangeable
flags of convenience for a very loose coalition of interest groups who
have found a common cause in their impatience with the intellectual
and ideological limitations of traditional literary criticism. ‘Theory’
has become a sweeping but indispensable shorthand for the state of
permanent methodological revolution that characterizes contemporary
literary-critical debate, with its apparently endless supply of new -isms
and -ologies: structuralist and post-structuralist conceptions of language,
1
2 Contemporary Fiction and Uses of Theory
difference and textuality; Marxist and Foucauldian demystifications of
state power and ideology; Freudian and Lacanian explorations of desire,
subjectivity and the unconscious; feminist critiques of patriarchal
reading habits and male-dominated canons; postcolonial challenges to
western cultural imperialism; postmodernist questionings of the official
post-Enlightenment narratives of culture, truth and value. What we
have here is a set of controversies that promise to keep critics occupied
indefinitely but seem to offer precious little in the way of inspiration for
the creative writer. This is partly because theory tends to operate as a
form of what Paul de Man calls ‘negative knowledge’, a remorseless
cataloguing of the ideas that no longer work, the intellectual categories
that have outlived their usefulness, and the literary-critical myths that
need to be exploded.2
Theory’s favourite eureka moments have usually been negative
epiphanies: the author is no longer an inspired genius who creates the
work ex nihilo; the self-conscious, self-determining human subject has
become the plaything of impersonal discourses and desires; the univer-
sal truth claims of political, religious and scientific ideologies have
dissolved into interchangeable micro-narratives; language has become a
self-enclosed system with no purchase on any non-linguistic reality;
indeed, ‘reality’ is nothing more than a copy without an original.
Reports of the ‘death of the author’ (Barthes), ‘death of the subject’
(Foucault) and ‘death of the real’ (Baudrillard), together with the news
that grand narratives are obsolete (Lyotard), and that there is nothing
outside the text (Derrida), can only reinforce the suspicion that theory
specializes in obituary-writing and general debunking. As well as its
famously sceptical treatment of notions of literary imagination, creativity
and originality, there is also the often rebarbative language of theory, a
style so thick with pseudo-scientific neologisms that Mark Currie – by
no means a defensive traditionalist – has branded it ‘the ugliest private
language in the world’.3If this is true then it seems unlikely that theory
is ever going to endear itself to fastidious literary stylists as anything
other than an irresistible object of parody.
For all its reputation as the bête noire of the creative writer, however,
theory has played a significant role in the development of recent literary
fiction – not simply as a butt of anti-theoretical humour, but as a forma-
tive influence and imaginative resource, a repertoire of embryonic stories
and radical ideas that contemporary novelists have been ambitiously
re-writing since the late 1960s. The possibilities for creative dialogue
between theory and fiction are perhaps most obviously visible in the
literary careers of novelist-theorists like Christine Brooke-Rose, Umberto