Literary Science

A few years ago, a graduate student in English was trying to explain to me one of the latest fads in literary criticism, the History of the Book. Historians of the Book, he said, study the making and circulation of early manuscripts, including their interplay with socio-econo-politco-colonial-technological-transgender-hegemonic factors, to put it briefly. Literary science, is what I call it, because facts and statistics are key.

“Don’t you ever read the texts themselves?” I asked my scholar-friend. “Do you ever just enjoy the words and stories of Dickens or Milton or Shakespeare?” He didn’t miss a beat: “Of course. That helps you understand why the publisher laid out the pages as he did; that helps you understand how the text was received.” Well, of course.

So I stammered around, talking about literature illuminating the world, history, life, and oneself. About literature showing me love and hate, war and marriage, foreign places and my own mind. I talked about enjoying what I read. “But, Amanda,” he interrupted, “you don’t study literature to learn reading appreciation . It’s about scholarship!” And I didn’t know what to say, except that appreciative understanding didn’t sound so silly to me.

“Read him, therefore; and again and again,” wrote Shakespeare’s first editors and fellow players, John Heminge and Henry Condell. “And if then you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him.” The literary scientist can teach us to appreciate the editorial influence of Heminge and Condell. If only he followed their advice . . .

On that note, here is a very good address on ” Why Read Shakespeare? ” or, for that matter, why read any literary work of great of value.