Hierarchy of literary theorists

Midterm diagram

This diagram tracks our theorists’ views of where meaning is located (or, for some of them, what shapes meaning.  The non-boxed descriptions (ex: “In the Unseen World,” “In the subconscious,” etc.) are categories describing the views of the boxed theorists.  Obviously, there are numerous connections between theorists which don’t appear on the diagram (for example, between Eliot and Coleridge for the role of the poet, or between Eliot and Wimsatt and Beardsley for their close readings of texts), but by focusing on just one layer of connections, this diagram puts together diverse theorists in ways that have helped me understand them all better.

The broadest category at the left, “Outside the Head,” includes theorists who generally assumed that there was some objective reality that we can know.  Plato places this reality in the eidos, and, following him, Hume assumes that there is some invisible standard which, though it is not technically a rule, we all know and share.  Augustine and Maimonides, operating as readers of religious texts, believe that the standard is not something innate, but something which must be revealed to us.  Augustine notes that we must interpret properly; Maimonides adds that interpretation can be complex… and Schleirmacher constructs an entire hermeneutic of interpretation. 

The Aristotelian line of thought sees reality as being available in the visible world.  Wordsworth and Emerson require the poet to interpret the world; Coleridge does too, but sees the poet’s interpretation as inspired by relationship with God—thus, revelation from the unseen world.  Sidney sees the poet as one who makes truth about the world appealing to an audience, interpreting it for them.  I have also included Wimsatt and Beardsley as ones who see truth as existing in the visible world; the text is an element of physical reality, and by claiming it as the ultimate authority, they make an Aristotelian, scientific move.

The right side of the diagram sees reality as subjective, always filtered through representations.  Those may be at the level of the individual mind (Kant) or subconscious (Freud, Lacan), or at the level of societal structures that shape how we see reality (such as Economics, ISAs, and Gender).  Nietzche includes both levels of representation: most individuals know meaning only as it appears to them via the social construction of language, but ultimately, meaning can arise only from an individual’s will to power.  Hegel sees meaning arising from the dialectic of ideas, and Eliot from the growth of new literature out of the tradition of the past.