Frances to Chris and Cheerskep and William...
Allow me to move in to the debate from my lurking position in the
wings. My knowledge of "literature" in the traditional sense has
always been hazy, and Rand has not clarified it adequately for
me. If her position as reported here is understood correctly by
me, she holds that the major literary form of artistic literature
is deemed the novel or book or tome, which is a fictional tale or
lore or story; in which the important attributes of such a
literary work are deemed its theme and plot and sort and style.
This deeming has confused me, because it is not consistent with
what is known by me from pragmatism. In its semiotics and
linguistics, the sign of even literary art may bear a referred
object and content, and then may yield a defined subject and
meaning. In its methodics and logics, the sign can further endure
a structured style and topic and theme and truth and so on. The
point here is that for the sign to have any value and worth and
power as literary literature, it need only be referred and
defined linguistically, but not structured logically.
The issue of whether signs and as stories "have" a meaning
carried in their form is of course in dispute mainly by realists
and antirealists. The pragmatist and realist stand on this issue
is that meaning is supported best by an "objective relative"
stance, rather than by a "subjective relative" stance, so that
the meaning of a sign is not merely a mental product of the
notional or nominal mind alone. In other words, the sign
objectively bears information in the form of objects, and also
potentially yields contents and subjects and meanings, all in a
relative situation with the signer. The signer after all is
brought into a relation with the object or content and subject
and meaning of the sign, and not with their own inner sense of
it, because it is the sign and its stuff that is sensed, and not
the sense of it that is sensed. The logic of relations or
relativity is adequate realist proof of this stance. This is to
say that the thought or idea meant of the sign is in the sign,
and not only in the mind. The mind may be in thought and with an
idea and meaning, but the thought and its idea and meaning is not
in the mind, but is in the sign as say the literary writing.
Chris reports:
[Ayn Rand presents the Novel as "the" major literary form, and
tells us that its four attributes, in order of importance, are
"Theme, Plot, Characterization, and Style". Rand has found
something called 'theme'("the summation of a novel's abstract
meaning") and shoved it in at the very top.]
Cheerskep writes...
I take Rand's judgment on this issue to be so wrong-headed as to
make me wary/suspicious of any comparable judgment about "art"
she might ever pronounce. When I was in school, I disagreed with
how they taught "understanding literature" in school. "Read for
the theme, kids -- what the story means!" But a theme is never
what makes a story great. 'War is hell, jealousy is bad, man
needs his illusions, you can't recover the past.' A million awful
stories have exactly those august, commonplace themes. Moreover,
the search for a story's alleged theme literally leads students
away from where the cherishable rewards are. There are more good
"themes" in ten pages of David Hume's A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE
than in half a thousand novels -- and they are all far more
cogently articulated and argued in Hume. Besides, stories don't
have a "the meaning of". Rand's position moves Chris to recall
his youth: [Which isn't all that unusual, is it? Didn't your high
school literature teacher always want to talk about the 'theme'
of "David Copperfield" or "Silas Marner"? That annoyed me than
and it annoys me now.] I share Chris's pain. To compound the
joy-killing effect of focusing on "theme", the teachers chose
books like SILAS MARNER to instill a love and "understanding" of
literature in their students. Awful.
William writes...
Isn't there a difference between theme and subject just as there
is between what is called subject and content in art?
