theoryofliteratu00inwell

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Theory of Literature
plicated devices of irony, parody, word play, mimicry, and
burlesque. Like the fine arts and music, literature has as its prime
function the provision of experience.
In thus defining the function of literature, have we settled
anything? In a sense, the whole issue in aesthetics might be said
to lie between the view which asserts the existence of a separate,
irreducible "aesthetic experience" (an autonomous realm of art)
and that which makes the arts instrumental to science and society,
which denies such a tertium quid as the "aesthetic value," inter-
mediate between "knowledge" and "action," between science
and philosophy on the one side and ethics and politics on the
other. 3 Of course one need not deny that works of art have value
because one denies some ultimate, irreducible "aesthetic value":
one may merely "reduce," break up, distribute the values of the
work of art, or of art, between what he accredits as the "real,"
"ultimate" systems of value. He may, like some philosophers,
regard the arts as primitive and inferior forms of knowledge, or
he may, like some reformers, measure them in terms of their
supposed efficacy in inducing action. He may find the value of
the arts (particularly literature) precisely in their inclusiveness,
their unspecialized inclusiveness. For writers and critics, this is
a more grandiose claim to make than the claim of expertness at
the construction or interpretation of literary works of art. It
gives the "literary mind" a final "prophetic" authority, possession
of a distinctive "truth" wider and deeper than the truths of
science and philosophy. But these grandiose claims are by their
very grandiosity difficult to defend, except in that kind of game
at which each realm of value—whether religion, philosophy, eco-
nomics, or art—claims, in its own ideal form, to include all that
is best, or real, in the others. 4 To accept the status of literature as
one of the fine arts seems, to some of her defenders, like timidity
and treason. Literature has claimed to be both a superior form of
knowledge and a form also of ethical and social action: to withdraw
these claims, is it not to renounce obligation as well as
status? And doesn't each realm (like each expanding nation and
ambitious, self-confident individual) have to claim more than he
expects to be conceded by his neighbors and rivals?
Some literary apologists would, then, deny that literature can
properly be treated as a "fine art," in aesthetic terms. Others