Literary Theory Quotes

“The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Works of Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life and Other Essays

“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
― Sir Joshua Reynolds

“Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

“I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!”
― Roman Payne

“Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren’t satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting.”
― Roman Payne

“It doesn't matter whether a sequence of words is called a history or a story: that is, whether it is intended to follow a sequence of actual events or not. As far as its verbal shape is concerned, it will be equally mythical in either case. But we notice that any emphasis on shape or structure or pattern or form always throws a verbal narrative in the direction we call mythical rather than historical.(p.21)”
― Northrop Frye, Biblical and Classical Myths: The Mythological Framework of Western Culture

“When the critic has said everything in his power about a literary text, he has still said nothing; for the very existence of literature implies that it cannot be replaced by non-literature”
― TODOROV TZVETAN

“The genuine artist, Harris is saying, finds reality in a point of identity between subject and object, a point at which the created world and the world that is really there become the same thing. [p.211]”
― Northrop Frye, The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination

“The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.”
― Charles Simic, The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs

“The truth is not that we need the critics in order to enjoy the authors, but that we need the authors in order to enjoy the critics.”
― C.S. Lewis

“To the jaded eye, all vampires seem alike, but they are wonderful in their versatility. Some come to life in moonlight, others are killed by the sun, some pierce with their eyes, others with fangs, some are reactionary, others are rebels, but all are disturbingly close to the mortals they prey on. I can think of no other monsters who are so receptive. Vampires are neither inhuman nor nonhuman nor all-too-human, they are simply more alive than they should be.”
― Nina Auerbach

“A clever schoolboy's reaction to his reading is most naturally expressed by parody or imitation.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Imagination and the pure delight in stories drive out fear.”
― W.P. Ker

“History is what hurts, it is what refuses desire and sets inexorable limits to individual as well as collective praxis...”
― Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious

“What we need is not so much radical writers as we need radical readers!”
― Samuel R. Delany

“A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity--he is continually in for--and filling some other Body--The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute--the poet has none; no identity--he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures. If then he has no self, and if I am a Poet, where is the Wonder that I should say I would write no more?”
― John Keats

“To deprive the bourgeoisie not of its art but of its concept of art, this is the precondition of a revolutionary argument.”
― Pierre Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production

“The proper METHOD for studying poetry and good letters is the method of contemporary biologists, that is careful first-hand examination of the matter, and continual COMPARISON of one ‘slide’ or specimen with another.

No man is equipped for modern thinking until he has understood the anecdote of Agassiz and the fish:

A post-graduate student equipped with honours and diplomas went to Agassiz to receive the final and finishing touches.
The great man offered him a small fish and told him to describe it.
Post-Graduate Student: “That’s only a sun-fish”
Agassiz: “I know that. Write a description of it.”
After a few minutes the student returned with the description of the Ichthus Heliodiplodokus, or whatever term is used to conceal the common sunfish from vulgar knowledge, family of Heliichterinkus, etc., as found in textbooks of the subject.
Agassiz again told the student to describe the fish.
The student produced a four-page essay.
Agassiz then told him to look at the fish. At the end of the three weeks the fish was in an advanced state of decomposition, but the student knew something about it.

— ABC of Reading (1934; New Directions)”
― Ezra Pound

“If literary scholarship and criticism are regarded as activities ancillary to literature, then their sole function is to multiply, prolong, and safeguard experiences of good reading. A system which heads us off from abstraction by being centred on literature in operation is what we need.”
― C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism

“Narrative is a stratagem of mortality. It is a means, a way of living. It does not seek immortality; it does not seek to triumph over or escape from time (as lyric poetry does). It asserts, affirms, participates in directional time, time experienced, time as meaningful. If the human mind had a temporal spectrum, the nirvana of the physicist or the mystic would be way over in the ultraviolet, and at the opposite end, in the infrared, would be wuthering Heights.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places

“The literary text seems like "a fortified medieval town –foreigners and outsiders are repelled, or allowed in only after rigorous checks, but within all is bustling life; exchange, mutual interdependence and influence are the rule.”
― Jeremy Hawthorn, Unlocking the Text: Fundamental Issues in Literary Theory

“Like any other artist, the writer is a licensed critic, traditionally given the leeway to have a long and critical look at society, to satirise its conventions, to be subversive, to question and challenge, and, ultimately to construct new ways of looking at the world that society comes to value and eventually to use in shaping new conventions, new rules of thumb for behaviour.

— From a lecture "What Is Literary Value," given 15 October 1997

Ms. Hunter was the Gresham Professor of Rhetoric between 1997 and 2000”
― Lynette Hunter

“By virtue of the literary work over which they meet, the reader and the writer both begin to loosen their hold on selfhood.”
― Wendy Lesser, Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books

“It is very true that one cannot always go by the principles of Marxism in deciding whether to reject or to accept a work of art. A work of art should, in the first place, be judged by its own law, that is, by the law of art. But Marxism alone can explain why and how a given tendency in art has originated in a given period of history; in other words, who it was who made a demand for such an artistic form and not for another, and why.”
― Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution

“The Formalist school represents an abortive idealism applied to the question of art. The Formalists show a fast ripening religiousness. They are followers of Saint John. They believe that "In the beginning was the Word." But we believe that in the beginning was the deed. The word followed, as its phonetic shadow.”
― Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution

“Theory," recall, is the term for bad philosophy in literature departments.”
― Brian Leiter

“সুকুমার রায়কে 'হাসির কবিতা'র গণ্ডির মধ্যে ধরে রাখা যায় না। 'আবোল তাবোল', আমার প্রথম থেকেই মনে হয়েছে, বাংলা ভাষার রীতিমতো একটি কাব্যগ্রন্থ, যাতে হাসির ছুতো করে, ছবি ও কৌতুকের সাহায্যে ভুলিয়ে এনে, শিশুদের এবং বয়স্কদেরও কয়েক ফোঁটা বিশুদ্ধ কাব্যরস অন্তঃস্থ করে দেওয়া হলো। 'মেঘ-মুলুকে ঝাপসা রাতে রামধনুকের আবছায়াতে' বসে 'আলোয় ঢাকা অন্ধকারে'র গন্ধে ঘন্টাধ্বনি শুনতে পাবেন কি কবি ছাড়া অন্য কেউ? না কি অন্য কেউ 'পান্তভূতের জ্যান্ত ছানা'কে 'জোছনা হাওয়ার স্বপ্ন-ঘোড়া'য় চড়িয়ে দেবেন? তাঁকে কবি বলে না-মানতে হলে "কবি" কথাটায় অন্যায়ভাবে সীমানা টানতে হয়।

("বাংলা শিশুসাহিত্য" প্রবন্ধ থেকে)”
― Buddhadeva Bose, সাহিত্যচর্চা

“Language is a work of astonishing creativity. It is by far the most magnificent artefact humanity has ever come up with. It even surpasses the movies of Mel Gibson in this respect.”
― Terry Eagleton

“More writers fail from lack of character than from lack of intelligence. Technical solidity is not attained without at least some persistence. The chief cause of false writing is economic. Many writers need or want money. These writers could be cured by an application of banknotes. The next cause is the desire men have to tell what they don't know, or to pass off an emptiness for a fullness. They are discontented with what they have to say and want to make a pint of comprehension fill up a gallon of verbiage. An author having a very small amount of true contents can make it the basis of formal and durable mastery, provided he neither inflates nor falsifies [...] The plenum of letters is not bounded by primaeval exclusivity functioning against any kind of human being or talent, but only against false coiners, men who will not dip their metal in the acid of known or accessible fact.”
― Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading

“Å beskrive hvorfor vi liker det vi liker, er å beskrive hvorfor vi er som vi er - og hvorfor vår kultur er som den er.”
― Erik Bjerck Hagen, Litteraturkritikk