Learning to Read
by
Joseph Pearce
Originally published on the Ink Desk.
My
approach to reading literary texts is outlined in “How to Read
Shakespeare (or anyone Else)”, which is published as an appendix to
my book Through
Shakespeare’s Eyes.
In a nutshell, I insist that a literary work should be read, as far
as possible, through the eyes of the author. My reasoning is that the
author understands the work more authoritatively than do his readers.
This approach has recently come under vociferous attack by a
contributor to the excellent “Christian Shakespeare” website,
which was established and is edited by none other than our own, Kevin
O’Brien, who will be no stranger to visitors to the Ink Desk. The
negative critique of my authorialism, to give it a name, was written
by Andrew Lomas. Those wishing to read Lomas’ spirited attack on my
position can do so here: "How to Read Shakespeare? Or Anyone Else?"
I
would, however, like to address some of his arguments with a view to
correcting his misreading of my position of his misunderstanding of
it. Lomas’s words are reproduced in italics below; my replies are
unitalicized:
The
first thing to note about Pearce’s account, is that it is really
tough on classical literary studies. We know nothing from
extra-literary sources about Homer’s beliefs and the intentions
behind his works, for instance; indeed, the existence of “Homer the
man” has often been doubted. Authorial authority cannot possibly
fix the meaning of Homer’s works. The same holds true, to a greater
extent, for all the Greek tragedians, but also, moving forward, for
the authors of Beowulf,
Sir
Gawain and the Green
Knight,
all those “anon” ballads, etc., etc..
The
best way of answering this objection is to ask a simple question:
Would we know more about the Iliad and the Odyssey if Homer walked
into the room and told us all about the writing of it and his motives
for doing so? Would it enlighten us and enhance our understanding of
the work if Homer explained to us its meaning and the moral it sought
to convey? Few would dispute that we would benefit greatly from such
an eventuality, and the few who would dispute it should not be taken
seriously.
Since
Homer could tell us a great deal of great value about his work, were
he alive to do so, it proves rather than disproves the authorialist
position. Since, however, we do not know much about Homer, is the
authorialist approach practical with regard to reading the Iliad or
the Odyssey? The answer is an emphatic “yes”. We will know more
about the works of Homer if we try to get as close to Homer as
possible. Linguistically, this means reading the text in its original
language, thereby avoiding the interpretative shadow that falls
between the original work and any translation of it. Historically, we
should endeavour to know as much about the times and culture in which
Homer lived so that we can see his works, as far as possible, through
his eyes and not through the eyes of Englishmen or Americans living
in the twenty-first century.
In
this context, I was excited to learn recently of the discovery that
one of the most ancient manuscripts of the Iliad, written on animal
hide, has been analysed using infrared technology. It has revealed
marginalia written by someone teaching it to students in a culture
much closer to Homer’s own. This relative closeness to the author
will help us to understand the work more objectively and in a way
that is not prejudiced by the zeitgeist in which we find ourselves.
The
difficulties wrought by insufficient biographical information spread
even to the examples Pearce cites in support of his theory, and
indeed deepen here. As is well known, Wuthering
Heights
was first published under a pseudonym, “Ellis Bell”, in 1847; it
was only in 1850 that Emily Bronte claimed authorship. So, on
Pearce’s theory, early reviewers and readers could have
legitimately interpreted the novel as a paean to “unbridled carnal
passion”; it was only after the real author and her beliefs were
known that this interpretation became illegitimate. On Pearce’s
theory, interpretations can switch from valid to invalid without the
text they are about changing a jot.
Of
course interpretations can be shown to be valid or otherwise without
the text changing! In this case, a misunderstanding of the text,
based on the false belief that the author was a man of indeterminate
religion, would be corrected by the realization that it was in fact
written by a deeply pious Christian woman, a parson’s daughter.
Yet
the disturbing fluctuations are not limited to the legitimacy of
interpretations: they go to the very meaning of literary texts. Let
us now turn to Shakespeare, and his biography. A.L. Rowse’s William
Shakespeare
is a fair representation of the state of Shakespearean biography in
the middle of the twentieth century—as I think Pearce would
concede, since he states that the facts which establish his different
portrait are recent discoveries. For Rowse, Shakespeare was baptized,
married, and buried in the Church of England, and consequently was an
“orthodox, conforming member”(47) of this church. Interpreting
the plays in the 1950s, then, according to the biographical method,
we must have found a C.of E. meaning. Indeed, for three hundred and
fifty years Shakespeare’s plays, construed in the light of
available biographical knowledge, must have had non-Catholic
meanings. It is only with the recent discoveries which prove
Shakespeare a Catholic, as Pearce believes, that the plays take on a
Catholic meaning.
As
a point of fact, I would not concede the point about the evidence for
Shakespeare’s Catholicism being more recent than Rowse’s
biography. As I make clear in my book, the foundations of work in
showing Shakespeare’s Catholicism were laid by the pioneering
scholar, Richard Simpson, in the nineteenth century. This relatively
minor quibble aside, the main problem is not with my authorialism but
with Rowse’s illogical conclusions from the historical data.
Everyone was baptized, married and buried in Anglican churches in
Elizabethan England, even known and convicted recusant Catholics. As
such, Shakespeare’s baptism, marriage and burial in an Anglican
church prove absolutely nothing about his religious convictions.
Rowse’s failures as an historian have no bearing whatsoever on the
rectitude or otherwise of authorialism. In practical terms, his poor
history will lead to a poor reading of the works based on a false
presumption with regard to Shakespeare’s religious beliefs.
Is
this Catholic meaning, though, really any more final than all the
other meanings? A crucial piece of evidence in Pearce’s case for
Shakespeare the Catholic is the playwright’s purchase of
Blackfriars Gatehouse, which had been a centre for recusant Catholic
activities, years before. But what if further searches of the records
turn up that Shakespeare also owned a house known to be a base for
Puritan agitators? What if, in some dusty Tudor attic, a poem by
Shakespeare is found which eulogizes Good Queen Bess? The meaning of
the plays would again metamorphose, by Pearce’s theory.
Of
course they would! That’s my point! If it could be shown that
Shakespeare was a German Jew living in the nineteenth century it
would force us to reconsider our understanding of the plays. No
evidence has been found of Shakespeare purchasing a house owned by
Puritan agitators, nor has a sycophantic sonnet been discovered in
Shakespeare’s hand that praises Bloody Bess. I think that Mr. Lomas
would concede that an argument based upon non-existent evidence
proves nothing. The evidence shows that Shakespeare was a believing
Catholic in very anti-Catholic times. This evidence must be seen as
crucial to an understanding of Shakespeare’s plays.
Still
for Pearce this is not yet the worst. There is an even more
fundamental objection to Pearcean interpretative theory, and it again
shows up most spectacularly with Shakespeare. But I want to begin by
identifying the issue in the most “water-tight” of Pearce’s
exemplars. J.R.R. Tolkien once affirmed that The
Lord of the Rings
is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”: Pearce
concludes that Lord
of the Rings
is
a fundamentally Catholic work. Surely this is just simple
commonsense? I recall, however, reading a non-Catholic critic who
noted that the letter in which Tolkien made this avowal was written
to a Catholic priest, Father Murray, S.J., and that in the letter
Tolkien seems rather eager to please the priest, and perhaps to
reassure him about the orthodoxy of the magnum
opus.
In hundreds of other letters to non-clerics, rather less stress is
placed on religious significance. The conclusion was drawn that the
letter to Father Murray is less central and decisive than Pearce
would have it.
This
is really clutching at straws. Tolkien states explicitly, in such a
way that no ambiguity is possible with regard to its interpretation,
that The
Lord of the Rings
“is, of course, a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”.
Note the word “of course”. And yet Mr. Lomas suggests that we can
ignore Tolkien’s explicit, unambiguous assertion or insistence that
the work is Catholic merely because he happens to be writing to a
priest. In hundreds of other letters to non-clerics he does not
discuss the Catholic core of the work because this is not the topic
under discussion. Whenever the topic is discussed, he has no
hesitation in making the same point abundantly clear. On another
occasion, in writing to a non-cleric, he states equally explicitly
that the fact that he was a Christian and in fact a Catholic was the
most important factor on the “scale of significance” relating to
his relationship as author to his work.
It
is interesting to note that Mr. Lomas seems to be conceding that
Tolkien’s making of such a statement would indeed have been
significant to our understanding of the work if he had said it to
anyone except a priest. I wonder whether Mr. Lomas doth protest too
loudly and that he is, in fact, a secret authorialist!
Drawing
out the implications of Pearce’s theory, we arrive at a situation
just the same as that produced by the theories of Roland Barthes and
Jacques Derrida. Yes, it pains me to say it, but the truth is
unavoidable: beneath his conservative rhetoric, Joseph Pearce is just
another doyen of postmodernity.
I
have no reply to make to such arrant nonsense. Indeed it renders me
speechless. It did, however, make me chuckle!
This
alternative theory of interpretation may be formulated by considering
literary criticism as a branch of scientific, experimental reasoning.
The critic’s interpretation is his hypothesis, the text constitutes
the factual matter he is attempting to explain. If in a critical
“experiment”, a confrontation of interpretation and text,
it is found that the interpretation does not account for elements of
the text, or accounts for them inadequately, the interpretation
must be modified, or abandoned. The validity of an interpretation is
dependent, wholly objectively, on the text: it must conform to the
text, as the ultimate authority.
Ignorance
of the theology, philosophy and historical culture which is
inevitably the informing principle of the work will invariably lead
to woeful misinterpretation. A work is a product of the personhood of
an individual author, the pouring forth of his deepest held beliefs
and assumptions in relation to the culture in which he finds himself.
As such, theological, philosophical and historical ignorance, and
ignorance of the author’s own theological and philosophical
assumptions must invariably lead to absurd misunderstandings about
the meaning of the text. There is a reason that Tolkien has the Ring
destroyed on March 25, the date of both the Annunciation and the
Crucifixion. If one does not know the significance of the date, or
the theological connection between the Annunciation and the
Crucifixion, or that Tolkien, as a Catholic, knew the significance,
one will miss the very key that unlocks the deepest meaning of his
masterpiece. If one did not know or suspect that Shakespeare was a
Catholic one might not notice the repeated references in his plays to
the poetry of the Jesuit martyr, St. Robert Southwell, and its
significance to the deepest meanings of Shakespeare’s plays. Et
cetera.
In
Wuthering
Heights
highly charged Romantic passion is front and centre, while the
“deeply held Christian faith” of Emily Bronte is not
conspicuously present. A critic attempting to demonstrate an
underlying Christian structure to the novel has to work against the
apparent meaning.
On
the contrary, knowing of Bronte’s “deeply held Christian faith”
will cause us to expect its presence in the work and will thereby
help us to discover it. Any “apparent meaning” that contradicts
the deepest held beliefs of the author is ipso facto an incorrect
reading.
Then
with the battle over Shakespeare’s proto or anti secularism,
consider the example of King
Lear.
This play clearly contains Christian themes, such as Lear learning
compassion through suffering. But it also contains elements that are
far from obviously Christian—the murder of the innocent Cordelia,
Lear’s agonized death—elements which even the great Doctor
Johnson considered unChristian—Doctor Johnson who was neither a
postmodernist, a secularist, nor a fool.
One
need look no further than the Gospel to find the murder of the
innocents. Is the Gospel, therefore, “unchristian”? The presence
of sin in a work does not make it un-Christian - as long as the sin
as seen as being sinful and its innocent victims are seen as being
innocent. In this sense, Lear is a profoundly Christian play. And as
for Lear’s “agonized death”, his last words indicate that he is
deliriously happy, having seen a vision of the resurrected Cordelia.
This crucial fact is all too easily missed if we do not see it
through Shakespeare’s Catholic eyes. As for Dr. Johnson, he was not
a good literary critic, for all his other strengths.
I
wish Mr. Lomas well. I also wish that he would learn to read through
the eyes of those who see more clearly than he. I refer not so much
to myself as to the authors of the works that his faulty philosophy
has caused him to read incorrectly.
