Author: Patrick C. Hogan

Blog for October 2023: Love Stories and Historical Universals


Posted on October 9, 2023

LITERARY UNIVERSALS WEBLOG: A series of informal observations and conjectures aimed at fostering more reflection on and discussion about cross-cultural patterns in literature.

Patrick Colm Hogan, University of Connecticut

Nicolas Baumard (Centre nationale de la recherche scientifique, Paris) and his collaborators designed and followed out a series of rigorous empirical studies treating “The cultural evolution of love in literary history.” The questions addressed in this study are, first, has romantic love varied in its social importance and, second, if so, what explains this fluctuation. A year and a half ago, they published their findings in an illuminating article, which I have just had the great pleasure of reading.

From the preceding summary, this research may appear irrelevant to a website on literary universals, as it does not initially seem to treat either literature or universals. However, the research focuses on the presence and importance of romantic love in literary fiction. This serves as a gauge for estimating the importance of romantic love in the societies where the literary works were written. Moreover, in treating literary romantic love, Baumard et al. in effect consider romantic tragi-comedy, though they do not generally phrase their findings in narratological terms.

As to universals, it might seem that a treatment of a history of changes would be the opposite of a study of universals. But, first, one presumption of the research is that romantic narratives are to be found in a range of genetically distinct traditions. Specifically, the focus of the study is on the fact that the prominence of the romantic genre varies, not only in Europe, but in China, Japan, India, and the Middle East. To vary, it must of course be present, part of the storytelling repertoire in all those traditions. In addition, their explanation for this variation is that romantic love increases in literary prominence as a given society makes advances in economic development. In The Mind and Its Stories (28-29), I drew on the linguistic study of universals to isolate different types of universal. These include historical universals. Historical universals are implicational or typological universals whose outcomes vary in systematic, predictable ways, depending on some features of their historical conditions (such as the prominence of mercantile capitalism). The research program of Baumard and colleagues is an exemplary instance of isolating and explaining an historical universal. That is particularly important as, among humanists, historical universals are hardly even acknowledged as a possible category.

Baumard et al.’s research shows us what could be gained by systematic, interdisciplinary work on literary universals, undertaken collectively. Conversely, it indicates some of what is lost when that cooperative work is absent (as it is, due primarily to the strange prejudices against seeking cross-cultural patterns, prejudices that pervade literary study today). In some cases, I believe Baumard and colleagues would have benefited from this interaction. For example, in characterizing romantic works, Baumard et al. contrast romantic love with sexual desire. In a sense, this is obvious. But it is also somewhat misleading. Sexual desire is one of the emotion systems that is recruited in the development of romantic love (see What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion, 33-37) and is, as such, part of romantic stories. The other component emotion systems are attachment (rightly emphasized by Baumard and colleagues) and what might be called “reward dependency” (a key factor in, for example, the suicidal despair of some separated lovers, a motif stressed by Baumard and colleagues). It is also significant that there is a separate, less frequent genre—the seduction story—which focuses on sexual desire without attachment. More generally, it seems that Baumard et al.’s research program might have benefited from the affective narratological analysis of how emotion systems generate cross-cultural story patterns.

Narratological work would have benefited equally from such interaction. For example, Baumard and his colleagues point to idealization of the beloved and the “long-term commitment” of the lovers. I analyzed these features solely in terms of intensifying the emotional effect of romantic works. When the lovers live “happily ever after,” their happy ending is particularly happy. This is true not only for the lovers, but for any reader who has a parallel interpersonal stance—which is to say, an empathic attitude–toward them. (This parallel stance is usually the result of categorizing the lovers as part of a one’s in-group.) Baumard and colleagues add to this the observation that evolutionary purposes are served by long-term parenting commitments. More remarkably, they find that “a higher importance of love in literary narratives is always associated with more positive attitudes towards children in the society” (514), a connection that would probably never even have occurred to most narratologists.

Areal distinctness is another topic which has not so far benefited from the collaboration of research scientists and humanists studying literary universals. In linguistics, there are two standard criteria for identifying a shared property as evidence of a universal. Specifically, the traditions across which the property recurs must be distinct in origin (genetic distinctness) and not have influenced one another due to interaction (areal distinctness). However, the issue is complicated by the fact that it is so easy for one literary tradition to influence another. I have therefore argued that one should of course seek genuinely areally distinct traditions, but that only works from culturally hegemonic and culturally subordinated traditions should be excluded due to areal contamination. This applies most clearly to modern colonial relations (e.g., postcolonial African novels). There are also some differences in how readily specific literary techniques may be transmitted (see “Areal Distinctness”). Baumard and colleagues take a different, but complementary approach. They adopt a method for empirically estimating the effects of influence across traditions. This provides them with data to argue that, for example, “while Eurasian societies were in contact with each other, cultural diffusion played a minor role in explaining the concomitant rise of love” (507).

The two approaches also complement one another on the issue of just what they count as data. Baumard et al. exclude all work that is not fictional narrative. This seems to be overly restrictive. Following Hayden White and others, we might expect to find considerable value in incorporating work on historical and other types of narrative. In addition, lyric poetry often concerns key moments in stories, such as the separation of lovers (see The Mind and Its Stories), making it potentially relevant as well. At the same time, Baumard et al. usefully broaden the scope of research by noting that patterns may appear in retellings of a story. In connection with this, they find that “The study of literary transmission chains shows that the same story line becomes more romantic when economic development increases” (507).

It seems clear that, in the study of literary universals, we in the humanities have a great deal to gain from the empirical orientation of researchers such as Baumard and colleagues. I believe that they have something to gain from our literary expertise and philosophical reflections and hypotheses as well. I will conclude this short discussion by noting one further way in which greater interaction might serve both groups. It concerns the possible political analysis of cross-cultural genres, including romantic stories, and how such analysis might contribute to understanding both the enduring and variable appearance of specific story genres, such as stories of romantic love.

Literary critics these days are insistently political. Often, I believe, this is a problem, especially when literary critics extend their righteous indignation to politically and ethically neutral topics or even get things backwards. (Cases of the second sort occur when they denounce the study of universals as racist and celebrate difference, despite the fact that racist claims are never based on claims that, say, blacks and whites share the same capacities, needs, etc., but always presuppose precisely difference.) Even so, the concern with politics does sometimes lead humanists to potentially worthwhile observations. Specifically, they may be more sensitive, in any given case, to the possible relevance of socio-economic class, exploitation, dominant ideology, and related topics (drawn largely from Marxist analysis).

Again, Baumard and colleagues link the predominance of romantic love stories with economic growth, and they make a compelling case for seeing the former as developing out of the latter. But that connection does not yet explain the change in narrative frequency. We still need some way of getting from economic growth to the predominance of romantic stories. One possibility is that economic growth leads to a change in readership, which in turn leads to the increase in love stories. But why might that be? Baumard et al. consider two possible readership-based accounts. The first is that a market for love stories is created by an increase in female readers. They do not find evidence for this explanation, though they do not believe the connection to be impossible either. The second readership-based possibility is that the market is transformed by male readers who are “less sophisticated” (517), and therefor opt to read love stories. Baumard and colleagues (rightly) argue that love stories are not in fact less sophisticated than other story genres. Beyond these two possibilities, the most obvious ways of explaining a change in audience would include, for example, the increased availability of stories in the vernacular, a broadening of education in learned languages, or the greater affordability of books. I do not know if any of these factors fit the periods that saw an increase in love stories. But, even if they do fit, they do not in themselves explain the change in proportions of different story genres. We still require some feature of the new readers that turns them toward tales of romance.

Here, we might briefly consider a different sort of possible explanation. (I am not actually supporting this explanation, but articulating a way of thinking that may suggest fruitful lines of inquiry.) The research summarized in The Mind and Its Stories and Affective Narratology indicates that there are three predominant types of story-structure that recur with particular frequency across traditions. These are romantic, heroic, and sacrificial. (I will leave aside the sacrificial genre here, as well as the less commonly occurring genres.) These genres are, of course, defined by story elements (in prototypical configurations, rather than having necessary and sufficient conditions). But they tend to imply certain values as well, some of which could reasonably be seen as part of an ideology supporting one or another socio-economic class or class fraction. I do not mean that they are class-based in a strict, Marxist sense. The ideological implications of all the story genres are more context-sensitive and malleable than that might imply. But the ideological resonances are of the same general sort. One way of considering changes in the frequency and centrality of any story genre, then, might appeal to some combination of two factors—first, changes in the enduring dominance of one or another class (or at least changes in class domination of the production and dissemination of stories) and, second, changes in circumstances that impact the ways in which a dominant class or class fraction exercises that domination.

More exactly, the heroic genre tends to support a strict ruling hierarchy within a society and a sharp division between the in-group society and an enemy out-group (most intensively represented in war). Ethically, it stresses such virtues as physical bravery and loyalty to leaders and comrades. It should be clear this configuration of values greatly benefits the dominant social classes. Perhaps this ideology initially benefits a feudal aristocracy, but the feelings of group pride, depersonalization (seeing oneself primarily as part of a group), etc., are not confined to feudalism; they are readily transferred to a variety of economic and political systems. Despite this bias toward a dominant class, this genre–with its formation of in- and out-groups, its celebration of in-group achievements, and so on–is well-suited to human psychology, including the psychology of those who are not in the elite class.

The romantic genre, in contrast, commonly favors individual choice against social authority, sometimes generally and sometimes by carving out an area of privacy that is exempted from the usual social rules. In keeping with our cognitive tendency to displace category-based generalizations with individuating judgments, it largely repudiates identity categories, favoring individual, affiliative bonds instead. A traditional Marxist interpretation would link these points with a bourgeois ideology, serving the interests of a mercantile or, later, industrial capitalist class. However, I am inclined to see the genre differently. I believe the heroic plot serves “ruling class” interests, whether feudal or capitalist, but romantic narratives do not typically embody any particular class ideology. Rather than requiring some sort of commitment to a market system for marriage, sympathizing with a person’s individual preference in attachment relations seems likely to arise spontaneously. When faced with individual attachment bonds, it is, rather, indifference or antipathy that has to be created, if the work is to have some sort of ideological bias.

More exactly, both heroic narratives and romantic narratives appeal to a wide range of people, for they fit our psychology (as Baumard and colleagues put it [515]). However, they do not do so equally. Our engagement with a literary work seems likely to vary with the intensity of our emotional response to the goals involved. Moreover, it seems likely that the majority of people would have a strong, spontaneous emotional commitment to union with an attachment figure. In contrast, I would imagine that, among those without relevant experiences, emotional engagement with battle would not be as strong. Finally, one’s degree of engagement with a work seems likely to vary with one’s sense that the implied norms of the work serve or contradict one’s self-interest; this would almost certainly be more likely to occur with heroic than with romantic stories. Given these factors, one would expect romantic storytelling to increase with almost any expansion of readership. In that way, it is a sort of default, a result that may need less further interpretation than we initially expected.

Again, I am not necessarily committed to the as an explanation of Baumard et al.’s findings. Though I certainly do believe that there is some truth to this argument, I sketch it here to suggest some possible paths toward such an explanation, and as a further illustration of how a more broadly integrated research program in literary universals may benefit all those involved, in this case by first of all challenging standard ways of thinking about the topic. In any event, the great value of Baumard et al.’s research findings and explanation of those findings is clear. My hope is that humanists will recognize this value, and that Baumard and colleagues will continue with their illuminating program of research.

WORKS CITED

Baumard, Nicolas, Elise Huillery, Alexandre Hyafil, and Lou Safra. “The cultural evolution of love in literary history.” Nature Human Behaviour 6 (April 2022): 506-522.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.

Blog for August 2023: Arabic Poetics and Japanese Theatre


Posted on July 25, 2023

LITERARY UNIVERSALS WEBLOG: A series of informal observations and conjectures aimed at fostering more reflection on and discussion about cross-cultural patterns in literature.

Patrick Colm Hogan, University of Connecticut

I began thinking about the possibility of a weblog for the Literary Universals Project as I was reading two excellent books in the past couple of weeks. The first is Lara Harb’s Arabic Poetics, a painstaking, scholarly examination of what the most important Medieval Arabic theorists viewed as producing aesthetic pleasure in response to a literary work. There are at least two ways in which one could relate a study of this sort to universals. The first does not consider the validity of the theories, but simply considers the degree to which closely comparable theories have arisen across (relatively) independent traditions. A difficulty arises here with regard to the requirement for areal distinctness in the study of universals. Specifically, the Arabic theorists were greatly influenced by Aristotle, and thus were not fully independent of—which is to say, not strictly areally distinct from—the European tradition. On the other hand, this influence is limited by the fact that their interpretation of Aristotle was often so different from that found in the west (or, as Vito Evola understandably prefers, as the west’s interpretation of Aristotle was often so different from that found among Arabic commentators). For example, the Medieval Arabic theorists lacked familiarity with tragedy, in some cases assimilating it to panegyric (see Harb 79-80). In any case, the second way that the Arabic theories may be connected with universals does address truth value. Specifically, it considers the degree to which we might reasonably judge these theories to be true, not only of the Arabic tradition, but of a range of traditions.

Harb herself comments briefly on the former. Specifically, she asserts early on that the Arabic theorists’ isolation of (what she calls) “wonder” gives “an aesthetic that is altogether different from the European conceptions of beauty and the sublime” (4). But at the end she modifies this claim, asserting connections with “the eighteenth-century Swiss thinker Johann Jakob Breitinger” (263), as well as the Russian Formalists, and the “French . . . semiotic approach” of Michael Riffaterre (264). She does not address the question of the broader validity of the theories.

Harb begins her book with a discussion of “old” vs. “new” styles in poetry. She relates this in part to “a shift from a tribal to a patron-based society” (25), the spread of literacy, and—what is “perhaps most important” (25)–the accumulation of “an established literary heritage within (and against) which . . . [new] poets composed their own poetry”(26). Admittedly, her construal of this situation has probably been influenced by ideas about the “querelle des anciens et des modernes.” Even so, it is very likely that the development of canons does in fact saddle new poets with “the burden of the past,” as Walter Jackson Bate has discussed. The experience of and response to such a burden, along with the related division between a set of established principles and a set of innovations, constitute likely candidates for at least typological universals (perhaps occurring only in literate cultures with a mercantile economy). On the other hand, the pattern here could be more general as well (e.g., the accumulation of oral poetry may be sufficient to produce a “burden of the past”). Moreover, it is unsurprising—but nonetheless significant—that this ancient-versus-modern opposition would involve such stylistic characterizations as “straightforward and natural” versus “obscure” and “contrived” or “affected” (27). These represent different levels of putative stylization that we find in a range of traditions. One end of the spectrum may be criticized as prosaic or praised as “natural”; the other may be dismissed as mannered or celebrated as “experimental.” (On the degrees of stylization, see my Style in Narrative, 39-41.)

Harb goes on to discuss the theories that developed out of the new poetry. These included a number of important concepts with resonances in theories found in other traditions (though in some cases this is probably due to influence). For example, a number of the Arabic theorists emphasize the crucial role played by takhyīl(roughly, imagination). Though a somewhat vague notion, this does bring to mind the concept of simulation in cognitive science, a concept that is crucial for cognitive accounts of creativity. The connection is strengthened by the close link between takhyīl and emotion (see 89; on the relation between simulation and emotion, see Hogan, Literature and Emotion, 43-44). On the other hand, the connection remains rather general, and at such a general level a link between imagination and literature may be uninformative.

More significant is the specific account of just how wonder, thus (by Harb’s account) aesthetic pleasure, is produced. Wonder is, she tells us, “a cognitive experience” through which “an emotional reaction [is] triggered by the strange and inexplicable” or “unexpected” (8). As it happens, this is very close to one aspect of the account of beauty developed in Beauty and Sublimity. In that book, I argue that, along with several other contributing factors, a recurrent element in aesthetic experience is the recognition of an unanticipated pattern. (A number of researchers have noted something along these lines; see, for example, Vuust and Kringelback on music. See also Fabb on the place of surprise in aesthetic response going beyond the experience of beauty.) The Arabic theorists’ view may seem to diverge from this account insofar as the literary work is “inexplicable,” whereas in my account the isolation of a new (explanatory) pattern is crucial. But Harb changes “inexplicable” on next page, writing “While ignorance might be the impetus for wonder initially, it is the eventual discovery of the meaning and its clarification” that is crucial; again, “that is highly cognitive in nature” (9). If correct (as I of course believe it is), this account should be widely applicable across unrelated traditions.

The second book that provoked this blog is the very different, but also outstanding–A History of Japanese Theatre, edited by Jonah Salz. In the past, I have drawn on Japanese dramatic works in isolating cross-cultural story prototypes, so I will set that topic aside. However, there are other points of connection that suggest possible universals. For example, when reading Terauchi Naoko’s “Ancient and Early Medieval Performing Arts,” I was reminded of the jo-ha-kyū (slow, moderate, quick) division (7; see also Laurence Kominz, “Premodern Playwriting Practices,” 367). That division serves to organize the story at several levels. For one thing, it points toward possible, cross-cultural patterns in the pacing of events. It seems likely that many traditions will tend to cluster rapidly changing, emotionally significant events at the conclusion of a story. This is not surprising, especially if there is a change in the valence of the predominant emotions, most obviously a decline into tragedy or a rise into comedy. The different resolving emotions of the tragic or comic conclusion would be intensified by rapid clustering.

More generally, the jo-ha-kyū division suggests that, in different cultures, people view event structure as fundamentally a matter of a beginning, middle, and end. This is, I suspect, a structure derived from goal pursuit, where the beginning is the establishment of the goal; the end is its achievement or definitive loss; and the middle is the pursuit proper. The causal sequences of, say, physics do not operate in this way, with this tripartite division. If they appear to do so, that is because we have imposed that structure on them.

Salz’s collection points us not only toward possible, cross-cultural patterns in events, but also in characters: Kyogen (the long-standing form of comic theater in Japan) has the following character types: “friendly gods, arrogant but stupid lords, lazy but clever servants, shrewish wives, browbeaten husbands, awkward bridegrooms, greedy priests, [and] fake . . . wizards” (Jonah Salz, “Kyogen: Classical Comedy,” 69). A monotheistic culture typically won’t have friendly gods, and I’m not sure how widespread the category is in polytheistic traditions. Though I have no doubt that all societies have their share of awkward bridegrooms in reality, such characters do not seem to be particularly salient, at least not in the European tradition. Greedy priests are quite visible in South Asian drama, specifically in the form of the vidūṣaka, a clownish Brahmin (member of the priestly caste), and in some modern, progressive, Indian literature. These two instances of traditions with greedy priests (Japan and India) would need to be supplemented if we were to consider this as a possible universal (even of the statistical variety). It does seem likely that characters of this sort appear in a range of traditions. One difficulty, however, lies in the ambiguity of “greedy.” The vidūṣaka is greedy in the sense that he wishes to be supported by a patron, who will treat him to good meals, but not in the sense that he tries to swindle people out of their money. Thus, the vidūṣaka may also be classed as a parasite character, of the sort discussed by Frye (166, 168, 175). On the other hand, this character is also often honest and loyal, thus sympathetic. Other cases of the greedy priest are not so innocuous and likeable. These other cases would include, for example, Brahmins in a modern work who demand that peasants pay substantial fees to have the priests perform socially necessary rituals. Moreover, charlatans who deceive people with their supposed supernatural powers (“fake . . . wizards”) may be greedy priests as well. Thus, the list of types here is not entirely transparent. There is overlap between categories and inconsistency within categories. This makes it somewhat difficult to estimate their recurrence across traditions or, sometimes, even to think of compelling examples.

The remaining types, however, are more straightforward, and clearly present in at least some unrelated traditions. The “arrogant but stupid lords” are a variant of the New Comedy senex iratus, the irascible old man, with some element of the miles gloriosus or braggart soldier as well. Combining these two is not a problem, because both New Comedy types are instances of Frye’s alazon, the character who overestimates himself or herself (39, 172). Alazon characters tend to be paired with eiron characters, who represent themselves as less than they are and, in part as a result of this misleading self-presentation, win out over the alazons. A standard case of the eiron from New Comedy is the wily servant (see Frye 73), thus the “clever servant” of Japanese tradition. Both alazon and eiron character types extend far beyond Greek and Roman New Comedy and Japanese Kyogen.

But this leaves us with the question of why these character types recur. It presumably has something to do with the way human social structures develop. Specifically, complex social relations seem to produce social hierarchies when there is durable, excess wealth (i.e., wealth that is not consumed to satisfy communal needs and that does not rot or otherwise lose its value). In this context, social hierarchies might develop through, for example, accidental events giving some people small advantages, which may then accumulate, eventually producing relatively stable social classes. Such a class hierarchy is not the result of some intellectual or other superiority of the dominant individuals. Moreover, dominated individuals are likely to recognize this and to resent it, even as dominant ideologies are likely to present the hierarchy as (in some sense) meritocratic or as established by God. In this social context, the foolish master and the wily servant are obvious character possibilities, appealing primarily to individuals from dominated groups. Moreover, the subordinated and demeaned groups often included playwrights and other theater people (see Salz 73 on the social status of actors; similar points could be made about other nations).

These points have consequences for recurring themes in literature as well. Thus, Salz points out that Kyogen plays “mocked traditionally revered figures” (77). Of course, that mockery was likely to please some viewers while displeasing others. Indeed, while plays often develop a sort of counter-ideology (mocking those who are commonly treated with reverence), dominant social groups frequently seek to recruit theatre to support standard hierarchies. For example, Julie Iezzi explains in “Kabuki: Superheroes and Femmes Fatales” that, in 1872, the “Ministry of Religious Affairs” “charged the theatre with educating . . . the populace” so as to “honor the Confucian ideal” (128). There are of course many cases of governments seeking to censor or otherwise suppress literary developments of anti-hierarchical themes. This sort of conflict is probably at the root of another cross-cultural literary practice—indirect representation. In “Bunraku Puppet Theatre,” Gotō Shisuo points out that many plays “set in the past” actually “comment covertly on contemporary political developments” (157, trans. Alan Cummings) or, as Andrew Gerstle states, many “history plays” serves “as a vehicle to comment on or criticize contemporary society” (“Chikamatsu Monzaemon: Puppet Playwright,”166-167). It should be obvious why more direct criticisms of dominant hierarchies might be imprudent.

The “shrewish wives” and “browbeaten husbands” of the Kyogen list also recur in some unrelated traditions. This is in part because there are such figures in life. But there are also unkind husbands and intimidated wives. The question then arises as to why we find the former types recurring in comedies, but not (it seems) the latter. The most obvious response is that, in this regard, (male-dominated) literature is simply guided by patriarchal ideology or even misogyny. This is certainly often the case. But it is important to stress that the typology here is for comedy. It seems likely that part of reason for the male/female asymmetry here derives from many people taking male unkindness to have more serious consequences than female unkindness. In other words, we may find a hectoring wife and a hen-pecked husband funny, but be more worried than amused by a bullying husband and intimidated wife.

There are several other points in A History of Japanese Theatre that recall features found in other traditions, ranging from the mere existence of puppet theater, to the organization of Japanese musical theater (“essentially the same structure employed by modern American musical plays” [Kominz 372]), to the association of “felicitous laughter” with “childish antics” (Salz 77; cf. chapter five of Hogan, What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion). But I cannot go through every relevant point in this sizable (592-page) book. I will conclude by remarking briefly on three features that recur in at least Japanese and American contexts and that I found particularly surprising. The first is the “star system” (Kominz 369, referring to Kabuki). It may at first seem counterintuitive that American film in the 20th Century and Japanese Kabuki in the 17th Century should both stress the appeal of particular actors. But, on reflection, it may actually be what one should have expected. There is reason to believe that we in effect respond emotionally to fiction as if it were real, though not (usually) urgent or proximate (see my “Paradoxes of Literary Emotion”). Actors are the part of this emotive “reality” that we see and hear. Although we know that the actors are not the characters, there is still some degree to which we are likely to connect the face we see and the voice we hear with our emotional response to the characters. This is consistent with the two other points that I also found initially surprising. First, popular Kabuki plays generated a market in textual “adaptations” (Kominz 371). In effect a version of “novelizations,” these texts presupposed the existence of a storyworld underwriting the play, a storyworld that could, in turn, be represented in an adaptation. This presupposition is not undermined by the fact that, unlike the case of non-fiction, there is no such underlying reality, and we even know that. Finally, the sale of adaptations was itself related to a range of “commercial publications for fan readership” beginning in the 17th Century (William Lee, “Premodern Practitioner Principles: Zeami to Chikamatsu,” 451). Personally, I have tended to think of fandom largely in relation to social media. But the psychological sources of fandom are clearly much more general.

The practices outlined in the preceding paragraphs call out for further study, prominently the isolation of related developments in other literary traditions. For the most part, the patterns I have been commenting on do not constitute absolute or near-absolute universals. If valid, they are, for the most part, implicational or typological, dependent on a particular type of socio-economic or other development. But that does not make them any less important or informative. Indeed, while literary universals are understudied in general, implicational and typological universals seem to be particularly ignored—especially those limited by socio-economic conditions. Perhaps this is due to the unfortunate tendency of humanists to see historical change and cross-cultural recurrence as mutually exclusive. However, understanding historical particulars—like understanding cultural particulars—not only uncovers differences, but reveals recurring patterns as well. It is just that we will fail to notice the latter (recurring patterns) when we have made up our minds beforehand that only the former (differences) are possible.

See also “Reason and Aesthetic Pleasure”

Works Cited

Bate, Walter Jackson. The Burden of the Past and the English Poet. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991.

Fabb, Nigel. A Theory of Thrills, Sublime and Epiphany in Literature. London: Anthem P, 2022.

Harb, Lara. Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. Beauty and Sublimity: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Literature and the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. Literature and Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2018.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. “Paradoxes of Literary Emotion: Simulation and The Zhào Orphan.” In The Routledge Companion to Literature and Emotion. Ed., Patrick Colm Hogan, Bradley J. Irish, and Lalita Pandit Hogan. New York: Routledge, 2022, 134-143.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. Style in Narrative: Aspects of an Affective-Cognitive Stylistics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2021.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011.

Salz, Jonah, ed. A History of Japanese Theatre. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2016.

Vuust, Peter and Morten Kringelbach. “The Pleasure of Music.” In Pleasures of the Brain. Ed. Morten Kringelbach and Kent Berridge. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010, 255–269.

Literature and Surprise


Posted on July 25, 2023

Nigel Fabb, University of Strathclyde

Theory of Surprise

In this article, I look at ways in which literary texts can cause surprise.  I suggest that there are specific devices which can produce surprise, and also that there are general aspects of literary texts which are continuously mildly surprising.  Surprise can in some cases result in various kinds of arousal, and can have epistemic effects, including the feeling of coming to know something not just new but also profound and perhaps ineffable.  The psychology of surprise is probably a human universal.  The characteristics of literary texts which can produce surprise are also found in many different literatures.

Surprise is a person’s response to a perception which deviates significantly from their expectations, where the perception can be of something external or internal (e.g., a new thought in this sense is counted as a ‘perception’).  There are different psychological theories of surprise, and here I use the approach particularly associated with Reisenzein, Meyer and Schützwohl, who say that ‘surprise is elicited by events that deviate from a schema’.  In this approach, much of what we know is in the form of generalized knowledge, formulated as schemata, which we bring to our perceptions in order to shape them, and to which we match the actual objects, events, and sequences of events which we perceive.  Schemata can also be thought of as types, to which we match these perceived tokens. There has to be some built-in tolerance for variation, such that the tokens do not exactly match the types, and tokenings of the same types are not identical. No cat is the perfect instantiation of a cat and no two cats are identical (in principle, but I return to this).  So, surprise is elicited by events (and sequences of events, and objects) which significantly deviate from a schema. 

 

The Consequences of Surprise and Their Relevance to Aesthetic Experience

Surprise is a response to something unexpected, and what is unexpected can be dangerous, and so surprise can potentially trigger one of the fight, flight or freeze responses.  David Huron in his study of responses to music in Sweet Anticipationhas explored how these responses, which we share with other animals, are adapted in humans, such that the initial arousal response is managed cortically to moderate its effect, in aesthetic experience. Wassiliwizky and colleagues have also explored similar thrill-generating processes in poetry, as in Housman’s account of how he knows poetry by the arousals in his body, including the hair standing up on his chin, so that poetry can hinder shaving.  Thus, surprise in front of an artwork or work of literature can produce arousals such as chills (goosebumps, frisson etc.), and (based on the work of Efran and Spangler) we can say that tears – another arousal response to aesthetic objects – can be understood in terms of surprise.  (Note that these arousals can arise in other ways, and many surprises do not produce the arousals at all.)  This all suggests that chills and tears in response to literature might be a response to something surprising in the text.  There are other contributing factors, for example empathy can also produce an arousal response which might be combined with a surprise to enhance the response.

Surprise can also produce an epistemic experience.  This is because surprise is a response to something we perceive but that we do not already know.  So, a surprise can always lead to learning, when we change what we know, to fit the new perceptions.  Perhaps in some special cases, the learning-from-surprise can feel as though we have learned something very profound.  This could be what happens in the experience of the sublime, or of the various types of epiphany: they are basically surprises where the epistemic feeling, the feeling of coming to know something new, is enlarged.  In some cases, something profoundly new has in fact been learned; in other cases, it may feel as though this has happened, but it is difficult to verify. Verification may fail if what is known cannot be put into words; that is, it is ineffable.  Here, we may be experiencing an effect of profound knowledge without there being any actual knowledge, in a kind of epistemic illusion.  Ineffability might arise from various sources, as Diana Raffman has shown in her analysis of ineffable experiences of music; but ineffability is also an expected correlate of any surprise.  This is because words for the most part represent schemata (types) rather than particulars (tokens), and surprise arises exactly when we cannot fit a token into an existing type; so, where there is no type there should be no word.  The epistemic effects of surprise can arise from our reading of literary texts, where there may be an experience of knowing something profoundly new, but we may not be able to say what it is.

The epistemic effects of surprise are, I suggest, at the root of various types of ‘strong experience’ including the sublime, the epiphany, and the uncanny.  In my book A Theory of Thrills, Sublime and Epiphany in Literature, I group these various types of experience under the rather noncommital term ‘strong experience’, a term borrowed from Gabrielsson’s account of ‘strong experiences in music’.  These strong experiences have been extensively discussed in the critical and philosophical literature, particularly under the categories of ‘sublime’ and ‘literary epiphany’ (Beja, Nichols, Tigges).  They have also been described in the psychological literature, notably by William James who was interested both in the epistemic (noetic) aspects and in the arousal aspects, and by Freud in his discussion of the uncanny. But, as I discuss in the next section, many more ordinary types of experience can also arise from surprise, triggered by characteristics of literary texts.

 

Discrepancy in Literary Texts as Triggers of Surprise

If a literary text has some element which deviates significantly from the schema we bring to it, then there may be surprise, and this in turn can bring with it the epistemic and arousal consequences of surprise, producing a powerful experience from the literary text.  The deviation can be in the content: the literary text may represent something, somebody, some place, etc. which is very discrepant relative to the schemata which the reader brings to them. Literary characters can surprise us by behaving in ways which contradict the knowledge which we formulate about them, and our surprise may be enhanced into a more profoundly felt experience if we also empathize with the characters (with empathy enhanced by literary devices).

Surprise can be triggered in narratives, and other texts which have a predictable sequential structure. Here, the predictability allows us to be surprised when the sequence does not follow the expected pattern, for example when an event fails to occur, or unexpectedly occurs, or occurs before or after it is anticipated.  This type of surprise has been extensively studied in the psychology of music, and is a major theme in Huron’s work on how music surprises us and produces the type of strong experience which is a thrill.  Any kind of sequential organization can allow for formal changes, and change is one of the possible sources of surprise.  Smith, in her book on the strong experience of poetic closure suggested that “any terminal modification of form will strengthen closure”.  Formal changes can change processing effort, and sudden changes in processing effort might perhaps be a trigger of strong experience because they are surprising. 

Narratives have a sequential structure but also have a hierarchical structure, which to some extent mimics the hierarchical structure of events as we understand them, where that hierarchical structuring of events is a psychological universal (Radvansky and Zacks, Zwaan et al).  This allows for another kind of discrepancy, when the hierarchical structures of narrative are violated.  Such a violation can involve liminal or transitional parts of a narrative, for example, when the ending of one event overlaps with the beginning of another.  And hierarchies can also be violated by failing to fully contain events, if the large-scale events of the whole narrative interrupt the lower-level events which make it up, rather than fully containing them.  An example of this can be seen in the penultimate chapter of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.  Mr Ramsay is “forever suspended in this moment” (Speidel) as he steps from the boat to the land near the end of To the Lighthouse, a moment which Beja identifies as epiphanic. For our purposes the important point is that here the large-scale episode ends when they arrive at the lighthouse, but the component small-scale event of stepping onto the land is interrupted and so never completed in the text. Thus, the hierarchical structure of events are violated and perhaps this violation of event schemata is the trigger of the epiphanic strong experience. Disruptions to hierarchical structure of this kind may be interpreted as discrepant relative to general schemata for events, and so surprising.

Literary texts are often characterized by ‘defamiliarization’ where familiar things are presented in an unfamiliar way: the resemblance is deliberately made odd, such that our perceptions cannot properly be matched to the schemata we bring to the text.  Some specific moment of defamiliarization in a text might be a trigger of sudden surprise which can lead to strong experience. This defamiliarization can come from a gap between the literary representation and what is being represented; of course, all representation involves a gap, but in literary texts our attention is often drawn to this gap, and so to the possibility of perceptions which are schematically discrepant. Metaphor is a good example of this, where what is said has a ‘discrepant’ relation to what is meant, and where what is literally said may be strange or untrue. Kuiken and colleagues, following Ricoeur, say of metaphors that “sublime feeling is embodied in the crossed ontological categories of the text”.

Literary texts can also trigger strong experiences ‘infectiously’ just by describing strong experiences.  There is anecdotal evidence that remembering one’s own strong experience, or reading about someone else’s, can trigger a strong experience, and can be a source of ‘infectious chills’, as Gabrielsson notes.  This is perhaps what happens at the end of Wordsworth’s ‘daffodils’ poem, in which Wordsworth stimulates a strong experience in himself by remembering a strong experience – and perhaps further stimulates one in the reader.  I suggest that this is an example of metacognitive surprise: we are surprised at the very fact of strong experience, and particularly at strong experiences of ordinary things.  Such experiences should not be able to happen; our perception of them may again violate a deeply embedded schema about the nature of experience itself.  (I return to other types of metacognitive surprise in the next section.)  Relative to our schemata for experience, strong experiences are metacognitively perceived as deviant, and hence potentially a trigger for strong experience.

 

Surprise at the Lack of Variation

I began this article by noting that when we match perceptions to schematic knowledge, we must allow for some variation.  Two tokens of the same type will vary both from each other and from the type itself, and this holds true of objects as well as events and sequences of events.  It is particularly notable that when this is not true, we are surprised.  So, for example, twins are surprising to many (non-twin) people when they see them; they violate an expectation that two tokenings of the same type (e.g., two people) will differ from one another.  And the experience of déjà vu is surprising in part because we do not expect identity between two separate sequences of events.  Dan Sperber, in his discussion of symbolic animals notes that animals can be symbolic when they are very discrepant relative to a classificatory system (as in the animals forbidden as food in Jewish law), but that animals are also symbolic when they are perfect tokenings of their type. Sperber points out that this identity is itself anomalous, and this is the basis of my suggestion here that a lack of variation is itself surprising.  This is a meta-surprise, about experience itself and specifically the relation between perception and schema, and not a surprised triggered just by the object of the perception. 

This (meta-)surprise is possible because, in addition to schemata about objects and events in the world, we also have schemata about our own experience, including schemata about the relation between tokenings in the world and the types (schemata) to which they belong.  I suggest that this is the source of our being surprised by ordinary things when those things are too close to their underlying schemata (or to one another).  I suggest that we have a deeply embedded schema which is a knowledge that things in the world, as tokens, vary both from other tokenings of the same type and from the ideal type of which they are tokens (the underlying schema).  This knowledge of the fact of variation is a basic schema, which has evolved with us as a species.  Other basic schemata include those which underpin our knowledge of the distinction between animate and inanimate things, our knowledge of basic physics such as the knowledge that things fall when we drop them.  Basic schemata are impossible to unlearn, even though they may be wrong in some contexts (or always wrong). For example, a basic schema tells us that objects fall downwards, and even though we know that in gravity-free environments objects can float, this knowledge does not prevent us being surprised by seeing objects floating in gravity-free environments. This is because failure to fall violates a basic schema which cannot be modified even if we consciously know that it is wrong.  These basic schemata are part of what Boyer calls our ‘intuitive ontology’: he argues that religious beliefs involve limited violations of basic schemata, and this gives them their power, presumably by permanently surprising us. 

So, I propose that when we – or characters in Modernist fiction – are surprised by ordinary things, the surprise comes from an inwardly directed perception: that the basic schema which predicts variation is violated by perceived nonvariation. This might arise if an ordinary object is perceived as unique, and thus it is the only instantiation of a schema. In this case, it is identical to its schema, and the basic schema which expresses fundamental principle of variation is violated, producing surprise. A person is a unique entity in this sense: as a token, they are identical to their schema.  The epiphany (or moment of vision) at the end of Mrs Dalloway is triggered by Clarissa Dalloway, and as Zhang notes, the language of the text directly points to the world (with a proper noun, and a pronoun), thus expressing the nonschematic and unique nature of the individual.   Kenneth Clark cites the painter Graham Sutherland who on his walks finds that “objects which he has passed a hundred times – a root, a thorn bush, a dead tree – will suddenly detach themselves and demand a separate existence”: here it is the uniqueness of the object which triggers the experience.  Detachment of the object may involve its perception as lacking (Gibsonian) affordances, such that it is seen as having an existence only in and for itself; this fits with James’s view of mystical experience (a type of strong experience) where “the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance”.  Another way in which an object can be seen as unique is if it is perceived with a high degree of granularity; this incidentally should also produce a type of ‘nuance ineffability’, Raffman’s term for when our perceptions are more granular than the schemata and so words which we can match them to.  Another possibility is that the object is perceived as a perfect instantiation of its schema: Sperber argues that perfect animals are odd in precisely this way, which makes them suitable for sacrifice in the temple.

The basic schema which predicts variation is also violated by the perception of doubles or multiples, since these are entities in the world which are perceived as identical to one another.  Doubles and multiples should trigger metacognitive surprise at this violation of a basic schema, and this surprise might turn into the experience of the sublime as a response to multiples (Mendelssohn), or to the uncanny as a response to doubles (Freud). 

If a lack of variation is surprising, then literary texts, in many cultures, should be surprising.  In their content, literary texts tend to regularize and simplify what they represent, relative to the real-world equivalents.  Narratives are simpler than real-world sequences of events, more bounded, more sparse, and with causation more simply expressed. Fictional characters are sparser in their characteristics and interconnections than real people, thus giving them greater regularity relative to types.  It is particularly worth noting that the greater regularity in the language of literary texts, relative to ordinary language, means that the language of literary texts can fall below the degree of variation which we expect from language in general: this points towards a violation of the basic schema of variation.  This consistent violation, at a low level, might also produce a continuous mild surprise.

Parallelism, which Jakobson thought was the basis of the poetic function, is a greater regularity imposed on language, as are the other types of regular form: metre, alliteration and rhyme.  In fact, one way of thinking about what is distinctively ‘literary’ about literary language is that relative to ordinary language it is more regulated, the syntax can be different (particularly in poetry), and its vocabulary can be different.  Literary language can be thought of as resembling ordinary language but with a reduced degree of variation, and I have previously argued (in ‘Why is verse poetry?’) that literary language might sometimes be a copy of language rather than an instance of language.  Literary language might thus be perceived as schematically discrepant when matched to schemata for language itself.  It is worth asking at this point whether we can become habituated to literary language, such that we no longer perceive it as discrepant, but I think not: no amount of habituation to literary language will ever make us forget about ordinary language, or reduce the distance between literary and ordinary language.

Similar points might be made about other aesthetic practices, which include forms which resemble but are not quite the same as practices in the real world.  All representative forms only partially resemble what they represent, and in principle can be perceived as discrepant relative to what they represent. Music is a more regular kind of sound; singing is not quite like speaking; theatrical performance is not quite like real behaviour; dancing resembles but is not the same as running and jumping, and so on.  In these ways all the aesthetic practices, as well as literature, demonstrate a constant but low-level schematic discrepancy.  This might stimulate a constant but low level of surprise, which in turn might be part of our general aesthetic experience, characterised by the effects of surprise, both epistemic and arousal.   

 

Is ’Surprise’ Too Simple a Way to Approach These Problems?

The approach I take to this range of problems is to treat all of them as starting from the same psychological event, the event of surprise.   Surprise is here treated as the response to perceptions (including thoughts) of objects, events, sequences of events which significantly differ from what we expect, where our expectations are based on our general, schematic knowledge.  Thus, surprise is responsible for: the effects of various literary devices, the aesthetic experience of general aspects of literary form, profound experiences such as the sublime and epiphany, and physical responses such as chills and tears.  In some cases there are other general psychological processes at play, including emotions and empathy, all of which may contribute to and modulate the experience of the event.  All of these are ordinary human psychological events, with experiential and epistemic components, but none of them are treated a distinctive category of psychological event.  The different names and categorizations of these events come primarily from culture, not from psychology.  In other words, there is no special theory here; this is a minimalist approach which starts from common and ordinary psychological events and states, and suggests that in the right arrangement of circumstances, the event has particular manifestations and feels special.  The term which I use for experiences such as the sublime, epiphany and the uncanny, along with thrills is ‘strong experience’, and this is a term of convenience which is both deliberately neutral and not understood as a separate type of experience: it is just ordinary experience, in a ‘strong’ form, where the strength manifests as the powerful epistemic experience, or as a bodily arousal.   This is a strength in the approach, in that it seeks to explain a wide range of experience, including aesthetic experience, using only what is already in the ordinary psychological toolbox.

The weakness in this approach is that it leaves many aspects of any individual experience unexplained: why does it happen now to this person and with this degree of strength of epistemic effect and this arousal?  Why should ordinary surprise be inflated into something rarer and more profound in certain circumstances?  But this is a weakness in explanation which may be unresolvable. Even for well-studied issues such as the triggering of chills in experimental subjects by musical or textual features, we know that there is a great deal of variation in response, which tells us that there will always be contextual or circumstantial factors which shape why certain experiences arise. 

 

Future Research

One direction of research would be to extend the experimental work on the triggering of thrills by specific aspects of texts, and to test whether these can be understood in terms of surprise.  This has been done extensively for music, and to some extent also on poetry, and it could be productively extended to literature more generally.  Experimental work on how thrill responses are caused is relatively straightforward, and is a proxy for the almost impossible task of doing experimental work on the more epistemically oriented and very rare experiences of the sublime, epiphanies or uncanny. However, even these rare and epistemically significant kinds of experience might be the subject of experimental work along the lines of research on religious and mystical experience as described for example by McNamara.

This project assumes some basic aspects of human psychology, involving the psychology of surprise and why it happens, the schematic organization of knowledge, and the universality of basic schemata—these should be true of all humans.  In the previous section I suggested that the experiences of the sublime and of epiphany might be manifestations of this experience of surprise; these are strongly evidenced in post-18th century Western literature.  But are they universally found?   An indication of what is possible comes from Dalton’s account of the sublime in Rawa culture of Papua New Guinea, or from Morphy’s account of the aesthetic power of brilliance in Yolngu culture in Northern Australia.

 

Works Cited

Beja, Morris. Epiphany in The Modern Novel. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1971.

Boyer, Pascal. Religion Explained: The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors. New York: Basic Books, 2001.

Clark, Kenneth. “Moments of Vision.” In Kenneth Clark, Moments of Vision. London: John Murray, 1981, 1-17.

Dalton, Douglas M. “The Aesthetic of the Sublime: An Interpretation of Rawa Shell Valuable Symbolism.”  American Ethnologist 23. 2 (1996): 393–415.  

Efran, Jay S. and Timothy J. Spangler. “Why Grown-Ups Cry: A Two-Factor Theory and Evidence from the Miracle Worker.” Motivation and Emotion 3 (1979): 63–72.

Huron, David. Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2006.

Fabb, Nigel “Why is verse poetry?” PN Review 189 (2009): 36, 52–57.

Fabb, Nigel. A Theory of Thrills, Sublime and Epiphany in Literature. London: Anthem Press, 2022.

Foster, Meadhbh I. and Mark T. Keane. “Why Some Surprises are more Surprising than Others: Surprise as a Metacognitive Sense of Explanatory Difficulty.” Cognitive Psychology 81 (2015): 74-116.

Freud, Sigmund. The “Uncanny.” Translated by Alix Strachey. First Published in Imago, Bd. V. 1919; Reprinted in Sammlung, Fünfte Folge.

Gabrielsson, Alf. Strong Experiences with Music: Music Is Much More Than Just Music. Translated by Rod Bradbury. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.

James, William. “What Is an Emotion?” Mind 9.34 (1884): 188-205.

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Edited with an Introduction by Martin E. Marty. New York: Penguin, 1982.

Housman, Alfred E. The Name and Nature of Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933.

Huron, David. Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.

Jakobson, Roman. “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics”. In Style in Language. Ed. Thomas A. Sebeok. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1960, 350-377.

Kuiken, Don, Paul Campbell, and Paul Sopčák. “The Experiencing Questionnaire: Locating Exceptional Reading Moments.” Scientific Study of Literature 2.2 (2012): 243-272.

McNamara, Patrick. The Neuroscience of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2009.

Mendelssohn, Moses. Philosophical Writings. Ed. Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Meyer, Wulf-Uwe, Rainer Reisenzein, and Achim Schützwohl. “Toward a Process Analysis of Emotions: The Case of Surprise.” Motivation and Emotion. 21:3 (1997): 251-274.

Morphy, Howard.  “From Dull to Brilliant: The Aesthetics of Spiritual Power Among the Yolngu.” Man New Series, 24.1 (1989): 21-40.

Nichols, Ashton. Poetics of Epiphany: Nineteenth Century Origins of the Modern Literary Moment. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1987.

Radvansky, Gabriel A. and Jeffrey M. Zacks. eds. Event Cognition. New York: Oxford University Press.  2014.

Raffman, Diana. Language, Music and Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.

Ricoeur, Paul. The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language. London: Routledge, 1977.

Sperber, Dan. “Why Are Perfect Animals, Hybrids, and Monsters Food for Symbolic Thought?” Method and Theory in The Study of Religion. 8.2 (1996): 143-169.

Tigges, Wim, ed. Moments of Moment: Aspects of the Literary Epiphany. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999.

Wassiliwizky, Eugen, Thomas Jacobsen, Jan Heinrich, Manuel Schneiderbauer, and Winfried Menninghaus. “Tears Falling on Goosebumps: Co-Occurrence of Emotional Lacrimation and Emotional Piloerection Indicates a Psychophysiological Climax in Emotional Arousal.” Frontiers in Psychology 8.41 (2017): 1-15.

Woolf, Virginia. “Moments of Vision.” In The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Andrew McNeillie. 1987. Volume II. 1912-1918. London: The Hogarth Press, 250-252.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway London: Penguin. 1969.

Woolf, Virginia.  To the Lighthouse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2006.

Zhang, Dora. “Naming the Indescribable: Woolf, Russell, James and the Limits of Description.” New Literary History, 45.1 (2014): 51-70.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Zwaan, Rolf A., Mark C. Langston, and Arthur C. Graesser. “The Construction of Situation Models in Narrative Comprehension: An Event-Indexing Model.” Psychological Science 6.5 (1995): 292-297.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obstruction in Romantic Love Narratives as Postcolonial Universal: The Case of Thomas Mofolo’s CHAKA


Posted on July 17, 2022

F. Fiona Moolla, University of the Western Cape (Republic of South Africa)

Love stories would appear to be one of the most universal genres of literary tale-telling. In fact, Patrick Hogan wrily observes that attention to literary representations of romantic love might have obviated “extended” ethnological debates on the cross-cultural and transhistorical prevalence of love (98). Hogan suggests further that the sub-genre of romantic tragi-comedy is a universal narrative structure since “it appears that every tradition tells tales of conflict in two areas – love and political power” (23), and may be found in the drama “from Greece, Rome India, China, and Japan, and in stories from other regions as well” (23). This essay will consider one such tale of conflict between love and political power in Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka, an “epic” novel about the formation of the Zulu nation in southern Africa, arguably one of the earliest African political expressions of modern state formation.

The focus on Chaka occurs in the context of a broader survey of African cultural expressions of romantic love[1]. Africa possesses a vast range of cultures, languages and traditions, but, for the purposes of this essay, only sub-Saharan cultures have been considered through their symbolic representation in oral narratives. The study thus has excluded the oral and written traditions of Arabophone North Africa, as well as that of Ethiopia. The impediment this survey faces at the outset is that published sources of sub-Saharan oral culture, given the multiple mediations of their production involving transcription in artificial settings and translation into European languages, become artefacts, in part, of the modernity which seeks to preserve them. The second obstruction faced by this study is the newly-confirmed recognition that hardly any sub-Saharan oral traditions about love have been recorded and archived. Where love is referred to at all in the folk tales of various cultural groups, it often occurs in an interspecies context signaling cosmogonic myths of primal origin times where the lines between human and animal were still fluid. Yet oral love narratives would appear to have abounded and continue to flourish in contemporary popular forms and media. The now-canonical Ghanaian writer, Ama Ata Aidoo, whose work is dominated by considerations of love in transforming contexts, in the introduction to African Love Stories, suggests that: “… Africa, like all the other regions of this earth, has been and is, full of great love stories” (viii). She speculates that, by contrast, in twentieth-century African literature, the love theme has not been foregrounded since this literature was preoccupied by other social and political questions which appeared more pressing. This does not, however, explain why love stories were not recorded by early anthropologists whose archives for the most part include proverbs, folk tales and epics. Given the dearth of love narratives in folk tales, this study turns its attention to African epics.

The African epic, in the context of the study of world epics, for a long time was a neglected form (Kesteloot 203). Depending on how one defines the epic, the list of African epics may be quite long, running into hundreds, or could be reduced to a limited number divided into “feudal” and “clan” epics (Kesteloot 205), or divided linguistically into epics of Mande-speaking and Bantu-speaking groups (Biebuyck 6). With the increased prominence of African epics in the frame of world literature, probably the most well-known of these, for varying reasons, are the Sunjata epic of west Africa, the Mwindo epic of central Africa, and the Chaka epic of southern Africa. While love may be a prominent theme in many epics, as the example of the romantic interludes in Homer’s Odyssey underscores, love is not foregrounded in the well-known African epics, except for a single complex and interesting case occurring in one of the narratives of the legend of Chaka, king of the Zulu nation.

The context of the emergence of the Chaka epic is not unlike the emergence of text forms of the oral expression of many other world cultures. The historical Chaka, born in 1795, founder of the Zulu kingdom which swallowed up the territories of many surrounding groups, became the stuff of legend, perpetuated especially in izibongo or Zulu praise poetry. The oral tradition which developed around the historical Chaka, augmented by research of other sources, shaped the first script narrative of Chaka’s life and achievements in Thomas Mofolo’s fictionalized biography, Chaka. Chaka which straddles the line between life narrative and novel was written in Mofolo’s first language, Sesotho, in the first decade of the twentieth century, but published only in 1931. This prose narrative was followed by Mazisi Kunene’s 1979 Zulu verse narrative, Emperor Shaka the Great: A Zulu Epic, which, no doubt, was influenced by Mofolo’s novel, but which adheres to the historical record more faithfully than Mofolo’s text. This study considers, specifically, the tragic love story that Mofolo invents in the heroic tale about the founder of the Zulu nation in relation to the concept of obstruction, the sine qua non of the romantic plot. Denis de Rougemont, author of Love in the Western World, a seminal study of romance, identifies the intensification of obstruction as unique to European romance. This essay looks at obstruction in the broader context of the idea of the “postcolonial universal”, deeply explored by Senegalese philosopher, Souleymane Bachir Diagne. This idea occurs, however, in the analyses of many comparativists, including Lalita Pandit’s study of Indian author Rabindranath Tagore, whose “nonimperialist, abstractly utopian idea of universalism … based on the principle of empathy” might be seen similarly to test notions non-hierarchically, assuming a background of commonality which makes lateral testing culturally comprehensible. This essay turns now to obstruction in the romance presented in Mofolo’s Chaka, testing it against De Rougemont’s assertion of the dynamism created by the centrality of obstruction in European romance, imparting a dynamism to the culture of European modernity.

Love in the Western World, De Rougemont’s landmark 1940 study of eros in Europe and, by extension, Europe’s settler colonies around the globe, proposes that obstruction to romantic union is the paradoxical desire of true lovers. The desire for that which thwarts satisfaction in love, so perpetuating desire, generates a drive, which De Rougemont describes as the “demon” (37) of love. The demon of love for De Rougemont is expressed also in the boundary-breaking restlessness of the novel, for many, the cultural form par excellence of European modernity. Shifting to an economic paradigm, the restless dynamism found in love and in the novel, has been regarded also as the unique momentum which drives capitalism (Berman). Obstruction which keeps desire in play thus is presented by De Rougemont as a continental and civilizational particular which through imperialism, colonization and in its current manifestation, globalization, has spread to the rest of the world. The question asked in the context of African orature and literature is whether obstruction in the love narrative is an absolute universal? If it is not absolute, then is it a statistical universal? Or is obstruction not universal at all; in other words, is it wholly particular to the socio-cultural development only of Europe? De Rougemont makes the claim about obstruction based on an interpretation of the archetypal medieval European myth of romantic love, namely, the story of Tristan and Isolde.

The pattern of mediation and remediation of the Chaka legend and Tristan and Isolde  is similar: stories of the historical lives become the material of folklore through fluid oral circulation, which then get fixed in the text narratives of individual authors, which then, in turn, spark a plethora of intertexts. Béroul’s and Bédier’s medieval Tristan is the inspiration of Wagner’s operatic Tristan and many other literary and cultural forms, as Mofolo’s and Kunene’s Chaka is the inspiration for Léopold Senghor’s lyrico-dramatic text, “Chaka”, and the inspiration in the production of many other artists, writers and intellectuals (Gérard).

This study focuses on the love stories in the Chaka narratives. The one love story, which is common across historical and literary narratives, is the story of Shaka’s parents, Nandi, his mother, and Senzangakhona, his father. Both Mofolo’s and Kunene’s texts present Chaka’s parents as being smitten by each other at their first meeting. In both cases, however, the focus falls not so much on the love affair and obstacles that may have existed in the lovers’ path to union. Rather, narrative concentration falls on the couple’s premarital intimacy which results in Nandi’s pregnancy. The issue at stake here is Chaka’s legitimacy, for which various opinions exist on the social acceptance of premarital sexual relationships in the culture at the time, and whether the rules for royalty were different from the rules for commoners. This love story will not be considered here since attention in both “founding” text narratives, namely that of Mofolo and Kunene, falls on the question of Chaka’s legitimacy, rather than the intimate relationship of Nandi and Senzangakhona.

Instead, this essay will consider the second love story, which occurs only in Mofolo’s “factional” representation of Chaka’s life. Mofolo’s novel is remarkable for its complete invention of Chaka’s love affair with the fictionally created heroine, Noliwa. Chaka is born to Nandi, whom Chaka’s father, Senzangakhona, marries, but, nonetheless, is spurned by Senzangakhona’s other wives, forcing Nandi to flee to live with relations. But even in her new home, in Mofolo’s representation of history, malicious rumors about Chaka’s illegitimacy pursue him, making him a despised pariah in the community where he is raised. His strength and bravery, however, result in the admiration of the young women of the village, make him the enemy of the young men whose cowardliness he indirectly shows up. His predestination for greatness is foreshadowed by his encounter with a diviner, Isanusi, another of Mofolo’s fictional creations outside of the historical record. Isanusi allows Chaka to see his persecution as part of a test for the acquisition of hitherto unknown power, giving him the strength to resist his abuse by the village. Because of subsequent threats to Chaka’s life, he is forced to flee, this time to the realm of a neighbouring potentate, Dingiswayo, who immediately is impressed by Chaka’s martial prowess. Mofolo invents a sister for Dingiswayo, namely, Noliwa, who is the one true love of Chaka’s life, aside from whom he generally is dismissive of women.

Noliwa is the favorite sister of Dingiswayo, the king who has taken Chaka under his wing, recognizing his exceptional military prowess. Noliwa is infatuated with Chaka and is disappointed that he never joins the lovers’ games which allow young people to declare their affection. Noliwa employs the “fool” Ndlebe also known as “Mr Ears” (71), one of Chaka’s allies, who deploys the techniques of surveillance suited to an oral community to spy for Chaka. Ndlebe gets Noliwa to declare her love for Chaka, whereupon he gets Chaka to declare his love for Noliwa, unarticulated by Chaka since he assumed that Dingiswayo would never allow him to marry his sister because Chaka is an outsider.  As the “goddess” and “god” of the group who stand out for their nobility, their physical perfection as woman and man, and their embodiment of the gender ideals of the community of feminine grace and masculine valor, Noliwa and Chaka are made for each other and appear to be destined for each other. Ndlebe expresses their mutual enamorment by saying to Chaka that Noliwa loves Chaka “with a love that surpasses your love for her” (74 emphasis in original). Noliwa makes the depths of her feelings known to her brother, Dingiswayo, by hinting that her passion for Chaka is inevitable and inalterable, like death: “I die utterly! I am unable to give you any idea, to find words to make you understand, the manner of my death!” (73). Dingiswayo’s approval of the union is implied, and the couple exchange necklaces, making their affection public, after which they are formally betrothed. Upon the death of Chaka’s father, Senzangakhona, Chaka, by far exceeding the legitimate princes in bravery, is installed on the throne. He also avenges the death of Dingiswayo by a pretender to Dingiswayo’s throne, and rises to the ultimate seat of power of Dingiswayo’s territory also, with the promise that he would marry Noliwa. Isanusi, the diviner, visits Chaka to test his commitment to acquiring power and renown without precedent:

 

Isanusi: “I understand that you are betrothed to Noliwa. Tell me, do you want to marry her?”

“I love her with all my heart, and I will marry her. But also I am bound to marry her, even if I did not wish to, because I have promised Dingiswayo’s armies that I would.”

“But if they had not bound you with that promise, what were you going to do?”

“I would still have wished to marry her because I love her, and, after all, they spoke to me in that manner after I had already become betrothed to her.”

“If I were you, I would not marry. Marriage splits kingdoms apart, because it always leads to quarrels in one’s house . . . .

Isanusi spoke these words like one who was merely jesting, yet they became a seed which began to grow in Chaka’s heart, especially since he had never really been very fond of women. (98-99)

 

Isanusi inflames Chaka’s ambition further by suggesting that he could have power greater than the power he had, which already was greater than the greatest kingdom known among their people. To obtain such power would require “medicine” for which Chaka would have to make a sacrifice:

 

. . . if you want such a kingship, every time you go to meet the enemy, your warriors must eat food mixed with medicines containing the blood of someone you love most dearly, one who is constantly in your thoughts, who is in your heart day and night, whom you love more than all the people in this entire world. It is by means of the blood of such a person that you can obtain the kind of kingship I have just described: I know no other way beside that one. (100-101)

 

Since Noliwa is his soulmate and the one closest to his heart, Chaka agrees to sacrifice her: “To tell you the truth, in this world there isn’t anything I love other than kingship, war and commanding armies. Therefore I will give you [Isanusi] Noliwa in order to remove any stumbling block from the path leading to my kingship. I have considered this matter and concluded: the medicines will be mixed with Noliwa’s blood” (102).

Paradoxically, the love story is the invented centerpiece around which Mofolo constructs Chaka’s actualization, but it is the crucial heart of the narrative which must be abjured as romance gives way to the epic. While the Tristan myth holds fast to the conventions of romance, Chaka embeds in the narrative (ultimately obstructed) romance as testament to the ruthless ambition of its finally, morally ambivalent epic hero. De Rougemont suggests that European culture, and its imperial-colonial offshoots, are distinct for inventing “passionate love” through the emergence of courtly love in the twelfth century. The heart of passionate love is obstruction, typified in the archetypal myth of Tristan, who invents obstacles where none exist. Obstruction gives love its existential drive.

The love story dimension of Chaka presents a romance with numerous obstructions, leading to the ultimate obstruction in death. Before it becomes patently clear that Chaka is going to sacrifice Noliwa, Chaka has intimate relations with Noliwa, resulting in her pregnancy. (The novel leaves Chaka’s knowledge of the pregnancy in productive indeterminacy.) But true union, as in the Tristan myth, is represented by marriage. What are the obstacles to the love between Chaka and Noliwa? First, it is Noliwa’s uncertainty whether Chaka is attracted to her, and then Chaka’s uncertainty whether Ndlebe’s intimations of Noliwa’s attraction are true. Thereafter, Dingiswayo’s potential rejection of the liaison, since Chaka is an outsider, is presented as an obstruction – but one which again is quite easily overcome. Significant obstacles which delay the union then come into play. Chaka’s father dies leaving him to negotiate the intricacies of succession. Dingiswayo is assassinated, requiring Chaka to avenge his death and ascend to his throne. These obstacles, which delay the union of the lovers ironically also kindle Chaka’s parallel love for power, manifesting in the ultimate obstruction, namely, Chaka’s overarching ambition. Chaka’s ambition leads to his sacrifice of Noliwa. Death of Isolde in the Tristan myth and death of Noliwa in Chaka is the obstruction which apotheosizes love as passion, thriving as it does on barriers, rather than apotheosizing the lovers themselves. However, while it is love of love which is the catalyst of love as passion in the European myth, it is the love of power which generates love as passion in the southern African heroic romance. Thus in both the European and the African narratives we see the emergence of love as passion.

The centrality of love as passion in Mofolo’s novel is underscored by Chaka’s emotions when he kills Noliwa and Noliwa’s response when she recognizes she is being sacrificed to consolidate the power of her lover. Before the killing, the narrative dwells on Noliwa’s infatuation with Chaka, heightened by her pregnancy, and Chaka’s love for her:

 

Chaka, too, loved Noliwa very much. If Chaka ever loved a woman with true love, we believe that Nandi (sic) was the woman upon whom that love was lavished. All beautiful and worthy things which a true wife might do for her husband, and which Chaka ever experienced, he received from Noliwa. And even as he betrayed her like that and planned her murder, his conscience ate him up and gave him no rest; it told him he had strayed from the straight path of human compassion. Yet, because of his desire for kingship, he suppressed it and pushed ahead, and walked about carrying death on his shoulders. (121)

 

The significance of love as passion in Mofolo’s narrative is made manifest again when it presents the diviner, Isanusi, giving Chaka one last chance to opt out of the course that will strip him of satisfaction in love and make him suffer emotionally, even as he climbs the ladder of power. Isanusi asks explicitly: “What do you choose for yourself, Noliwa or the kingship? to which Chaka again confirms, “The kingship!” (123). The significance of passionate love is foregrounded also by the fact that it is Chaka himself who kills Noliwa, rather than any of his henchmen, whose obedience to their leader is absolute. Chaka is struck again by Noliwa’s ethereal beauty when the time comes for the murder, and he is struck above all by her eyes: “They were eyes which revealed a message which said: ‘I am yours with all my being, Chaka; I am yours in life and in death” (125-126). Chaka kills Noliwa surreptitiously, using a thatching needle pierced into her underarm, to disguise her murder as illness. Noliwa, however, dies knowing that it is Chaka who has killed her, and, nevertheless, with her dying breath refers to Chaka as her “beloved” (26). Noliwa’s death thus preserves love as passion in the epic narrative about the founding of the Zulu nation.

The status of Mofolo’s Chaka as, in many respects, a liminal text makes its offsetting of passionate love problematic as an assertion of the universality of the principle of obstruction as central to love as passion. For De Rougemont, the contention that passionate love is an invention of European culture, of course, is a claim for much more than merely the “technology” of the romance narrative. It is an assertion of the fundamental dynamism of European culture, which, by implication, is absent in other world cultures. (Even though De Rougemont acknowledges the influence of Andalusian court poetry and sufi mysticism on European medieval culture, nonetheless, the breakthroughs of courtly love are deemed the origins of European exceptionalism in the sphere of the personal relationship which, more than any other personal relationship, embodies European socio-cultural transformations. It is hard to hold Mofolo’s Chaka up as a challenge to De Rougemont since Mofolo as a Christian mission-school-educated writer may have invented and incorporated the Chaka-Noliwa love story as a consequence of cultural influence, or an orientation to European culture acquired at the Morija mission. However, it is salutary to recall that Mofolo was writing about a Zulu legend in Sesotho for a Sesotho audience in the first decade of the twentieth century. His novel would have had to have been persuasive to his Sesotho audience, an audience less culturally influenced by mission Christianity and European culture than he had been. The conclusion one might draw from this is that it is precisely the existence of some form of universal which makes this form of intercultural communication possible.

Diagne extends the idea further: Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Diagne suggests that “[t]he postcolonial universal, the non imperial universal is … lateral” (16). The lateral universal is “no longer the overarching universal of a strictly objective method, but a sort of lateral universal which we acquire through ethnological experience and its incessant testing of the self through the other person and the other person through the self” (16). What we see in Mofolo’s African articulation of love as passion, where obstruction is central, may thus more productively be viewed as a lateral universal testing the concept of love as passion across languages, cultures and the epistemologies they intimate.

 

Works Cited

Aidoo, Ama Ata. African Love Stories: An Anthology. Ayebia, 2006.

Berman, Marshall. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity. Verso, 1983.

De Rougemont, Denis. Love in the Western World. (1940) Translated by Montgomery Belgion. Princeton UP, 1983.

Diagne, Souleymane Bachir. “On the Postcolonial and the Universal?” Collège international de Philosophie, vol. 2, no. 78, pp.7-18. https://www.cairn.info/revue-rue-descartes-2013-2-page-7.htm. Accessed 15 May 2022.

Gerard, Albert. “Rereading ‘Chaka’. English in Africa, vol. 13, no. 1, 1986, pp. 1-12. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40238579. Accessed 10 June 2022.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. The Mind and its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion. Cambridge UP, 2009.

Kunene, Mazisi. Emperor Shaka the Great: A Zulu Epic. Translated by Mazisi Kunene. Heinemann, 1979.

Mofolo, Thomas. Chaka. (1931) Translated by Daniel P. Kunene. Heinemann, 1981.

Moolla, F. Fiona. “Foundational Fictions: Variations of the Marriage Plot in Flora Nwapa’s Early Anglophone-Igbo Novels.” Routledge Handbook of African Literature, edited by Carli Coetzee and Moradewun Adejunmobi, Routledge, 2019, pp. 290-304.

—. “In the Heart of the Country: The Auto/biographies of Ayesha Dawood and Fatima Meer.” Social Dynamics, vol. 46, no. 1, 2020, pp. 150-163.

—. “Love in a State of Fear: Reflections on Intimate Relations in Nuruddin Farah’s Dictatorship Novels.” Journal of the African Literature Association, vol. 10., no. 1, 2016, pp. 118-130.

—. “The Polygynous Household in Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives: A Haven in a Heartless World.” ARIEL – A Review of International English Literature, vol. 48, no. 1, 2017, pp. 71-96.

Pandit, Lalita. “Caste, Race, and Nation: History and Dialectic in Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora.” In Literary India: Comparative Studies in Aesthetics, Colonialism and Culture. Ed. Patrick Colm Hogan and Lalita Pandit. State U of New York P, 1995, pp. 207-233.

 

Note

[1] Until recently, the cultural, literary and philosophical significance of romantic love has not been a focus of attention of African scholarship. It has, however, been my interest for a number of years where I have considered African oratures, popular cultures, and literatures across the genres of poetry, novel and drama. Some areas of concentration include a focus on love in representations of monogamous and polygynous marriage, the role of love under oppressive regimes, and romance as national allegory. These studies have been published as journal articles and book chapters, such as: “The Polygynous Household in Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives: A Haven in a Heartless World”, “Foundational Fictions: Variations of the Marriage Plot in Flora Nwapa’s early Anglophone-Igbo Novels”, “Love in a State of Fear: Reflections on Intimate Relations in Nuruddin Farah’s Dictatorship Novels”, and “In the heart of the country: the auto/biographies of Ayesha Dawood and Fatima Meer.” Lynda Spencer and Martina Vitackova have directed their attention to African popular romance, in particular, and are currently co-editing a special African popular romance issue of the Journal of Popular Romance.

Talking Stories: Encyclopedia of Traditional Ecological Knowledge


Posted on September 11, 2021

Earlier this year (2021), Michelle Scalise Sugiyama (Anthropology, University of Oregon) launched Talking Stories: Encyclopedia of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, an open educational resource that situates the prehistory of literature and science in the oral traditions of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Based on the premise that oral narrative is one of humanity’s earliest information technologies, the Encyclopedia aggregates stories from diverse hunter-gatherer cultures and explicates the ecological knowledge they encode, with links to articles, books, films, and other pedagogical resources. The site is designed for use by educators seeking to integrate traditional Indigenous literature, philosophy, and science into their courses, and by students and researchers interested in the origins of natural history, symbolic behavior, and cultural transmission.

 

Reuven Tsur (1932-2021)

Patrick C. Hogan
Posted on September 6, 2021

I was deeply saddened to learn that the brilliant and warm-hearted Reuven Tsur passed away earlier today. His contributions to the linguistics of poetry–including the study of literary universals–were invaluable. The Literary Universals Project was honored to publish his and Chen Gafni’s “Phonetic Symbolism: Double-Edgedness and Aspect-Switching” just two years ago. This is a great intellectual and human loss.

Counterintuitive Imagery as a Narrative Universal


Posted on September 11, 2019

Tom Dolack, Wheaton College

It has been postulated that religious beliefs “minimally violate ordinary intuitions about how the world is” (Atran, In Gods We Trust 83). This is not to say that religion need be defined by counterintuitive imagery. There is a constellation of behaviors that has been proposed as underlying religion including a “hyperactive agency detection device” (Guthrie), overpromiscuous Theory of Mind, and ritual practices. Nonetheless, counterintuitive imagery appears to be a religious universal. Some research on this topic has noted that counterintuitive imagery is not a priori religious. Specifically, Kelly and Keil have looked at Ovid and the Brothers Grimm; Burdett, Barrett, and Porter have looked at folktales; and Swan and Halberstadt have more recently examined what differentiates religious from fictional counterintuitive agents. Even so, work in the field has mostly focused on the religious domain. What I propose is a research program that explicitly applies insights into religious counterintuitive imagery to narrative more broadly, including modern literature. This is in keeping with the idea that cognitive “templates” for religious concepts, discussed by Pascal Boyer (Religion Explained 78), have application in a wide variety of cultural artifacts.

 

Art was once thought to be the sole province of Homo sapiens, a cultural Rubicon that only we crossed. But, as has often been the case in recent years, the archaeological record shows that we are not so special. Intentional markings have been found on mussel shells dating back a half million years, which would make the suspected artiste Homo erectus (Joordens et al.). Whether we wish to term these engravings “art” is open to debate, but they seem to be intentional, serve no apparent utilitarian function, and are not random. If not art, then what? Doodle, perhaps, but that would probably be distinction without difference in this context. Our cousins the Neanderthals clearly also “doodled,” as evidenced by cave art in Spain predating the arrival of Homo sapiens (Hoffmann et al.; Hawks). Examples from our own direct ancestors are widespread and found all over the world (Henshilwood et al.; Aubert et al.). But much of the art we find in the record can be described as decorative or mimetic. The type of symbolism or figurativeness we associate with the term “art” in modern times, not to mention with human behavior more generally, is clearly a more recent addition.

Along these lines, the Löwenmensch or Lion-Man, found in the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in Germany, stands out. Not only is it one of the oldest, if not the oldest, statuette on record; it is also conspicuously not abstract, mimetic, or purely decorative. About a foot in height and carved from a mammoth tusk, the largest piece of the figurine was unearthed in 1939 (smaller pieces were dug up later and the pieces painstakingly reassembled). The Löwenmensch has a human body, with the head of what appears to be a lion. It is unclear if the figurine was meant to be symbolic or religious (theories abound), but it is clearly figurative. Nobody ever saw such a creature. It is all too easy to lose sight of how revolutionary this would have been. It would be unexceptional today in our world of CGI; it would have been unexceptional even thousands of years ago when mythology and tales around the campfire were commonplace. But there was a time when such a hybrid creation was entirely new, and it changed human culture forever.

We don’t know when or where this capacity for imagining hybrids originated, and can only hypothesize about how it came to be (changes to our mental architecture along the lines of Mithen’s “cognitive fluidity”? A tipping point in cumulative cultural evolution?), but however this change occurred, it signals a new ability to envision what did not and could not exist; previously we could either reproduce what we had seen or heard about or make abstract shapes that we found pleasing.

I suspect it is no coincidence that this oldest of all figurative art is a hybrid. Such hybrids are a stock element of religions, mythologies, and folklores the world over. The technical term for them is counterintuitive imagery. What makes these images special is that they violate our natural intuitions. We have innate ontological categories (Atran,“Basic Conceptual Domains”) in our minds such as animal, person, inanimate thing, tool and plant. Each of these categories involves specific expectations regarding our innate knowledge domains of physics, biology, and psychology. A natural object such as a rock does not move on its own, does not grow or reproduce, and does not think. An animal does move on its own, grow, eat, and reproduce, has some mental workings, but does not speak. Humans are like animals biologically, plus have additional psychology faculties, but are restrained by certain physical laws (we can’t fly or walk through walls). Counterintuitive images violate these ontological expectations in one way or another—an animal that talks, a person who doesn’t die, a stick that heals. A table from Justin Barrett covers all of the bases (see Figure 1).

 This table covers the panoply of figures in religions, mythologies, folklores, but also science fiction movies and fantasy novels. A zombie is a person lacking human consciousness (a violation of expectations regarding psychology); a ghost is a person without a body (a violation regarding biology); a talisman is an artifact with magic properties (physics violation); Ents are plants that behave like people (biology and psychology violations); monotheistic gods are often people lacking bodies and with reality-defying powers (psychology, biology, and physics violations). And so on.

A primary postulate for why counterintuitive imagery is so common in the religious imagination is because it is better remembered. But we need not restrict ourselves just to the religious imagination in this regard (Barrett, “Utility” 250). Atran and Norenzayan did experiments where stories with counterintuitive imagery were better remembered after one week (see also Barrett and Nyhof). Perhaps most interesting, they found an ideal ratio of counterintuitive to intuitive imagery (mostly intuitive with some counterintuitive), which accounts for why all or even most religious imagery is not counterintuitive. This is an explanation for its universality – in a tradition lacking writing, imagery that was better remembered would have a Darwinian advantage. And, indeed, such imagery does seem to be universal. Donald Brown lists belief in the supernatural, anthropomorphism, magic (which involves category violations of some sort), and myths all as human universals (139).

This may explain the abundance of spirits, and giants, and witches, and gods and the like – all the mythic figures that populate the religions, folklores and stories the world over, all of which have their roots, if you go back far enough, in the letterless past. But can we say the same about wizards and aliens and all the creations of modern fantasy and science fiction that are solidly within modern times? Clearly memory is no hurdle to the retention of something located conveniently in paperback or blue-ray. Indeed, if we extend our view to incorporate our metaphors (your eyes are like diamonds, a mountain of a man, fast as a cheetah), counterintuitivity pervades all of our narrative, even the most realistic.

This points to a possible need to expand what we mean by the term “supernatural.” Rather than being the domain of magic, mysticism, or the occult, an understanding of our innate folk physics and folk biology lets us understand why exactly we draw a line between natural and supernatural, and that there is nothing inherently religious or magical about things on the other side of that line. As Konika Banerjee notes (Banerjee et al.), in actuality, we likely get the directionality wrong: counterintuitive imagery isn’t religious, there’s just something about it that leads to its overrepresentation in allforms of narrative. The “supernatural” (read: counterintuitive) surrounds us, we just tend to notice only the more extreme examples found in mythology and religion. This meshes quite well with the work of Kelly and Keil that found similar rates of cross-domain transformation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Grimms’ Fairy Tales.

But if counterintuitive imagery is so ubiquitous, even (especially?) into the modern day where memory is no longer a restricting factor, what can account for its prevalence? Why would Hinduism, Ovid, and comic books all contain similar imagery? Banerjee uses the phrase “inferentially rich,” which may be on to something. If a novel counterintuitive idea breeds new ideas and images, this may make them more attractive. There is perhaps something more creative about them. This fits with one approach to creativity at the cognitive level that assumes creativity to involve the combination of two previously separate ideas in working memory (Vandervert et al.; Fink et al.). Thus, counterintuitive imagery may force us to be creative in reverse by separating the components of a hybrid that we had not encountered. But much more research is required on this specific question.

 

An Attempt to Test Some Hypotheses

Based on the standard formulations of the role of counterintuitive imagery in religions, I formulated two hypotheses that could be empirically tested. First of all, if memory is truly the main reason for increased counterintuitive imagery, we should find more of it in oral traditions than written traditions. Second, if there is something religious about counterintuitive imagery, we should find more of it in religious texts than non-religious texts. Obviously, counterintuitive imagery exists in both written and secular texts, but there should be some difference in the rates. With these hypotheses in mind, I and a group of undergraduate students began to tabulate rates of counterintuitive imagery. The project is highly labor intensive and so progress is both slow going and narrowly focused. Consequently, conclusions are so far highly tentative and really only serve as means of directing future research. But the data has been interesting, nonetheless (Dolack). To date we have gotten through the Hebrew Bible and the Harry Potter series, which is only a starting point. Obviously, this choice alone is a delimiting factor in the results, but we believe that at the very least we have established that a fuller empirical study along these lines promises to contribute to worthwhile research programs on counterintuitive imagery and narrative.

What we have done is tabulate all of the characters in both works (over 3,500 total) and, using the rubric established by Boyer and Barrett (“Natural Foundations”), marked which ones had counterintuitive elements. Specifically, we tracked whether each character had some additional, unanticipated domain capacity in psychology, biology, or physics, or whether it lacked such a capacity (marked as +psychology, or –physics, for instance). Some simplification was necessary, especially at this stage. Future work could involve the subtlety built into Justin Barrett’s coding system, particularly his distinction between “counterintuitive” and “counterschematic” (Barrett, “Coding”).

Some of our basic results showed that only 8% of characters in the Old Testament had some form of domain violation. However, if we counted not just characters, but how many times the characters were mentioned, it turns out that 33% of character mentions involve a character with a domain violation. This means that counterintuitive figures were much more likely to be mentioned multiple times than “normal” figures. This fits with the predictions of the theory – there is obviously selection pressure for counterintuitiveness in the Bible.

To test another prediction, we tabulated the percentage of character mentions involving a counterintuitive character per book of the Bible. We did percentage and not raw numbers because otherwise larger books such as Genesis would have an unfair advantage. The results look like Figure 2.

Some books have very high numbers because they only have a handful of people, all of whom are prophets, or fall into some other counterintuitive category. The test here was to see if the earlier books of the Bible (the ones more likely to date back to a purely oral tradition) had higher or lower rates of counterintuitive figures. Dating books of the Hebrew Bible is tricky as there are no exact dates to begin with, but things are further complicated by when texts were written down or edited. But using a rough ordering, my team came up with Figure 3, which shows a general decrease from older to newer texts.

The overall decrease in the percentage of domain violations fits with the model’s predictions as well. But what happens when we look at a work of contemporary fantasy? Our prediction based on theory was that rates of counterintuitive imagery would be lower, but our instincts said it would be about the same. It turns out that 45% of the characters in the Harry Potter novels are counterintuitive. That’s far higher than the 8% in the Hebrew Bible. If we look at character mentions, the disparity is much less: 49% compared with The Bible’s 33%. The percentage of mentions jumps much less than with The Bible; a counterintuitive character in Harry Potter is only slightly more likely to be seen more often than a non-counterintuitive character. We suggest this difference is because the initial rate in Harry Potter is so high and because The Bible was winnowed down and changed over centuries.

What conclusions can we draw from this admittedly narrow selection of texts? Based solely on this one example we can say that individual, modern, written works can have as much or even more counterintuitive imagery than religious or oral texts. Indeed, this is another sign of the universality of counterintuitive imagery. It also supplies support for the hypothesis that memorability may not be the only reason for the prevalence of such imagery. Harry Potter is not dependent on long-term memory for its propagation, only its appeal to readers. So perhaps counterintuitive imagery is more engaging (or exciting, or rich), and not merely more unforgettable. These results point more to what work needs to be done than to answers to our original questions.

 

Future Research

This line of research clearly needs more data from as many different sources as possible. There is no way for two works to give an accurate view of the problem; what we have been able to do is more akin to a pilot study that prepares the way for more systematic work. For starters, we should compare rates of counterintuitive imagery in cross-cultural folklore and mythology to see if there are geographical variations in rates or preferences. (Work already appears to show that counterintuitive imagery is cross-cultural. See Boyer and Ramble, and Barrett et al.) Second, we need more work on counterintuitive imagery in literary texts. What are the factors that affect counterintuitivity – genre? tradition? audience? Do counterintuitive elements appear in our metaphors at the same rate as counterintuitive images appear in folklore? Finding counterintuitive imagery in a broad range of works and types of work would suggest that it is fundamental to our imagination. Lastly, these data can be used to investigate why this type of imagery is so pervasive since it seems that memorability alone cannot be the answer. This could be a consequential undertaking, because any line of investigation that gets to a possible common root of religion and the narrative arts could also shed light on the evolutionary origins of both behaviors. Common ancestors are not just valuable in anthropology and paleontology.

 

Works Cited

Atran, Scott. “Basic Conceptual Domains.” Mind and Language 4.1–2 (1989): 7–16.

Atran, Scott. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Atran, Scott, and Ara Norenzayan. “Religion’s Evolutionary Landscape: Counterintuition, Commitment, Compassion, Communion.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27.06 (2004): 713–730.

Aubert, M., et al. “Palaeolithic Cave Art in Borneo.” Nature 564.773 (Dec. 2018): 254-257.

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Particular Works and Literary Universals: As You Like It


Posted on August 12, 2019

Patrick Colm Hogan, University of Connecticut 

Particular literary works figure in the study of literary universals principally as data from which researchers may abstract cross-cultural principles. However, the isolation of literary universals may also have consequences for our understanding of individual works. Consider story genre. I have argued that a limited number of such genres recur across a range of unrelated traditions (on the nature of these genres, see “Story”; on the cross-cultural evidence for the genres, see my The Mind and Its Stories and Affective Narratology[1]). These are not the only possible genres. However, their cross-cultural recurrence suggests their cognitive and affective salience and even predominance. For this reason, the cross-cultural genres are often more valuable in categorizing literary works or parts of works than are the historical categories to which works were assigned by their contemporaries. (In a similar way, our diagnostic categories are typically more valuable in categorizing illnesses than are the diagnostic categories to which a person’s illness was assigned by his or her contemporaries.) For example, in How Authors’ Minds Make Stories, I have contended that the cross-cultural genres do a better job of organizing Shakespeare’s plays than the traditional, fourfold scheme of comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances.[2]

In the present essay, I set out to consider a single work—Shakespeare’s As You Like It—in relation to cross-cultural story genres. Though his plays are generally open to categorization in one or another dominant genre, it is well known that Shakespeare mixed genres.[3] In the following pages, I will consider the ways in which different story trajectories in the play may be usefully analyzed as instances of different, cross-cultural genres. This analysis allows us, in turn, to isolate some of the play’s stylistic techniques and thematic concerns more clearly and to explore them more fully.[4]

More exactly, one useful method of exploring Shakespeare’s play begins by isolating the various story sequences–the story of Orlando and Oliver, that of Touchstone and Audry, and so on—then identifies their genres and determines how Shakespeare particularized those genres. Such an analysis suggests conclusions about Shakespeare’s story style and about the thematic resonances of the work, both ethico-political and psychological. However, before treating As You Like It, I should outline the main features of the relevant story genres and some of the key principles used by authors in developing particular literary works.

Cross-Cultural Story Genres, Motifs, and Development Principles

It is important to make three general points about literary universals. First, like linguistic universals, literary universals may be absolute (recurring in all traditions), near absolute, statistical (recurring in a significantly greater percentage of traditions than would be expected by chance), or typological/implicational (recurring in traditions of a specified type). Second, “unrelated” means that the traditions have distinct origins and have not influenced one another extensively. Thus, English and Twentieth-Century Chinese literatures are related; evidence for cross-cultural patterns would have to draw on Chinese and European works prior to the period of modern, European colonialism. Third, universals are not exhaustive. One can tell stories about anything. Stories are not confined to the cross-cultural genres. On the other hand, as already noted, the cross-cultural genres tend to be particularly salient and prominent; traditions appear more likely to differ in recurring patterns of particularization than in the main genres themselves.

The mention of particularization leads us to development principles. In How Authors’ Minds Make Stories, I have argued that the creation of particular stories may be understood in part as the application of development principlesto cross-cultural genre prototypes. These development principles comprise principles governing specification (where abstract elements in the prototype, such as “lovers,” are given particular features), completion (the filling in of ellipses), extension (the combination of different prototypes or motifs), and alteration (deviation from a prototype). Development principles may bear on the story itself (as just indicated) or on aspects of discourse, thus the narrational point of view, the emplotted order of information (e.g., strictly chronological or partially chronological with flashbacks), and so on.

 In analyzing As You Like It, I will be concerned with three cross-cultural story genres (romantic, heroic-usurpation, and familial) and one cross-cultural motif (remorse and conversion). In The Mind and Its Stories and Affective Narratology, I have argued that cross-cultural genres prototypically involve one or two protagonists pursuing some goal. The goal is defined by an emotion system or some integration of emotion systems. The cross-cultural elaboration of the story trajectory functions to intensify the outcome emotion. In the full, comic form of each genre, this leads to the apparent loss of the goal in the middle of the story.

The romantic genre develops out of the integration of attachment and sexual desire (as well as the reward system) in romantic love. The romantic story prototype forms around two people falling in love, but finding their union prevented by society (commonly intensified by making the blocking figures loved ones, such as parents). This social interference commonly involves a rival and thus a love triangle, and the apparently permanent separation of the lovers (often through rumors of death). However, in the full, comic version, the lovers are ultimately united and social rifts overcome.

The heroic genre is based on the emotions of pride, shame (thus a violation  of pride), and anger (due to shame), bearing on characters and on groups. In its prototypical form, this genre has an individual part and a collective part. The collective part involves a threat to the hero’s in-group (commonly the nation) from some enemy out-group. The individual part prototypically treats the usurpation of a leader’s rightful position, a usurpation often emotionally intensified by making the usurper an attachment object, such as a sibling. In the comic version, the story is commonly resolved through combat in which the usurper is defeated (often killed) and the legitimate authority reinstated.

The familial genre is based on attachment feelings. It concerns the separation and reunion of family members. The separation may be intentional on the part of the parents or children, and the reasons for the separation vary. The reunion is often less joyous than one might anticipate, given that the parents’ age may imply that this reunion will soon be cut short by their death. It may also involve feelings of guilt and remorse for the initial separation.

Finally, in The Mind and Its Stories, I distinguish story genres from story motifs. Story genres are derived from emotion-defined goal pursuit, as just explained. Motifs, in contrast, are types of event sequence that may be incorporated into various genres as they are not linked intrinsically with any genre-defining goal.[5] Like genres, some particular motifs are cross-cultural, while others are not. For example, the quest is often cited as a cross-cultural literary structure.[6] In my account, a quest does not define a genre, but a cross-cultural motif that may be incorporated into any genre. For example, the usurped hero or the struggling lover or the abandoned child—that is, types of character from the universal genres (heroic, romantic, and familial, respectively)–may undertake a quest in the service of regaining his or her kingdom, being joined in marriage with his or her beloved, or being reunited with his or her family. (A motif may, of course, be elaborated into a full story. But that is only because anything may be elaborated into a full story. That does not make everything into a cross-cultural genre.) In As You Like It, the motif I have in mind is, roughly, that of remorse leading to self-reformation or “conversion” in a broad sense. This motif often appears at the conclusion of heroic works in what I have called the “epilogue of suffering” (see chapter four of The Mind); it leads to the hero’s abandonment of the very goals he or she had striven for (and even achieved) in the rest of the story.

The Stories of As You Like It

The first scene of the play introduces us to the story of Orlando and Oliver, a reduced or deflated version of the heroic usurpation story. It is “reduced” in the sense that it concerns family relations rather than a nation. However, it involves the same denial of social position and even a murder (or assassination) plot. This scaling down of the heroic usurpation is facilitated by the fact that the national usurpation story is often intensified by being familial in the sense of involving betrayal of the hero by a family member. For simplicity (and as a sort of homage to Russian formalist practices), I will refer to the narrative trajectories through abbreviations. This first heroic usurpation story is HU1 (“heroic usurpation 1”).

One stylistic feature of Shakespeare’s writing is his tendency to develop parallel story sequences. Sometimes he invents them; sometimes he draws them from his sources (which he presumably found appealing in part due to the parallel stories). He frequently treats these parallel stories in contiguous scenes. In keeping with this, I.ii introduces the backstory to a more standard heroic usurpation story (HU2), also one involving brothers, that of Dukes Frederick and Senior. In addition, it introduces our first family separation story (FS1), that of Rosalind and Duke Senior, which results from HU2. This scene continues HU1 as well, by thwarting Oliver’s plot to have Orlando killed. The combat between Oliver and the wrestler is drawn from the source, with the important difference that the latter is (presumably) not killed.[7] This allows the possibility that no irreversible damage is done by the main characters in the course of the play (a point that bears on Shakespeare’s development of heroic stories, as we will see). This wrestling match is not only part of HU1, but also part of the first romantic story of the play (R1)—that of Rosalind and Orlando. In the love story, it represents the common device of a contest in which the lover impresses the beloved with his manly skills. Shakespeare not only parallels, but also frequently integrates his separate story sequences, as in this crossing of HU1 with R1. We find another case of this sort when Duke Frederick suggests that Orlando’s father sided with Duke Senior in Duke Frederick’s usurpation. This intertwining of HU1 and HU2 will be extended later in the play.

The third scene allows Rosalind and Celia to elaborate on Rosalind’s feelings for Orlando (thus R1). It also introduces the exile of Rosalind. This initially raises the possibility of Rosalind and Celia being separated. But Celia protests that “thou and I am one” and thus should not be “sund’red” (I.iii.95, 96). They therefore determine to go together into exile. Though little developed in what follows, this does introduce a second familial separation sequence (FS2), that between Celia and Duke Frederick.

Having introduced the exile of Rosalind and Celia, Shakespeare turns in II.i to the prior exiles of HU2—Duke Senior and his companions. An interesting element of this scene involves Jaques’s (reported) objection to hunting and his “weeping” over a deer that they have killed (II.i.65). Jaques “swears” that the hunters “do more usurp” than Duke Frederick (II.i.27). Here, Shakespeare draws on the model of the heroic prototype to consider hunting and tacitly analogizes Jaques’s grief (see II.i.26) to the remorse felt by the heroes in the heroic epilogue. This is then the first suggestion of the conversion motif, CM1. The motif will recur in the stories of Oliver and Frederick. It is an instance of Shakespeare’s multiplication of parallel story sequences and is not found in the source. As we will see, unlike the conversions of Oliver and Frederick, that of Jaques appears to concern promiscuity or hedonism, rather than usurpation; however, in this scene, Shakespeare connects Jaques’s conversion with usurpation in a way that appears very much like remorse.

The second scene of act two fundamentally serves to inform us that Rosalind and Celia have followed through on their plans to leave. It thereby establishes the separation of Duke Frederick and Celia, FS2. In his usual, tidy manner, Shakespeare moves in II.iii to the exile of Orlando, when faced with another assassination plot from his usurping brother. Finally, in II.iv, we see Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone in the forest, simply shifting the narrational point of view regarding HU2, FS1, and FS2.

II.v serves to develop Jaques’s melancholy, which is consistent with his motivic role relating to remorse and conversion. II.vi and II.vii principally elaborate on the condition of the exiles of HU2. II.vii further integrates the story sequences of HU1 and HU2 by having the exiles—Orlando, Duke Senior, and so on—meet. This scene also includes some slight hints of Jaques’s backstory, that he lived riotously before he became somber and reflective (see II.vii.62-69). This too points toward a (subdued) motif of remorse and conversion (CM1), already hinted at in the report of Jaques’s grief over the deer (II.i.65).

The third act begins with a further integration of the two usurpation sequences, HU1 and HU2, as Frederick threatens Oliver with dispossession if he does not capture or kill Orlando. In terms of emplotment, this revives the suspense of HU1 as it poses a new threat to Orlando, whom we might otherwise have assumed to be out of danger. The second scene involves many elements, principally developing character, provoking mirth, and serving other purposes. For our interests, the second scene most importantly sets up the relation between Oliver and Ganymede. This sequence draws on a motif found in some romantic stories (such as Shakespeare’s own Cymbeline), where one of the lovers determines to test the sincerity and durability of the other’s affection, though it recasts that motif as a sort of open joke.[8] At times, however, the joke seems to shift into a nearly real seduction of the lover being tested.[9] 

By the beginning of the fourth act, the relation between Orlando and Rosalind—in the guise of Ganymede–almost appears to constitute another story of romantic love (R2).  Of course, this is not a different love story for Rosalind, who is continuously enamored of Orlando. The question concerns just what Orlando’s feelings might be for the person he identifies as Ganymede, not Rosalind. This is particularly significant as the relation between these two is developed somewhat differently in the source. At least in my reading, Lodge’s Orlando (there called “Rosader”) is more clearly playacting. Indeed, after their first recitation of poetry in the assumed roles, Rosader asserts the falsity of their pretense. Shakespeare makes their connection—a matter of wooing “every day” in her “cote” (III.ii.417)–more evidently romantic and thus ambiguous on Orlando’s side. For example, Orlando’s phrase, “fair youth” (III.ii.377) suggests an appreciation of Ganymede’s physical beauty, in contrast with Rosader’s “gentle swain” (Lodge). Orlando speaks directly to Rosalind/Ganymede of kissing her/him rather than merely talking (IV.i.68), whereas Rosader’s only reference to kissing occurs in a poem and refers (somewhat confusingly) to “Love” kissing “roses” (Lodge). In connection with this, there seems to be some bawdy ambiguity in Orlando’s plea to “have me” (IV.i.111) following Ganymede’s “more coming-on disposition” (IV.i.106-107), and his subsequent urging of Celia/Aliena, “Pray thee marry us” (IV.i.120). In contrast, when Lodge’s Aliena suggests a mock marriage, Rosader agrees and “laugh[s]”; moreover, the entire business is characterized as a “jesting match,” again stressing the distance between the people (Rosader and Ganymede) and the roles they are playing (Rosader and Rosalynde).

Punctuating the development of R2 (Orlando and Ganymede), Shakespeare indulges his penchant for parallel story sequences. One of these is drawn from the source. In III.v, we find the love triangle of Silvius, Phebe, and Ganymede (R3). Before this, in III.iii, we find the romantic story of Touchstone and Audry (R4), added by Shakespeare. This is a very minimal story in that the obstacles to their union seem to be largely a matter of getting the marriage ceremony set up. Though parallel with the story of Orlando and Rosalind (R1), both these stories are deromanticized. Phebe seems to have no interest in Silvius whatsoever. In the end, she marries him because she lost a bet. As to Touchstone and Audry, the former makes a mockery of the entire process from start to finish. This is not to say that their marriage is doomed. Touchstone is certainly sharp-tongued, but he seems fundamentally benevolent. Mockery is his profession; as he himself says, “we that have good wits have much to answer for. We must be flouting; we cannot hold” (V.i.11-12). The audience should probably not take that mockery too seriously with respect to his marriage. Nonetheless, we might infer from these cases that the romanticization of love may be mistaken—even in the case of Rosalind and Orlando (as well as Celia and Oliver, to which we will turn shortly). The idea is consistent with some suggestions of the larger organization in story trajectories, as we will see.That deromanticization may be suggested also by the odd scene, IV.ii, in which Jaques makes jokes about cuckoldry and horns—a tiresomely repetitive form of humor that Shakespeare incomprehensibly found irresistible.

The third scene of the fourth act resolves HU1. This occurs when Oliver’s life is endangered. Orlando is tempted by “revenge” (IV.iii.129), thus the violent response to usurpation, the usual development of the heroic plot. But he foregoes this response, saving his brother’s life. This leads to Oliver’s “conversion” (IV.iii.137). Thus, we have a second instance of the conversion motif (CM2), in this case operating not as an epilogue for the heroic story, but as the resolution to that story itself, a resolution that substitutes for the violence and destruction that would have given rise to the epilogue’s remorse. In How Authors’ Minds Make Stories, I argued that Shakespeare’s use of the heroic structure may allow a genuinely comic conclusion insofar as no irreversible loss—most obviously, death–has occurred. His ideal outcome appears to be a matter of forgiveness and reconciliation, not violent retribution.  (As Oliver puts it, “kindness” is “ever nobler than revenge” [IV.iii.129].) In this case, the main events and possible motives or outcomes (e.g., Rosader/Orlando taking “revenge”) are largely found in the source for the play. Moreover, in Lodge, Oliver (there called “Saladyne”) does experience remorse and a sort of conversion (cf. his resolution to do “penance” and be a pilgrim to “the Holy Land” [Lodge]). This does not make the point any less Shakespearean, since there must be aspects of a source work that drew Shakespeare to it initially. Moreover, in Shakespeare’s play, the motif recurs not only in HU1, but more importantly in HU2, the other heroic usurpation sequence, as we will see. Here, as elsewhere, the enhanced story symmetry or multiplication of story parallels is characteristic of Shakespeare, no less than the thematic preference.

This scene also introduces us to yet another love story (R5). This one is between Oliver and Celia. Moreover, in the typical, Shakespearean fashion, it is integrated with HU1, as it is allowed by the resolution of the brother conflict in that story.

The first scene of the final act develops the Touchstone-Audry love story (R4) by introducing and summarily dismissing a rival. The second scene elaborates on the Oliver-Celia romance (R5). That scene ends with a sort of cliffhanger bearing on the possible marriages in the stories R1 (Rosalind-Orlando), R3 (Phebe-Silvius), and R5 (Celia-Oliver). The following scene simply extends this cliffhanger to R4 (Touchstone-Audry).

The final scene resolves most of the story sequences in short order. Rosalind reveals her identity, which leads to her official reunion with her father and the resolution of the Silvius-Ganymede competition. This, in turn, enables the marriage of Silvius and Phebe, who are wed at the same time as Orlando and Rosalind, Touchstone and Audry, and Celia and Oliver. This resolves FS1, R3, R1, R4, and R5 simultaneously, leaving only HU2 (Duke Senior’s usurpation), FS2 (the separation of Celia and her father), and perhaps R2 (the [imaginary?] relation between Orlando and Ganymede).

Before going on to these, I should remark briefly on one peculiar aspect of the resolutions we have already treated. In Shakespeare’s play, Rosalind encounters her father well before she reveals herself to him (see III.iv.32-36). It is not at all clear why she did not reveal herself to her father when they first met.[10] The male disguise was supposedly for her and Celia’s protection (I.ii.106-120), though they did have a male companion in the form of Touchstone. But this is clearly unnecessary when her father and his retinue are present. The most obvious explanation has to do with her testing of Orlando. There may, however, be other possibilities, suggested by unresolved parts of the work. (We will return to this point.)

The Frederick-Senior usurpation story (HU2) is resolved in a striking departure from the source text. Specifically, Lodge presents us with a typical heroic resolution in which combat leads to the death of the usurper. But, in Shakespeare, the usurper is “converted” (V.iv.161) to a religious life. He abandons the world and returns the kingdom to the legitimate leader, Duke Senior. This is a third instance of the motif of conversion (CM3). Like the story of Oliver, it recalls the heroic epilogue, but in fact replaces the heroic ending, and thus avoids the violence that entails a remorseful epilogue. Moreover, in keeping with CM1, Jaques leaves the rejoicing society to join the converted Duke Frederick. Thus, two of the three “converts” (Frederick and Jaques) retreat from the world into spiritual pursuits. Indeed, the third convert, Oliver, though now married, has also determined to abandon wealth and worldly things to live a pastoral life with Celia (V.ii.12), aptly-named for Heaven.[11] These points are consistent with the generally critical attitude Shakespeare took toward heroic violence.[12] They suggest a thematic repudiation of revenge (by the usurped heroes) and an advocacy of moral self-examination (by the usurping villains). In terms of emotion, love, compassion, and remorse seem to be prized in these stories (HU1 and HU2), not the usual heroic sentiments of anger and pride. Indeed, in both cases, the resolution is more familial than heroic, as the alienated brothers are directly or indirectly reconciled.[13]

On the other hand, Duke Frederick does not rejoin the group and this reminds us that the second family separation story (FS2)—that of Celia and her father—remains unresolved. This may be merely an oversight on Shakespeare’s part. But I will conclude by considering another possibility which connects this unresolved separation with other peculiarities of these stories—the apparent romance of Orlando and Ganymede (R2), the delay of Rosalind in revealing her identity, and the emotionally unsatisfactory quality of the Silvius-Phebe resolution.

Specifically, Celia chooses to be separated from her father in order not to be “sund’red” from her “sweet girl,” Rosalind (I.iii.96), as “thou and I am one” (I.iii.95).[14] Removed from the identity and situation of the speakers, such an appeal would most obviously be taken to express romantic love. Hyperbole of this sort may of course found in friendship. In consequence, I do not wish to make too much of it on its own. But, in relation to the other unexplained or unresolved story sequence in the play—the hint of homoerotic feelings on the part of Orlando for Ganymede–it would appear reasonable to think of it as involving at least a suggestion of romance.[15] In this case, Rosalind would be the forbidden beloved; the separation of Rosalind and Celia would represent the separation of the lovers, and so on. Construed in this way, the exile of Celia is not most importantly part of a familial story, but of a semi-concealed romantic story (R6)—indeed, a romantic story that is relatively prototypical. Of course, in romantic works, parents and children are often reconciled eventually. The possibility of such a reconciliation remains open in this case, particularly given that both Celia and her father appear to be remaining in the forest. However, such a reunion is not so important to the romantic story as it would be to a family separation story; thus, its explicit articulation is less necessary.

As to the Silvius/Phebe/Ganymede story (R3), I suspect that most recipients of the play—audience members or readers–would agree that it is emotionally unresolved (even though we are given a narrative conclusion). There is, indeed, something almost distressing about Silvius and Phebe marrying for no apparent reason other than Phebe losing a wager. The future is hardly promising for either the husband or the wife, given this start to their union. One way of reading their wedding is not as a comic resolution of a Silvius/Phebe love story (where Ganymede is the rival), but as the tragic conclusion of a Phebe/Ganymede love story (where Silvius is the rival), thus R7. Moreover, it does not take a great deal of hermeneutic subtlety to see homoerotic elements here. Phebe’s radical change from a votary of Diana to one of Venus may have to do with the appeal of Ganymede’s presumably feminine features.[16]

Understood thus, the overall pattern of story resolution and non-resolution in the play might be taken to suggest something along the following lines. Orlando and Celia have both heterosexual and same-sex romantic feelings, represented in the hazy, uncertain R2 and R6. The heterosexual feelings (R1 and R5) are clear and explicit. The same-sex feelings, however, are unclear—suggested, but obscurely. It is precisely these implicit, indirectly acknowledged feelings that are sustained, in their ambiguous state, by the preservation of Rosalind’s disguise, itself made possible by her unexplained delay in revealing her identity to her father. It is also precisely these same-sex trajectories that remain unresolved, perhaps because they were unresolvable—either for social reasons or simply because some of our choices in life preclude the pursuit of other interests, or both.[17] A similar pattern is to be found in R3 and R7, the stories of Silvius, Phebe, and Ganymede/Rosalind. The difference here is that it is never clear Phebe has heterosexual feelings at all; related to this, the heterosexual story sequence (R3), though superficially resolved, is unsatisfying. It is resolved formally–in terms of what happens in the story, including Phebe’s statement about a (very speedy) change in her “fancy” (V.iv.150)[18]—but it is not really resolved emotionally, at least for any audience member who reflects on the marriage.

A Note on Future Research

A great deal of literary study involves the careful analysis or interpretation of individual works. Research on literary universals necessarily considers broad patterns beyond individual works. However, this does not mean that universals are irrelevant to particularistic analysis or interpretation. There is clearly a great deal of scope for future treatment of universal story structures and motifs in individual works. In addition, while focusing on story—thus, the actions and events that constitute “what happens” in As You Like It–I set aside the “discourse” aspects of the work, which is to say, the plot selection (what is presented from the story and when it is presented) and the manner of presentation (e.g., depicted onstage or reported by a character). Research on cross-cultural aspects of discourse too should prove a fruitful area for articulating general principles and for analyzing particular works.

Conclusion

We began with the question of to what extent the study of universals might contribute to our understanding of individual works in their particularity. I focused on story universals—genres and motifs—which allow us to isolate particular story trajectories and to consider the ways in which such trajectories repeat, specify, complete, integrate, or alter universals. Considering As You Like It in these terms, and in relation to Shakespeare’s source for the play, we were able to see some patterns in Shakespeare’s story style as well as some thematic concerns that may have been less clear, or even obscure, otherwise.

The stylistic patterns include the multiplication of parallel story sequences, sometimes with a systematic alteration, such as heavily ironic deromanticization, as in the Touchstone-Audry love story. They also include the causal intersection of distinct story lines. The multiplication may be an instance of a more abstract and universal stylistic technique of symmetry enhancement, which may apply not only to sequences of events, but to scenes, the structure of dramatic acts, the generation of characters, or such verbal practices as parallel phrasing.

The thematic concerns include Shakespeare’s preference for repentance and examination of conscience, or “conversion,” over revenge and violence—or, alternatively, his preference for familial reconciliation rather than heroic victory. Perhaps more significantly, somewhat unexpected patterns in the resolution and non-resolution of story sequences may suggest a subdued, partially denied concern with the place of same-sex romantic love in the lives of individuals and in the practices and possibilities offered by society.[19] In short, the preceding analysis suggests that the study of universals, though by its nature general, can and does have consequences for our understanding of particularity. That particularity includes style and theme. It also includes what some psychoanalytically-influenced critics refer to as “symptomatic” elements, concerns that haunt an author, but that he or she has not been able to work through in a systematic and clarifying manner, either for others or for himself or herself.

But that is not all. This examination of As You Like It suggests more general, theoretical ideas as well. Specifically, I take the general structure of the universal story prototypes to tell us something about the ways in which our emotions systems and our processes of simulation (or imagination) operate.[20] In its complex patterns of resolved and unresolved story sequences, As You Like Itindicates some further points about these systems and processes. Specifically, the preceding analysis suggests that we all are regularly engaged in multiple, simultaneous or alternating forms of simulation or imagination. These forms of simulation partially overlap, but also diverge from one another in some respects. Thus, Orlando has complex and various imaginations of Rosalind (whom he has apparently seen only briefly and in the past); these partially converge with his simulations of the features and behavior of Ganymede, as well as his possible interaction with Ganymede. (The same general points hold for other characters as well.)

These various simulations are necessarily interwoven with emotion, including attachment feelings and sexual desire. That interweaving is inevitable because simulation is motivated and emotion systems provide us with motives for both action and thought. The variability of our simulations is in part cognitive, but in part emotive, suggesting that we think of various people in often contradictory ways and emotionally respond to them in often ambivalent ways. Indeed, in some degree, we may respond to a given person as masculine in one context and as feminine in another context; perhaps there is even a sense in which we may sometimes tacitly respond to someone as alternatively male and female (not just masculine and feminine), even if we would never self-consciously affirm such variability.

Finally, some of these simulated trajectories (or imagined stories) may be resolved, while others are not open to resolution. That irresolvablility is sometimes social, as when same-sex union is not accepted. But it is sometimes personal or psychological, in the sense that one sometimes cannot in practice satisfy all one’s emotion systems and simulations. For example, Orlando cannot be united with both Ganymede and Rosalind; similarly, Phebe cannot have the socially acceptable union with Ganymede along with the socially unacceptable union with Rosalind. In a sense, then, none of these stories is fully resolved. But Orlando seems pretty well satisfied with Rosalind alone, thus giving his story a high degree of resolution. The situation is very different with Phebe.[21]

 

Works Cited

Booker, Christopher. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. New York: Bloomsbury, 2005.

Danson, Lawrence. “The Shakespeare Remix: Romance, Tragicomedy, and Shakespeare’s ‘Distinct Kind.’” In Guneratne, 101-118.

de Grazia, Margreta and Stanley Wells, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.

DiGangi, Mario. “Queering the Shakespearean Family.” Shakespeare Quarterly 47.3 (1996): 269-290.

Gilman, Albert, ed. As You Like It. New York: New American Library, 1986.

Guneratne, Anthony, ed. Shakespeare and Genre: From Early Modern Inheritances to Postmodern Legacies. New York: Palgrave, 2012.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2011.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. How Authors’ Minds Make Stories. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013.

Hogan, Patrick Colm.The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. “Story.” The Literary Universals Project(2016), https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/2016/11/20/story/.

Hope, Jonathan and Michael Witmore. “The Hundredth Psalm to the Tune of ‘Green Sleeves’: Digital Approaches to Shakespeare’s Language of Genre.” Shakespeare Quarterly 61 (2010): 357-390.

Lodge, Thomas. Rosalynde or, Euphues’ Golden Legacy. Ed. Edward Baldwin. Boston: Ginn, 1910. (Unpaginated Kindle edition.)

Marcus, Leah. “Anti-Conquest and As You Like It.” Shakespeare Studies 42 (2014): 170-195.

McEvoy, Sean.Shakespeare: The Basics. 3rded. New York: Routledge, 2012.

Nardizzi, Vin. “Shakespeare’s Queer Pastoral Ecology: Alienation around Arden.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 23.3 (2016): 564–582.

Neely, Carol Thomas. Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2004.

Segal, Janna. “‘And Browner Than Her Brother’: ‘Misprized’ Celia’s Racial Identity and Transversality in As You Like It.” Shakespeare 4.1 (2008): 1-21.

Snyder, Susan. “The Genres of Shakespeare’s Plays.” In de Grazia and Wells, 83-97.

Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. In Gilman, 35-140.

Traub, Valerie. “Gender and Sexuality in Shakespeare.” In de Grazia and Wells, 129-146.

Wells, Stanley. Shakespeare, Sex, and Love. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010.

 Notes

[1] The latter book also includes some (admittedly brief) references to other work in narrative theory (Greimas, Propp, Genette, and others) in relation to the study of emotion and story universals.

[2] For a clarifying, historical account of the traditional genre classification, see Snyder.

[3] Danson goes so far as to say that “the mixed mode is the Shakespearean default mode” (102).One referee for this essay suggested that the traditional classification has perhaps been supported by the statistical analyses of Hope and Witmore. Since this essay is not about the classification scheme for Shakespeare’s plays (being an interpretive analysis of one play), I cannot treat the issue at length here. However, it is worth making three points. First, my claim here is about story structures, specifically that the best way to categorize the story structure of the plays is by reference to the cross-cultural genres. There could of course be other patterns to the plays, depending on the period when they were written, the sceneswhere they are located, or other variables. Second, Hope and Witmore do not in fact find that stylistic features perfectly align with traditional genres. For example, they find “the early history plays massing in one part of the diagram” and “the later history plays, along with some of the tragedies, clustering in another” (390). Finally, even Hope and Witmore findapparent anomalies. For example, Othello clusters with comedies. This is, of course,not because it has a happy ending or makes us laugh. It is, however, related to the fact that most of the works traditionally categorized as comedies are at least in part romantic works (in the cross-cultural scheme)—and so is Othello. In this respect, then, the cross-cultural scheme may fit even Hope and Witmore’s analysis better than the traditional categories that Hope and Witmore presuppose.

[4] By “theme,” I mean implications of the play that are designed to systematically affect the audience’s thought about or response to the real world, the world outside the theater—for example, their judgments about political events. However, by “designed,” I do not mean that the author has self-consciously articulated a thematic concern to himself or herself. Rather, I take it that authors have some sense of whether a particular version of the work is “right,” thus whether it seems likely to produce the (implicitly and often vaguely) desired effects. But the author need not be able to articulate those effects, and may even be mistaken if he or she undertakes to do so. Theme is that part of the desired effects that bears systematically on the audience’s thought about or response to the real world.

[5] One referee worried that my “approach” to motifs differs from that in folklore studies and that I should make this clear. In fact, I would not say that I am treating the same category of object as folklorists, but adopting a different theory. Rather, I am simply using the word “motif” in this particular manner. It is true that my usage is related to my theory of narrative universals (e.g., the motif of the quest is bound up with my account of how space is organized in stories). But the fact that I am using the same term as another writer does not mean that we are talking about the same object. Indeed, that is the point of defining how I use the term, “motif.”

[6] See, for example, chapter four of Booker.

[7] For the most part, the similarities and differences between Shakespeare’s play and Lodge’s work are not consequential for the main purpose of the present essay. The study of universals is or not significant for our interpretation and analysis of individual works—either Shakespeare’s or Lodge’s—independent of whether a particular event is or is not shared by the two of those works. After all, a particular event in Shakespeare’s play is there and bears on interpreting the play, whether Shakespeare got the idea for it from Lodge, some biographical experiences, a free associative process, or something else. On the other hand, the relation between Shakespeare’s and Lodge’s works is important for other considerations, such as claims about Shakespeare’s style or about distinctive features of either work.

[8] The relevance of this motif is perhaps more evident in the source, where Ganymede expresses doubt about whether Rosader/Orlando is “deeply enamoured” of Rosalynde (Lodge), and urges him to turn his attention toward Alinda/Celia instead.

[9] The homoerotic quality of this relation has, of course, been developed by directors and analyzed by critics. For an account of a particularly influential staging of the play, see McEvoy (78-82). As to critics, Wells for example summarizes a common view, writing that “Shakespeare shows us Orlando becoming confused between desire for an imaginary Rosalind and for the boy Ganymede whom the real Rosalind impersonates. It is an ambivalence that would have been enhanced when the real Rosalind was played by a boy, and that would have been signaled and emphasized by the use of the name ‘Ganymede,’ a common term for a man’s young male sexual partner” (106-107). However, as far as I am aware, such analysis has not been developed in relation to prototypical story sequences and their associated expectations. Indeed, the theoretical context for such readings has been very different, as suggested by Segal’s brief summary statement that “As You Like It has become a centrepiece in feminist and/or queer discussions concerning early modern English gender and sexual prescriptions and the theatre’s role in contesting or reconsolidating a patriarchal and/or heteronormative social structure” (1). To some extent, the present reading contests such analyses, in that it does not construe the thematic or emotional points at issue in the same terms; however, I take it that the present analysis is more often complementary to such feminist and queer interpretations.

[10] In Lodge, there is a problem also, though it is slightly attenuated. Upon meeting her father, Rosalynde soon reveals herself. But it is not clear why she does not seek to meet him earlier, since she learns of his whereabouts from Rosader/Orlando, who explains that he is living in the company of “the unfortunate Gerismond [Senior]” (Lodge).

[11] Jay Farness pointed out to me that there is some ambiguity as to whether or not Oliver will follow through on this resolution in the changed circumstances of the ending. Jaques does suggest that Oliver will be returning to his lands (V.iv.189). But the counter-argument here is that Jaques has no reason to know about Oliver’s intentions. Moreover, Oliver had said that he was handing over the family estate to Orlando; this indicates that he was opting for the pastoral life even if he could return to the estate (V.ii.10-12), in which case the changed circumstances should not matter.

[12] With the exception of Henry V; see Hogan, How 56-58.

[13] Other critics have noted that there is something un-heroic and un-military about Shakespeare’s play. For example, Marcus interprets the play as involving a critique of colonialism, with Jaques as a sort of repudiated colonial figure. I obviously believe Marcus was onto something. However, by relating the story sequences of the play to cross-cultural prototypes, I have come to a much different interpretation of these un-heroic aspects of the play, and of Jaques’s retreat at the end. I take it that my interpretation is incompatible with Marcus’s view of Jaques, but it is at least potentially compatible with her more significant claims about anti-colonialism.

[14] This echoes Celia’s/Alinda’s even more suggestive assertion in the source that the two share “a secret love” and that they “have two bodies and one soul” (Lodge).

[15] This has been stressed by some recent critics, though (again) in a different theoretical context, which leads to different development of the shared idea (see, for example, Nardizzi).

[16] This is clearer in Lodge, through Phoebe’s stress on Ganymede’s “beauty.”

[17] Again, prior critics have recognized the homoerotic elements in the play; however, they have not analyzed these elements in relation to the genre of particular story sequences. In part for this reason, and in part because their theoretical presuppositions are very different from my own, their conclusions about these elements is often quite different from mine. For example, in a pathbreaking essay, DiGangi maintains that “the marriages succeed to the extent that premarital female homoerotic desire and post-marital male homoerotic desire have been successfully banished” (271). My view is rather that most of the characters in the play have some degree of bisexual desire, manifest in different romantic storylines, more or less following a romantic prototype; however, social constraints and the limitations imposed by life choices prevent the homoerotic storylines from reaching a resolution. This leads to unresolved heteroerotic storylines only in the case of Phebe, for in her case the heteroerotic storyline is not reciprocal; again, she has been married off to the undesired rival, not the beloved. Despite these and other differences, however, I believe that the present reading is more complementary to DiGangi’s than contradictory of it. Certainly, his highly informative treatment of the literary and social history that contextualize Shakespeare’s play adds greatly to our understanding of same-sex desire in the play, and it does so in a way that would not really be possible for an interpretation based solely on literary universals. On the other hand, the point of the present essay is not that interpretation based on literary universals is sufficient or complete, merely that it provides insights not readily available otherwise.

[18] Some critics have seen such swift alterations as part of the play’s “destabilizing” of hegemonic norms of gender and sexuality. Though I am very skeptical of such a conclusion on this particular point, it is clear that the play can serve to challenge some rigid assumptions about gender and sexuality (for a nuanced discussion of this topic, see chapter four of Neely).

[19] Of course, this analysis in terms of particular, same-sex, romantic storylines can be developed only if one first recognizes that “homoerotic desire is evinced in Shakespeare’s plays” (Traub 142). But this initial recognition seems to be more a matter of not suppressing relatively clear indications, rather than one of particular hermeneutic insight.

[20] I have treated these topics at length in The Mindand Howrespectively.

[21] An earlier version of this essay was part of the seminar on As You Like It seminar of the 2019 annual convention of the Shakespeare Association of America. I am grateful to the seminar participants for their comments, questions, and suggestions.