The Characteristics of Literature - Essay Example

Characteristics of Literature Introduction Amongst the various literary critics and analysts, Culler takes an interesting position since he sets out to define literature in a rather closed manner with five specific classifications which declare a piece of writing to be literature or not. For all practical purposes it seems that the descriptions given by Culler are very accurate and they can be certainly shown to be true if they are applied to various texts which are commonly considered to be literature. An examination of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, The Tell-Tale Heart and Wallace Stevens’ poem entitled, Of Mere Being can be made to show the applicability and usefulness of Culler’s ideas and five natures of literature. The five natures or characteristics found in literature are subdivided into smaller segments to show the complex variety and types of works which have been produced by writers but the central points remain the same. These include: The foregrounding of language The integration of language Literature as a work of fiction Literature as an aesthetic object Intertextual or self-reflexive constructs Knowing and understand these aspects allows an individual to apply the same to any work which is presented as literature and permits the examination of how that particular piece is constructed (Culler, 2000). The Tell-Tale Heart Considering the longer of the two works, the Tell-Tale Heart is a fine example of gothic short story writing for which Poe is rightly famous. The story places an unnamed narrator with an old man who has a defect in one of his eyes which give it a cloudy appearance. The narrator is very distressed by the eye for some reason to the extent that he wishes to kill the old man. He stands night after night looking upon the old man as he sleeps but doesn’t kill him because the urge to kill settles down while the eye is closed. One night the old man wakes up and upon seeing the cloudy eye the narrator loses control and kills the old man. He chops up the body and buries it under the floor boards (Poe, 1843). When the police come to investigate, he remains calm and shows them around the house to clarify that there was no murder or accident. However, during the visit he starts hearing the heartbeat of the man he buried and becomes very agitated as it grows louder. The police do not hear anything but narrator himself is driven into frenzy and starts tearing out the floorboards to reveal the dead man’s body and his own guilt (Poe, 1843). If we apply the five characteristics, then all seem to fit very well into place with the story in question. First of all, the story and the events described therein are completely fictional although understandably scary and exciting. The language used is very suitable for the time when the story was written and clearly reflects the narration as literature therefore foregrounding is established. The integration of the story comes with a double climax one which comes at the murder of the old man and the second one at the discovery of the crime. Intertextual agreements are established by the fact that several other stories written by Poe carry the same themes as the Tell-Tale Heart. For example, the theme of decent into madness while a person constantly insists that they are sane as well as the theme of a corpse coming back to life is seen in Fall of the House of Usher. Additionally, the themes of imprisonment of a living thing within the structure of a house are seen in both The Black Cat and The Cask of Amontillado written by the same author. Other authors have also tackled many of the concepts outlined in The Tell-Tale Heart and a lot of gothic literature is devoted to raising corpses or unnatural phenomenon e.g. Frankenstein. Finally, when it comes to the aesthetics of the work it seems that it is up to the individual to find it aesthetically pleasing or not. If we apply what we know about gothic literature and short story writing, The Tell-Tale Heart is an excellent work since it would be very aesthetically pleasing to a fan of gothic literature. On the other hand, if someone were to be more interested in Victorian literature or consider Shakespearian drama to be the height of literature then they may not be as pleased with this work. However, while the aesthetics of a piece can be debated, it is clear that the story has a lot of aesthetic value even if we can not be sure about exactly how much. Of Mere Being Strangely enough and perhaps as an exhibit of Stevens’ talent, the shorter of the two works also seems to be more complicated with hidden meanings, double meanings and sentences which defy meaning altogether. For example, the word ‘palm’ in the first line could mean a palm tree, while the ‘palm’ in the fifth line could mean palm tree or a person’s hand while the third ‘palm’ is most likely to be the palm tree due to the following line which discusses wind moving through the branches (Cook, 2006). Lines seven and eight which read, “You know then that it is not the reason/ That makes us happy or unhappy” come across as holding the key to the poem since the poet is addressing the readers directly but it remains cryptic and meanings have to be extracted based on a person’s own experiences. Culler’s recommendations add value to a work of literature if the readers have to extract meanings from the piece and if multiple meanings can be extracted then the value of the work is also established further. In this aspect, Stevens’ work seems to be more valuable than Poe’s. The application of the five characteristics shows that it is a fictional work with the integration and foregrounding of language. As aesthetical comparisons between the poem and the short story are difficult to make in the space allotted as well as dependant on the approach of the individual it would be sufficient to say that it has aesthetic value as well. However, the most important aspect for this work comes across as the self-reflexive construct because even though it is much smaller than The Tell-Tale Heart, it covers a much wider range of thought since the poem is about existence and what bring happiness to people. Conclusion This leads me to the conclusion that Of Mere Being, is the higher work of literature since as defined by Culler, literature is supposed to engage individuals in the problem of meaning. I can read Poe’s story, understand the events, know what happened and explain it as a gothic horror story. However, I find it difficult to understand what Stevens is trying to project in his poem and perhaps the full meaning of the poem is clear only to the author himself. At the same time, I also accept that some people can easily understand what Stevens has to impart to the reader but could be completely puzzled by a dead man’s heartbeat. Word Count: 1,192 Works Cited Cook, E. 2006, On Of Mere Being’, Modern American Poetry, [Online] Available at: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/mere.htm Culler, J. 2000, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press. Poe, E. 1843, The Tell-Tale Heart. Bantam Read More