NEW CRITICISM (Formalism)

Alright, back to descriptions of schools of criticism. For this entry, I’ll talk about Reader Response Theory’s direct opposite: New Criticism.

In the middle of the 20th Century the various schools of Formalism had a massive battle royal, winner take all. A faction known as “The New Critics” came in and dominated American literary criticism for decades. The New Critics took their name from a book, The New Criticism, published in 1941 by one of their members, John Crowe Ransom. They were also influenced by the critical essays of T. S. Eliot, with such snappy titles as “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and “Hamlet and His Problems.”

I’ll give the New Critics one thing, they had some interesting branding.

Once the New Critics became kings of the literary hill, they basically got everyone into looking at a work, particularly works of poetry, with an emphasis on close reading. Their agenda was to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. These are the guys who basically came up with the concept of the Literary Canon.

Yeah, all you geeks out there who ever had a teacher tell you that all that stuff you loved wasn’t, “real literature,” you can blame The New Critics.

Hold up.

Before you nerdrage and take to the Internet to rant about these guys, I’ll give you a slight spoiler alert… New Criticism isn’t that big a deal anymore. Also, while some New Critics use their perspective to belittle and demean works that other people love, the theory itself offers useful tools for our explorations of works of art. And not just poetry, all of it.

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of New Criticism, let’s take a look at the origin story of The New Critics.

No. There is too much. Let me sum up.

In the early part of the 20th Century, most literary criticism was heavily influenced by 19th Century German scholarship. Analysis of works focused on the history and meaning of individual words and their relation to foreign and ancient languages, comparative sources, and the biographical circumstances of the authors. While some of this can lead to interesting discussions and observations (which we’ll talk about with some other theories), The New Critics felt this perspective of seeking meaning about a work from sources outside the work distracted from the pure awesomeness of the work itself. The New Critics also rejected the Literary Appreciation school, which limited itself to discussing the beautiful and morally elevating qualities of a work. To The New Critics, this was too subjective and emotional. Rather than put up with what they considered two flawed systems, The New Critics aimed for a newer, shinier method, a systematic and objective method, for discussion of the awesomeness of a work. Well… at least the awesomeness of works upon which they chose to grant their stamp of approval.

Under the reign of The New Critics, the structure and meaning of a text were intimately connected, and in order to really understand a work, these two qualities should not be analyzed separately. In order to focus all literary studies on the work and nothing but the work, The New Critics set about excluding all other conditions that might muddy the waters. The reader’s response? Irrelevant. The author’s intention? Irrelevant. The historical and cultural context of the work and or the author? Irrelevant. Any kind of moralistic bias of any and/or all of the above? Irrelevant! Irrelevant! IRRELEVANT!

For most of the Cold War decades — the 1950 through the mid-seventies — The New Criticism dominated English classes in American high schools and colleges, largely for offering a relatively straightforward and politically uncontroversial for the teaching and learning of literature.

Remember kids, these guys came to prominence in Academia during the same time as McCarthyism. Not saying correlation is causation or anything…

Exploring works through the lens of New Criticism requires precise, exacting, almost anal-retentive levels of scrutiny. Examination of formal elements such as rhyme, meter, setting, characterization, and plots were used to identify the theme of a work. Oh, yeah, these guys were HUGE on theme. So all of you who had to find all the Da Vinci Code-like secrets the author had hidden throughout a piece in order to discover the “theme” of something you read in school, thank The New Critics. In addition to the theme, The New Critics also looked for paradox, ambiguity, irony, symbolism, metaphor, and tension to come up with the single best and most unified interpretation of the text.

In 1946 a couple of The New Critics camp, William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, predicted the arguments they were going to face in opposition to their belief of the text being all-important in discussions of the literary value of a piece. To preemptively cut off those counterarguments, they wrote a couple of essays defending their position, creating the Intentional Fallacy and the Affective Fallacy. “The Intentional Fallacy”, basically says an author’s intention, or “intended meaning,” for a work is (say it with me) irrelevant in the analysis of a literary work. “The Affective Fallacy”, a kind of sister essay to “The Intentional Fallacy” discounts the reader’s personal reaction to a literary work as (you know where this is going) irrelevant.
I know I’m repeating myself here a bit, but I feel it’s important to know The New Critics’ backstory, specifically so we spot when people are holding onto the principles of New Criticism during a discourse. It’s like talking to a hardcore fan of The Flash and you start asking about anything you don’t get — the answer will be, “Because Speed Force.” Same with Doctor Who, “Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey.” Star Wars, “The force.” Batman, “I’m Batman.”

Toward the end of the 20th Century, Stanley Fish (from Reader Response Theory) broke ranks from The New Criticism camp.

Currently, New Criticism no longer dominates theoretical models in American universities. I feel this is largely a good thing, as it was stifling the creative aspect of literary criticism. Any time anyone tries to codify “right” and “wrong” when it comes to experiencing art, it hurts everyone: artists, the audience, critics, everyone. I, your humble guide prefer some theoretical schools than others; however, aside from a little snark here and there, I’m doing my best to check my biases at the door. Even being as problematic as it is, especially considering the amount of derision geek culture has experienced at the hands of New Criticism, I believe some of the ideas of The New Critics have value, if used in moderation. Close reading, a tool introduced by The New Critics is still a fundamental tool of literary criticism and the study of writing. Also, several major schools of literary theory are built on a foundation of New Criticism, including Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction Theory, and Reader-Response Theory. (Stanley Fish started out in the New Criticism Faction.)

Here’s a real-world example of how New Criticism can be useful when approaching a work.
While earning MFA in fiction, I got to have input in some of my reading. One semester, my mentor and I went deep down the genre fiction rabbit hole. With The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin having won the Hugo Award for best novel the previous summer, I decided to put that on my reading list. I did not enjoy it on first read. Not at all. I felt I understood why other people did enjoy it, but I just couldn’t get into the rhythms of the book. During my final semester, we had a guest speaker who taught in my undergrad program. She knew I was a genre writer and asked my opinion of Jemisin and her books. I gave my honest reply. We had a lengthy discussion which convinced me to give The Fifth Season a second try.

During my second read, I realized I had brought too much baggage to the work from my own experience as a reader, writer, and student of writing during my first read. That, coupled with some of the perspective and tense choices, resulted in me not having a good time with the book. By the time I’d gotten to the third chapter during my second read, I had the same experience; only… this time I asked, “What’s going on with me that I’m having this reaction to the book?” I checked all that baggage and approach the text from a place of curiosity. I asked questions: “Why?” “What is the effect here?” “How does this structural choice resonate with the story being told?” By changing my mindset from an emotional exploration to an analytical one, I discovered many things that I missed the first time around.

I still don’t know if I like The Fifth Season. However, I am curious. Very curious. Through close reading, I understand the care and precision Jemisin made in crafting her world and her story. I understand it’s well-deserved Hugo Award. If not for the tools I’d learned from studying New Criticism, I never would have taken that second journey into that world, and I wouldn’t have learned valuable lessons as a writer and a critic.

And this is the most valuable lesson of New Criticism. It gives us a way to separate ourselves from our personal feelings about the work or about the creator of the work. For example, I find reading both Earnest Hemingway and H.P. Lovecraft problematic. Both possessed deep character flaws. However, each man brought a shift in how we think about writing. If I want to study their writing with any kind of objectivity, (and I believe the work of both men, as problematic as they are, is worthy of study) I must use at least a little bit of the ideas of New Criticism.

New Criticism teaches us that liking a work (or the creator) does not mean the work has no value, nor is liking a work (or the work’s creator) necessary for learning from a work. Yes, I’m aware that this may be a controversial stance for some, but if we are going to have critical discussions about art, we sometimes have to separate our emotional response to the piece as well as the quality of the art from the qualities of the artist. Otherwise, all of our discussions will boil down to everyone emulating The Dude.

“Well, that’s just your opinion, man.”

The advancement of Artificial Intelligence in both visual and text formats has created quite a stir across the Internet. Many of these discussions center around the question, “What is art?” or perhaps the discussion is better framed as, “What is Art?” That change from lowercase to uppercase “A” may be vital to the heart of this discussion. Maybe.

In this, I’m not going to explore the economic ramifications of AI-generated content upon working creators. I’m neither an economist nor an IP lawyer. That conversation isn’t the point of The Geek’s Guide To Lit Theory, and it’s not as interesting to me. Late-stage free market capitalism is unkind to most people struggling to be creative professionals, and the struggle is exhausting.

My goal here isn’t necessarily to define what art is or isn’t. I’m just wandering down the rabbit hole of my own thoughts through the keyboard. Maybe I’ll come out the other side with a new understanding, as Alice does at the end of her journey. Or perhaps, I’ll just get lost wandering around, lost in the Wonderland of my mind. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Merriam-Websters online defines art as:

1. skill acquired by experience, study, or observation
2. a branch of learning
3. an occupation requiring knowledge or skill
4. the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects
5. decorative or illustrative elements in printed matter

Dictionary.com defines art as:

1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance
2. the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings
3. the fine arts collectively, often excluding architecture
4. any field using the skills or techniques of art

And because I’m super snarky and adore irony, Chat Open AI defines art as:

“Art is a broad term that refers to the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in the form of visual or performing arts. It can take many different forms, including painting, sculpture, music, dance, literature, and film.”

As I suspected when I thought to get definitions from different sources, we’ve got a wide range of definitions. In the discussion of images created through AI generators, I’ve seen lots of people coming up with many different definitions of what art is. Most of those come as pronouncements. “Art is as thus….” and then they go on to define the “thus.” Most of the time, I see what follows “thus” that art requires some form of human intention and/or creativity. This isn’t limited to visual mediums. This conversation has come up in music and in writing as well. The whole of academia is in the middle of an existential crisis over AI generated essays, poems, and stories. It’s not so easy anymore to determine when students didn’t actually write their essays.

Something I noticed missing in pretty much every conversation I’ve seen over AI-generated art is the viewer. That makes me wonder: What role does the person who experiences a created thing have in defining whether the created thing is actually art?

One of the great literary discussions of the 20th Century centered around the conversation (and sometimes academic shouting matches) between New Criticism and Reader Response Theory. Examining works through the lens of New Criticism is grounded upon the idea that true works of art (or maybe Art) contain objective meaning already present in the work being examined, completely removed from the viewer’s experience; however, Reader Response criticism argues that a work contains no meaning before a human experiences—reads—it.

I understand that many artists across multiple mediums have many fluctuating emotions about the quality of images being churned out by AI generators. (Heck, I gave an AI the prompt, “Write a poem about Lucille Clifton at Comic Con,” and the result was surprisingly not terrible.) I’m not trying to justify their feelings, not is my aim to tell them their feelings aren’t valid. People are going to feel how they feel. I’m working here beyond my own feelings, and diving into my curiosity about the conversations people are having, and what it all might mean. Again, not necessarily looking for answers. Rather, I’ve grown curious about what perspectives aren’t being explored in most of these conversations.

I brought up Reader Response vs New Criticism because I see lots of people talking about the creator in these conversations about art. I see very few people talking about the role of the observer in relation to art. Different people are going to have different views on this. If everyone felt the same about it, we wouldn’t need a distinction between Reader Response and New Criticism. Where’s the line between art, the creator, and the observer?

This is at the forefront of my mind because of a project I’m going to launch soon, Folklore Fridays. I’m going to go through Grimms’ Fairy Tales and rework them as if I was telling them during my storytelling shows. I have 5 different translations of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. The Brothers Grimm did not write these stories. They collected them, wrote them down, and published them. Every translation is slighty different. My versions are going to be WILDLY different. We don’t know the creators of these stories. They exist as works of art only because people continue to observe them. We can do the same with any number of stories or works of art: all of folklore, The Sphinx, the Lascaux cave paintings, etc…

In the case of AI-generated content, if an observer sees something that comes from an AI, and it elicits some kind of response that resonates within the observer, is it art or not? Does that change if the observer learns the object’s origin story?

To muddy the waters even more, I’ll bring Object Oriented Ontology (OOO for short) into the discussion. I find OOO fascinating, even if from just a thought experiment perspective. OOO is a philosophical position that challenges traditional critical ideas espoused in postmodernism and critical theory. According to OOO, objects have their own inherent properties and qualities with no dependence on their relationships to humans or other objects. This means, according to OOO, an object, no matter what form it takes, is not merely a passive thing waiting around to be acted upon by humans or other agents, but rather, the object’s very existence gives it an inherent agency. Really out there, crazy thinkings come from us practicing Object Oriented Ontologists.

(This barely scrapes the surface of the awesome weirdness of OOO. Seriously, pour yourself a drink and spend a lazy rainy weekend afternoon checking it out.)

Back to Grimm. Those stories exist as changing and evolving artifacts of the universe. Are they art because someone told them once upon a time? Are they art because the Brothers Grimm wrote them down? Are they art because someone translated them? Are they art because I read them? Are they art because they exist? — A heavy series of questions that are worthy of valid exploration. And each of the various answers those questions produce is almost certainly worthy of exploration. (One of the four pillars of true criticism is curiosity.)

This brings me to Deconstruction Theory, which I suspect is really at the heart of this conversation about art, Art, AI, humans, Humanity, agency, etc… Basically, Deconstruction Theory works to break down a text into its constituent parts and examines how those parts relate to one another and to the work as a whole. It’s about how changing the context can change our understanding of a piece, because language is clunky, awkward, and imprecise. Words are little bundles of Schrödinger’s definition waiting for other words and punctuation marks to help give us a clue as to what it’s going to mean. The heart of Deconstruction Theory lies in understanding that language is not static. Deconstruction Theory uses this meta-understanding to examine the language and concepts used in objects created with language in order to explore the underlying assumptions. contradictions, and biases that shape their meaning. As the OOO cats will tell you, language has its own agency.

Further and further down the rabbit hole I’ve gone, wandering in my wonderings deeper and deeper until, curiouser and curiouser, until now I think I’m satisfied (at least for now) at the place I’ve arrived.

Discovering the concrete definition of, “What is art?” isn’t quite so interesting as being in this pivotal moment in human consciousness where we’re truly exploring the question of, “What is art?” For me, the exploration is far more important than any momentary definitions we stumble onto before wandering back into the question once again. I think on the other side of the momentary existential crisis AI-generated content is causing the artistic and academic community, we’ll collectively have a greater appreciation not just for artists, but for the process of artistic creation. The conversation about art will shift from, “this made thing,” but into, “the making of the thing.” As a creator, I’m still a little freaked out in the short term. As someone who loves the exploration and examination of ideas and concepts, I’m super jazzed for the conversations we’ll have over the next couple of years. These two views are not mutually exclusive.

What an amazing time to be both a creator and observer of artistic creation.

Have you ever heard, “Everyone’s a Critic?”

This is the heart of Reader Response Theory. To some extent, all literary theories acknowledge the relationship between the reader and a literary work. While those theories primarily explore the author, the content, and/or the form of a work, the reader is secondary at best, the reader (audience) and their relationship to a work stands at the center of modern Reader Response criticism. Any time someone says, “I liked this,” or, “I didn’t like that,” they are engaging in Reader Response Theory.

For the Geek world, this is our home turf.

If you ever go to a comic con, or a science fiction convention, or a gaming store, or just hang out with a group of geeks, eventually… oh heck… within minutes of any engaged conversation… someone is going to start talking (ranting) about something they love or hate and why exactly that person feels you should share their opinion. Then, someone else in the conversation (or someone passing close enough to overhear) will express exactly why the original assertion is false and why. Come on. You’ve been there. Odds are, you’ve been on one side of that conversation or the other.
Having spent most of my life around geeks, I can already see some of you doing a happy little nerd dance about how you’ve been right all these years, that YOU are the one truly responsible for bringing all this nerdy goodness into the world and that we should bow down, etc, etc, etc. Slow down. Don’t get too excited. Really, chill. It’s true that you are responsible for bringing those things you love to life. So are the billions of other nerds on the planet. They also bring the stuff you don’t love to life. As much as I would like to imagine that the Twilight books don’t exist, because I’ve never read it doesn’t work that way. This is one, remember ONE, lens through which to view a work of art. So… save your happy dance for when the next MCU movie trailer hits. Besides, that’s the very most basic of basic levels, which is why I’ve chosen to start with this. If we want to go to the next level of Reader Response Theory, we’ll say, “I liked this; because…” or “I didn’t like that; because…”

If we go deeper into Reader Response, we discover it’s more than merely being someone’s personal opinion about a work. Modern Academia claims that Reader Response mostly began in the 1970s, particularly in the US and Germany, in work by Norman Holland, Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser, Hans-Robert Jauss, Roland Barthes, and others. (Names included for those geeks who want to head down the Google rabbit hole.) However, geeks can take pride in the fact that C. S. Lewis was at the forefront of this new way of thinking about literature when he wrote An Experiment in Criticism in 1961. In this book Lewis analyzes the role of readers in selecting literature. While Lewis wasn’t himself a member of geek culture — it was barely becoming a “thing” — he certainly influenced us. It’s kinda cool that he had a hand in the theory that’s arguably closest to the heart of Geekdom.

Since we’re talking about opinions of artists and readers, we find multiple branches in Reader Response Theory. Come on, you didn’t think that with all this personal experience stuff floating around in their theory that some people weren’t going to have a difference of opinion on how to apply Reader Response? (Spoiler alert: this happens in a lot of theories. Each of the following branches explores this theory slightly differently, but in their shared belief that a work is derives meaning from the reader, they have overlapping beliefs and practices, so that categorizing discussions explicitly invites difficulty. (Not that we geeks know anything about arguing over the minutest of details.) Gamers might think of the following branches as sub-classes, specializations, or talent trees.

Affective stylistics, established by Stanley Fish — think of hims as the Stan Lee of Reader Response Theory — believes that works only exist when someone experiences the work, that a work has no meaning independent of the audience. To put it another way: a book (movie, song, show, comic, etc…) isn’t real until someone reads it (watches, listens, etc…) For example, until someone sits down and reads The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf doesn’t cry “Fly you fools,” and no one has to worry about being corrupted by the One Ring…Middle Earth doesn’t exist. The reader becomes a co-creator of the text. Yes. This is a cool idea, especially for those egocentric nerds who things every creator should pay fanservice and appease their every little whim. But, settle your geeky little heart down. The planet is filled with billions of people all over the world who are also sharing the spotlight with J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, and J.K. Rowling. And again… Reader Response is one theory among many ways to examine a piece of art. (Wait until we get to New Criticism.)

Transactional Reader-Response Theory is a branch led by Louise Rosenblatt and supported by Wolfgang Iser. This discusses the relationship between the work’s meaning and the reader’s interpretation, which includes all the baggage the reader brings to the work. This baggage includes, yet is not limited to, emotions, experiences, knowledge, traumas, other books the reader has read, etc. We all have a bunch of extraneous crud bouncing around in our heads, and of course, that’s going to color our view of a work. I had a very different experience of Ready Player One than my fourteen-year-old son did. (Well, the book anyway. We were on the same page with the movie.) Likewise, I had a teacher in my MFA program tell me that she wished she got all the Easter Eggs (inside references for those who don’t grok geek speak) in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Knowing and studying this perspective helps us get past our own biases, and it helps us be more aware when someone else is biased.

Subjective Reader-Response Theory, brought to you by David Bleich, looks entirely to responses from readers for a work’s meaning. This is probably the most purely “academic” brand of Reader Response. This branch seeks to collect other individual interpretations to a work, compare and contrast them, in order to discover a continuity of meaning. In a way, Geeks love to do this with awards. The Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and other awards are geeky ways of expressing this branch. Book clubs and book blogger communities are other aspects of this branch of Reader Response.

Psychological Reader-Response Theory, spearheaded by Norman Holland, believes that a reader’s personalities heavily affect how they read. It’s an interesting branch because it’s rather than analyzing what a reader’s experience of a work tells us about the work; thus uses the reader’s and experience of the work to tell inform us about the reader.

Social Reader-Response Theory is a relatively new branch where Stanley Fish expands on his earlier ideas. He’s now exploring the concept that our individual experience of a work is influenced by a community. If that doesn’t sound like geek culture, then you need to hang out at a comic con or spend some time on Reddit. Fish suggests that in an interpretive community a reader is exposed to particular and specific forms of interpretation. As a consequence, sometimes it’s hard to break away from those norms in order to have a completely unique experience. I’ve noticed this both in Geek culture and Academia. Each community exhibits traits of this in both positive and negative ways.

Now, let’s talk about engaging with other people using Reader Response Theory. At the core of it’s approach, Reader Response doesn’t have “right” or “wrong,” but if we want to engage with other critically-minded individuals, it’s important to demonstrate an understanding of the work being discussed and clearly explain and support our reactions. We want more than: “I loved this book because it so epic, and I love epic, and the end made me happy,” or “I hated it because it was stupid…had nothing at all to do with my life…was too negative and boring,” or “Meh… Because, meh… (insert MEME).” If we’re just considering something we just read or we’re talking to our friends about the latest geek fad, these responses are perfectly fine. No worries. However, for a deeper engagement and discussion about art, these responses, positive or negative, do little encourage further discussion.
When engaging with a work through Reader Response, we want to take a systematic, analytical approach to the work when explaining and defending our personal experience with the work.

Here are some jumping off points for Reader Response Theory:

• Explain why you liked or disliked your experience of the work. Note that this is different than labeling the work as “good” or “bad.”
• Explain whether you agree or disagree with points in the work, that is, claims within the narrative or things the characters say. Let’s not get into discussing whether we agree or disagree with the author, as we’re unlikely to know the author’s mind or motivations just by experiencing the work. Sometimes we may, but usually not.(We’ll go into discussing the author of the work in other theories.)
• Explain what you believe is the purpose of the work. Not what it actually is, but what you believe it is. Important
• Critique the work by citing sections of the work to support your opinion.

Tone is especially important, even vital, in Reader Response. Since Reader Response Criticism speaks of our personal experience with a work, it’s far too easy to become impassioned and wander into ranting rather than engaging in intellectual discourse. If we fail in civil and mature communication, it’s far too easy to alienate people and ruin a potentially interesting conversation. Whether on the Internet, at a nerdy gathering, or in a classroom, pretty much every geek has experienced that one person who got so bombastic and emotional about their opinion and wound up killing what had been an interesting conversation. We’ve all known that guy, right? Don’t be that guy. The rule of thumb for Reader Response — well any time we engage in criticism, but especially Reader Response — is to write for the smartest person we can imagine using the most precise and direct language we can. As Harlan Ellison said, “You’re entitled to your informed opinion.” Reader Response Theory is best when using our informed opinions to engage with others who also have informed opinions.

We can speak to a work from a position of our principles, our interests, and/or structural issues within the work. Is the work racist? Is the work unreasonably insulting to or religion, or groups of people, such as women or adolescents, conservatives or liberal, etc? Does the work include factual errors or outright lies? Is the work too dark and despairing? Is it falsely positive? Note: In this, we want to differentiate between the work and the characters within the work. Is the text poorly written? Is it bloated, have too much purple prose, wander aimlessly before getting anywhere? Does it have too many facts and figures? Does it give information and back story via too many info dumps? Do typos or other errors keep you from enjoying the text? Does the wander aimlessly without making a point?

In every case, cite examples from the work to support assertions. If we don’t, others may conclude that we are too ignorant, sloppy, or lazy to understand and appreciate the work. In geek communities, it’s especially important to use specific and exact examples to support our claims. As a community, Geeks play close attention to details, sometimes minute details, and if our fellow nerds think we’re being ignorant, sloppy, or lazy in an analysis of a work they love, they will absolutely call us out and tell us exactly why they think we’re ignorant, sloppy, or lazy… and I promise you, geeks will come armed with specific and exacting details.

In lurking in the comments section on websites, YouTube, and Reddit most critical discussion breaks down because the participants don’t have a shared an agreement or rules governing their interaction. They may have community guidelines of expected civil behavior, but that’s not the same thing as rules for engaging in critical discourse. Three years ago, I started testing the waters of literary criticism. Two years ago, I took a deep breath and dove in headfirst into the deep end. In all that time, I’ve read dozens of books and articles and not once have I seen anyone talk about rules for interaction. It seems like every single reviewer and critic out there is saying what they want, when they want, and putting their thoughts into the world with the attitude of, “Come at me bro!” And critical discourse devolves into the equivalent of a shouting match of who can intelligently poke more holes in another’s premise the fastest. As I’ve explored criticism from both the geek community as well as the literary and academic community, I’ve become more and more convinced of the need for critics to develop a list of “rules of engagement.” That is, a set of guidelines for others to follow in order for critics to know which people in the discussion are acting in good faith and which are just trolling.

I’ve developed The Four Pillars of Criticism as both the “rules of engagement” for The Geek’s Guide to Literary Theory and as a template for other nerds and academics to consider for their own guidelines of interaction. These pillars come from an amalgamation of ideas from more than a dozen books by some of the smartest people writing about writing in the latter part of the 20th Century and the first part of this one as well as my own belief that, like the art itself, discussions of art should serve to enrich the human experience. I understand not everyone feels this way about art or criticism, but that’s how I feel about it. To that end, that’s this website will approach both articles and discussions. For those who don’t like it, feel free to start your own website and make up your own rules.

A final note before I get into The Four Pillars of Criticism: We do not expect everyone to agree on everything posted on this site. The greatest art sometimes comes from a place of disagreement. To paraphrase something one of my Lit Theory teachers said, “Most of us come to writing to solve the problems of previous generations of writers.” However, with The Geek’s Guide to Literary Theory, I want to encourage people to consider how they engage in discussion at least as much as what they chose to discuss. We expect everyone to consider at least three of these pillars when interacting with articles and others on this site.

CURIOSITY

This is the first pillar. Without true curiosity, what’s the point in exploring art in the first place? Now, curiosity is a double-edged sword. Some people are curious about the things they love in order to be right, to prove how smart they are. This is equally prevalent in geek circles as it is in academia. Gatekeepers about in both communities. Both communities will always have those who feel it’s their right to judge who should or should not be welcome in the hallowed halls of what they feel is the “correct” way to be an academic or nerd. Those who embrace curiosity for those purposes will find little tolerance for those antics here.
For the true critic, curiosity is the beginning of exploration. The true critic begins with a question, not hoping to find an answer, but instead, hoping to discover new, previously unconsidered questions. In exploring those questions, the critic hopes to find even more questions. Eventually, answers will come, but only after a long journey down a twisting and turning rabbit hole of new ideas. This curious critic will include the most interesting questions in their work because they will want others to consider those questions, exploring them from different angles, and presenting new thoughts, which might very well lead to new questions. This is where true critical dialog begins.

RESPECT

To criticize means to judge. We are making judgments on art, and those judgments are subjective. Part of the nature of criticism challenges or disagrees with the art being examined. It’s far too easy for such examination to turn into a hate fest of nerd raging. The comments section everywhere abound with this kind of vitriol. The true critic approaches their work with the utmost respect. This includes the art being examined and their explorations and questioning of that art. Respect is vitally important when the critic comes to a deep disagreement with the art they are exploring. How can we expect people to respect our work if we are not in turn respectful of the works of others? How can we engage in constructive discussions with our fellow critics when we disagree without remaining respectful throughout all points of the conversation?

KNOWLEDGE

Can we truly criticize from a place of ignorance? It seems like the internet is full of that; however, this idea should be abhorrent to the true critic. Knowledge should be the foundation for all of our inquiries of art. This doesn’t have to be formal education, but the critic should not only possess a firm understanding of the subject of their critique, but also of the manner in which the critic is making the critique. This includes any and all lenses of critical theories that the critic plans to use in the examination of a work of art. This also includes some understanding of the medium of that art, the accepted conventions within that artistic school, and, if possible, the intentions of the artist the more knowledgeable a critic is, the better questions a critic can ask, which leads to a deeper exploration. Then the critic is better able to speak of the work explored with assurance and authority as well as better prepared to respond when challenged.

ENGAGEMENT

True criticism is an art unto itself, and critics should be open to, even invite, exploration and questions from their peers. This is where I feel most critics fall short. In so much of my reading, it seems that critics want to put their thoughts into the world and expect those thoughts to be accepted without challenge or question. The true critic invites discussion, discourse, and debate. In turn, the true critic seeks out the criticism of others and engages with the fullness of their curiosity, respect, and knowledge. If critics expect artists and consumers of art to take criticism seriously, then we — that is critics — should hold ourselves accountable to the higher, more demanding standards than we do to the artists whose work we explore.

I foresee the terms literary theory and literary criticism getting used a lot on this site. Since an agreement of terms is the basis for constructive communication, let’s look at what each of these terms means in the context of examining and discussing works of art, in the case of GeekLitTheory.com these will usually be stories in written form.

The above sentence holds the key difference between the terms. Examination and discussion.

LITERARY THEORY refers to schools of thought through which someone examines a literary work. There’s a lot of them. A LOT. Since the 1970’s it seems that schools of literary theory have been spreading like an ever-evolving zombie plague. I was going to go and list some of the fun ones, but we’ll get to those as we post about them from the geek perspective. Also, most schools aren’t an “all or nothing” game. Think of the whole of literary theory as those multi-lens goggles you sometimes see steampunk fans wearing. Each lens represents a school of lit theory. When we examine a piece of literature, we can lower any number of the lenses we want to help give us a different perspective on that work. Not all lenses are appropriate to every literary work. For example: If a book is told in a traditional, straightforward, beginning-middle-end narrative, viewing it through a Structuralist perspective isn’t going to give us much in the way of new ideas about the book, or literature as a whole. However, we could use a Structuralist perspective on say The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison, which bounces back and forth between third and second PoV and is told in the present tense. How do those choices inform the work? Likewise, we could use Structualism to examine books such as A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, which has lots of tense and PoV shifts, as well as a chapter told in powerpoint presentations. I could go on and on with examples using Feminism, New Historicism, Post Colonialism, Gender Studies, (queue Yule Brenner) et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

LITERARY CRITICISM is the discussion of literary works when using one or more lenses of Literary Theory, whether it’s through writing or speaking about it in a presentation, panel at a convention, or on YouTube. Yes, I realize that it’s a subtle distinction, but sometimes those subtle distinctions are the most important when going as deep as I hope to on this site. I’m sure some people will disagree with my definition — I’m waxing academic on the internet after all. I’m happy to disagree with people. I do it often. However, for the purposes of discussions on this site, these are the definitions we’ll be using.

A bit more clarification about Literary Criticism. It’s more than saying, “I liked this piece,” or “I didn’t like this piece.” When we’re engaging in criticism, even when viewing a work through the lens of something like Reader Response Theory, we want to do more than say,  “I liked this piece,” or “I didn’t like this piece.” Criticism means to engage the work with a reflective and attentive attention analysis of the work. We want to balance examining a work’s merits and faults so that we can arrive at a sound, well-rounded assessment of the work as a whole unit, rather than those bits we approve or disapprove of. This is largely the difference between the reviewer and the critic. This is not to say one is better, more noble or intellectual, than the other. It’s just a clarification of the purposes of a review and that of true literary criticism.

It’s important to become familiar with the schools of LIterary Theory because each carries certain privileges and blind spots, favoring some aspects of a work over others. All of them have some intellectual agenda at their core. In understanding this, we can take care to not allow these biases and agendas to affect our opinion of a work as a whole. We can use that understanding to appreciate that view of the work and not to get into arguments with misplaced energy.

Over this last year, people have come up to me at events, having seen “The Geek’s Guide to Literary Theory” on the list of programming items, and they’ve asked something along the lines of, “Why should geeks care about literary theory?”

Two things: curiosity and communication.

In the post “Defining ‘Geek'” I talk about the insatiable curiosity of geeks as well as their love of talking about the things they are curious about. Having an understanding of the schools of literary theory will help focus both curiosity and conversations about the things geeks love. Understanding these terms will help smooth over disagreements, as we’ll be able to understand where those disagreements are coming from, especially in those moments when engaging with people outside geek culture.

For example,

I had several conversations with people I respect about our difference of opinions on the literary merit of The Road by Cormack McCarthy. Some of these have been rather heated. One such exchange jeopardized a professional relationship. In hindsight, playing the interaction back in my head, I realized that we were approaching our experiences of The Road through very different lenses of literary theory. My examination of The Road comes largely through a Metatextual lens, with more than a healthy dose of Reader Response Theory and a dash of Deconstruction. From what I gather from the exchange, the other party came to The Road with equal parts New Criticism and Religious Studies.

Understanding this gives me two positive outcomes on the exchange.

First, I don’t feel the need get defensive over my position. I can defend it, but I don’t need to get defensive. I don’t feel the need to prove I’m “right” and the other party is “wrong.” I can’t because we’re coming at the conversation from two extremely different places, and that’s completely okay. We don’t have to waste time or emotional energy on a largely fruitless conversation.

Second, this has piqued my curiosity. I’d never considered examining The Road through a lens of Religious Studies. Because I’m a huge lit theory geek, I’m considering diving into The Road again, this time through the lens of Religious Studies. I doubt doing will change my mind about this book from a Metatextual perspective, but I’m always excited to learn about new ways to examine a story. I may even gain further insight into why so many people find this book such a brilliant reading experience when my experience is just the opposite. In this way, I hope to gain a greater sense of empathy for my fellow man, which is one of the major benefits of being a reader of great literature, no matter what genre.

So, that’s why we as readers and writers want to study literary theory: curiosity and communication. The more schools of theory we acquaint ourselves with, the better we will be at exploring the art we love with critical curiosity. We’ll also be more prepared to engage in meaningful discussions with others, or we’ll be more prepared to understand when it’s better to agree that those involved in the conversation aren’t ever going to come to an agreement, and further discussion is a waste of time and emotional energy.

Largely, I’m undertaking this labor of love, working to inspire my fellow geeks to educate themselves in lit theory because I’m selfish. We geeks love to talk about things we love. We do this on a deeply personal level, but we lack the precision of terminology used by both the literary and academic communities. We’re a smart bunch, we could probably invent our own lexicon of terms, but why expend that energy when we already have a body of language or terms waiting for us. I also desperately want to read the books that expect will come out of a shared dialogue between the literary and genre communities. This is happening already, slowly, but it could be so much more.

So, my fellow geeks, are we ready to get to work?

Originally, I didn’t want to write this post. I didn’t want the herculean task of trying to define “geek.” Even now, as I type these words, an alarm is going off in the back of my head, “Warning! Danger! Abort!” It’s likely, with the volatility that runs through geek culture, I’m going to offend someone, or multiple someones. It’s just as likely that theses offended someones will let me know that they are offended, why they are offended, and tell me, at length and in exacting detail, why my definition is wrong. However, I’ve already gotten a bit of backlash for not defining what I mean when I say, “geek.” since the mission of this site is to foster communication about literature between different communities, it’s disingenuous to leave one of the core terms in the name of the site, “The Geek’s Guide to Literary Theory” undefined.

The challenge of defining “geek” is that even geek culture can’t seem to decide what it is. Gatekeepers galore want to decide who is and, more importantly, who isn’t a “geek.” This occasionally blows up, and rather than reinvent the wheel about who is and isn’t a geek, I’ll direct you to this awesome post by John Scalzi on the subject. Spoiler alert: Anyone who wants to identify as a geek gets to identify as a geek.

That being said, what do we mean when we say, “geek?”

That’s no simple task.

In preparation to write this post, I went to google and did three different searches:

• “What is a geek?”
• “Who gets to be a geek?”
• “Are you a geek?”

The lists of websites resulting from these searches is a mixture of inspiring, heartbreaking, bittersweet, fascinating, and turned into a massive timesink that really got me no closer to a concrete definition. So, in an effort to help come up with a definition, I posted to social media, asking folks for their definitions, and went for a walk to ponder this while playing Pokemon Go for a bit, to consider the conundrum of creating a definition of “geek” that embodies the spirit of geek culture while being inclusive rather than exclusive.

First off, this site will use the terms “geek” and “nerd” interchangeably. Yes, some folks out there seem to feel the pedantic need to over-define them into distinctly different things. Once upon a time, I embraced that need, but no longer. To argue the difference between geeks and nerds is tiresome and counterproductive to the mission of this website. If that level of nit-pickery is your idea of fun, then by all means, have your fun. This site isn’t a place we’re going to do that.

For the purposes of this site, we’re going to consider a geek as any individual with deep interest and curiosity for some subject or topic that is traditionally considered counter-culture or outside of the main-stream. This includes, but is in no way limited to, science fiction, fantasy, comic book, video games, role-playing games, board games, theater, costuming, computers, education, anime, etc… the list goes on and on. Many geeks often refer to themselves as the type of geekery they especially identify with. At various times in my life, I have been a gamer geek, a ren faire geek, a scifi geek, a dance geek, computer geek, a Red Sox geek (yes, you can be a sports geek), a WWE geek, and a literary theory geek.

I believe the most important word in the paragraph above is “curiosity.” Of all other descriptors or qualities that apply to geeks, I would say they are curious more above and beyond anything else. They become so curious about a subject that they want to know anything and everything they can about it. This is a double-edged sword, as this quality also leads to many of the biggest squabbles that have come out of geek culture as opinions and curiosities clash.

Speaking of geek culture, for the purposes of this site, we’re going to consider “geek culture” as the gathering and/or communication of two or more geeks to discuss and celebrate the geeky things they love and cherish.

These aren’t perfect definitions, but I believe these will do for the purposes of this website. I’m sure as time goes on, I’ll refine these definitions, tweak them here or there, as that’s kind of what geeks do. We’re always redefining and reexamining the things we love and the ways in which we talk about and celebrate them.

Now that we have those definitions, we can start posting essays and articles.

MTG

With all the awesome reception I’ve been getting from my presentation at conventions, I figure I might as well start this as a website. Now I have to think about smart stuff to say. This is very much a labor of love in progress. Stay tuned, true believers! – MTG