February 5, 2007

By Lee Ann Alexander

Protestants have long championed the idea of the “priesthood of believers”--in essence, the idea that individual believers can interact with God directly, rather than funneling business through a priest.  One of the more famous proponents of this concept was Martin Luther, and, of course, his radical thinking rocked the religious world and changed the course of history.

 

The Way It Always Has Been

After sitting through two semesters of Critical Theory as an English Literature undergraduate and graduate student, I’ve heard the systems with which we should critique literature.   Start with Aristotle’s Poetics, jump to Coleridge’s discourse on the concept of “genius” and “imagination,” and then tour Nietzsche’s argument for rationalization.  Oh, and let’s not forget Derrida’s gospel of deconstruction.  Toss in Keat’s “negative capability” premise, a little Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis, Showalter’s feminist theory, plus Matthew Arnold’s study on criticism itself, and you’ve got a recipe for 101 ways to read critically and interpret a text.

 

Attached to these standard schools of thought is a rhetoric that includes unspoken rules such as:  “your personal interpretation is not needed, and your related personal experiences are not welcome,” as well as the weekly admonition in our class discussions to “stay within the text!”

 

Imagine discussing the possible ways to critically interpret Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth in a class.  One class session focuses on deconstructing the text.  Another class is spent discussing a Marxist criticism of the text:  an analysis of the social structures at work and how Lily Bart “barters” herself in the marriage economy of late 19th-century New York.  In another class we undertake a feminist reading of the text and postulate that Wharton offers a critique of a society that objectifies women. That’s all well and good, but should someone venture in this discussion, “This reminds me of my Mom getting overlooked for a promotion and how a glass ceiling still exists for women in America today,” the instructor politely leads us back into the safe confines of the text with a “That’s interesting, but let’s talk about an example from the novel that reflects a third-wave feminist criticism.” And despite the degree of civility, the personal experience is minimized and the legitimacy of the reader’s interpretation is curtailed.

 

Luther vs. Literary Tradition

In recalling those recent university days, I can’t help but compare that traditional thought to that which prevailed in Luther’s day in the sense that only the qualified experts among us are sanctioned to interpret sacred text—literary works, in this case.  Whether intentionally or not, our (arguably archaic) critical interpretation approach to literature has convinced us that only the “priests” among us are qualified to break open the holy writ of Faulkner, Chaucer, Updike, Milton, the Bard, and so on and so forth down the canon.  And then in so doing, that act of reading and interpreting is to be a distanced, clinical examination of a text with no trace of personal experience involved. 

 

As a student, I didn’t realize there was any other option at the time.  I assumed the instruction I was given and the interpretation skills being engrained in me were the only ways to read and study literature.

 

An Apostolic Experiment in Fiction Critique

Fast forward to the present.  A few like-minded, literature-loving friends and I have started a short story club.  I assumed we would get together, pick apart literary conceits and author technique, and try to line up texts with the literary criticism du jour.  What has happened instead is a more personal (and fulfilling) interaction with our texts.  We talk about whether or not we “like” stories and why.  Then we go a step further and analyze the stories from our unique perspectives as Apostolics.  When we do speculate about authorial intent or evaluate literary devices, we talk about whether or not we think it works.  We even talk about the text in relation to—gasp—personal experiences we have had.

 

We had a blast with two chapters from Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River, for example. First of all, who knew there’s actually a contemporary literature author out there who can treat Christianity without contempt in a format other than a cheesy, formulaic yarn?  But beyond that, we had the added luxury of going in a unique direction based on our experiences as Apostolics.  We talked about spirituality in the novel and started a fascinating, open discussion on why the gifts of the spirit are not more in operation in our churches.  Again, who would’ve guessed we would go there in just a casual short story club meeting? 

 

The result of sharing various personal experiences and interpretations is the opening of new possibilities toward a fuller, more enhanced comprehension of a text and broader related insight.

 

But…

Though I’m proud of my new every-man-a-priest approach, at times the English M.A. student in me questions if we are profaning the sacred.  I’m reminded of the clergy’s reaction when Luther essentially promoted Joe Schmoe the Believer and validated his individual experience with God and/or the Bible.  On that line of thought, what makes Joe Schmoe the Reader qualified to pass judgment on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18?  Is the fact that Joe likes the poem and think it’s “real good” enough to certify the text’s worth?  Or even if Joe thinks Shakespeare’s use of analogy is “way cool,” does that justify a critical reading?

 

The truth is that we do need some guidelines and standards for defining and critiquing art.  But if we convince ourselves that we have a monopoly on those guidelines and standards, we are missing out on new and innovative ways to read and interpret a text.  What’s more, we are robbing readers of the magical, if you will, experience of interacting with a text on their own terms.

 

When I dropped my scalpel for a moment and began to listen to the different viewpoints and the depth of perspectives fellow readers shared as a result of their expertise across multiple disciplines, my reading and understanding of the text was enriched.  The result is that I am starting to expand my mental paradigm. That is, I’m accepting the idea that sharing personal experiences and interpretations of a text can be just as important as a traditional application of critical theory.  How would I know there is a “Christian aesthetic” and how would I have made that application to Tim Gautreaux’s “The Safe” without a reader in our group bringing it up from his advanced studies in theology?  It goes to show that there is a certain synergy that comes from discussing a work with readers who can bring in their unique personal interpretations.

 

Oh, the Places You’ll Go

Maybe what we should hope for in our current literary landscape is not a thorough deconstruction of texts, but an awareness of the possibilities of reading a text.  If my college English students leave my class understanding that there are multiple ways to interpret a text and can appreciate that each text has meaning that can add value to their personal experience as a reader and a person, I’m satisfied. 

 

Should I be? Am I settling short of a fully educated viewpoint?  It is possible, but in the meantime, I hope I’m allowing my students to discover their own priesthood as readers.  They are entitled to access a text directly and interpret meaning.  And if they can understand that, we have a platform from which they can discover the additional beauty of applying established schools of criticism and interpretation.

 

Is this suggestion a reflection of the dumbing down of academia?  It doesn’t have to be if we balance the suggested personal-textual interaction with the use of respected traditional schools of theory as guide rails but not the sole basis for reading and interpretation. 

 

Perhaps it is the way we book lovers and academics compete in a world inundated with technology and entertainment of every kind and degree.  We can’t stick our heads in the sand, and we can’t keep churning out selfless automatons from our Master of Fine Arts (MFA) and Master of Arts (MA) programs with no personal connection to texts.  What we can do is allow and even encourage each individual reader’s personal interaction with a text—an unalienable right within the priesthood of readers. 

 

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© 2007, Lee Ann Alexander

 

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Lee Ann Alexander is an English Instructor at Gateway College of Evangelism.