The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back Into Literary Interpretation by Jean-François Vernay

The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back Into Literary Interpretation
by Jean-François Vernay

English translation by Carolyne Lee
Arabic translation by Fuad Abdul Muttaleb

Because of my connection with Fuad Abdul Muttaleb, I learned of Vernay’s book and am very happy to have obtained a copy. Vernay is concerned not only with declining interest in literature studies, but also with how the teaching of literature can be too alienating for students because it takes much of the emotion and joy out of reading: Scholars and teachers can seem more interested in forcing literature to fit into the too-restrictive boxes of various literary-critical schools of thought, so instead of being immersed in the experience of reading, literature is used as a screen upon which scholars and instructors project their predetermined literary-critical ideologies.

Chapter 3 begins with an abstract: “Acknowledging the influence of New Criticism on literary studies, Vernay notes that conceptualizing a literary text as an enclosed space does not take into account the different forces that have participated in the creation of the work.” Walter Ong noted something similar a number of decades ago when New Critics wanted to imagine a work of literature as a “well-wrought urn,” and he responded with his essay, “The Jinnee in the Well-Wrought Urn.”

Vernay notes Umberto Eco’s observation that texts are not objects on which we can project anything we wish, because texts have their own intentions.

Vernay is concerned about how literary criticism tries too often to be mechanical and to mimic the hard sciences in its quest for so-called objectivity. This relates not only to joyless reading, but in fact it also relates to the way early scholars of Shakespeare and the Bible strove to mimic the sciences: Bishop Charles Wordsworth published a best-selling book within less than a decade of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” and he tries very much to fit Shakespeare’s biblical allusions into theological categories with an approach that seems perhaps too influenced by science.

This is an important book for scholars and teachers, and also for deans of humanities concerned about declining enrollments.

Richard Strier, professor emeritus of the University of Chicago, published a book in 1995 called “Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts” in which many of Strier’s concerns overlap with those of Vernay: Strier is similarly concerned with how critics of various schools of thought are limited by those traditions, and those limitations make the critics neglect important aspects of literary texts. For those interested in the topic of Vernay’s book, I recommend Strier’s as well, which is more focused in some parts on Renaissance and Shakespeare texts (usually the main focus of my blog).

I would also note that in the English translation, Vernay replaces the Umberto Eco epigraph (that had been in the original French version of the book) with an epigraph by Siri Hustvedt, who was originally from my home town of Northfield, Minnesota.

A hearty thank you to Vernay for this excellent and thought-provoking book, and to Fuad Abdul Muttaleb for being the occasion of my learning about it.

IMAGE: A happy reader after the book arrived.
HAT: Shakespeare, manufacturer of fine fishing rods and reels (and also an Early Modern playwright).
 


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INDEX OF OPHELIA POSTS:
My 2023 series on Ophelia, and earlier Ophelia posts:

https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/10/index-of-ophelia-posts-2023-series-and.html
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
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My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.

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