The Structure of Literature

The Structure of Literature is a 1954 book of

In the early 1930s, Goodman informally audited Columbia University classes taught by philosopher Richard McKeon. When McKeon became a dean at the University of Chicago, Goodman accompanied him and became a humanities graduate student.^[1] McKeon was a central figure of what became known as the neo-Aristotelian Chicago School of literary criticism,^[3] despite not identifying as a Aristotelian himself.^[4] In an interview, Goodman said that he had been brought to Chicago to work on aesthetics and came to write on practical criticism and Aristotelian poetics.^[5] The Chicago School neo-Aristotelians were not a consistent school of thought but shared a common interest in (1) the history of literary theory, (2) the methodology and terminology of Aristotle's Poetics, and (3) skepticism towards the New Criticism movement.^[3] The Chicago Aristotelians emphasized categorical elements of a literary work, such as plot and genre.^[6]

Goodman finished his doctoral dissertation by 1940,^[7] yet did not file it or receive his formal degree for over a decade, being unwilling to pay for its typesetting.^[8] The dissertation, The Formal Analysis of Poems, compiled studies Goodman had written for courses on criticism and the analysis of ideas.^[7] It took until 1954 for him to receive his degree, when the university accepted a copy of the newly titled The Structure of Literature in lieu of the dissertation's typescript.^[9] The central points of this late dissertation, according to literary critic Kingsley Widmer, were published in Goodman's 1934 article on aesthetics in The Journal of Philosophy.^[1]

McKeon and Benjamin Nelson, another Chicago professor, convinced the University of Chicago Press to publish the dissertation. Goodman revised the published edition^[9] to include new academic material, including a section from Goodman's 1947 analysis of the works of novelist Franz Kafka^[7] and a glossary.^[9] The University of Chicago Press published a cloth hardback edition on April 30, 1954. A paperback edition from the Press's Phoenix Books imprint followed in 1962, as did a Spanish translation from Siglo XXI in 1971.^[7] The book is dedicated to Goodman's teachers: Richard McKeon, Rudolf Carnap, and Morris Cohen.^[10]

Contents

Goodman's book seeks to create and demonstrate a method of literary analysis that he calls "inductive formal analysis".^[11] By this method, Goodman defines a formal structure within an isolated literary work, finding how parts of the work interact with each other to form a whole, and uses those definitions to study other works.^[12] The book applies this method to a series of individual literary works (plays, poems, verse, novels, short stories, and film) as examples, using a combination of close reading and genre discussion.^[13] Goodman restricts his technical approach to how the parts within the work's structure interact, and avoids making value judgments of the works themselves, apart from describing "bad" literature as not integrating its parts.^[14] He discusses subtleties within a literary work such as a "hidden plot" (i.e. hidden to the protagonist) and the involvement of characters, followed by how those elements work or do not work together.^[15] His analysis considers each work's independent structure.^[2]

The first chapter differentiates "inductive formal analysis" from other methods of formal criticism.

Goodman ends with an analysis of Pierre Corneille's 17th-century tragedy Horace that uses his inductive formal method alongside other critical modes to highlight the play's psychology of war. He criticizes Corneille's decision to not portray the real atrocities of war.^[18]

Reception

Reviews listed in Book Review Digest were of mixed favor and disfavor.^[21] In his glossary section, Goodman acknowledges that his term definitions are wide and unspecific, and that the reader will find that either annoying or entertaining. The poet Nicholas Moore wrote that this effect on the reader extends to the lively book as whole: irritating or amusing in style, with a persuasive, painstaking scholar underneath.^[2]

Critics described the method as falling short of its aims.^[22] Based on Goodman's applied examples, philosopher Henry David Aiken did not believe that "inductive formal analysis" constituted a new type of analysis.^[12] Literary critic Harry Levin agreed that the method had no "special light to cast"^[23] and the poet Nicholas Moore said, despite describing the book as a "tour de force", that Goodman had not entirely fulfilled his argument.^[2] Goodman's psychological insight and "incisive asides" engaged some reviewers,^[2][24][18] but as one critic put it, they were the insights of a poet and outsider rather than of a theorist.^[25] As Books Abroad wrote, these striking asides became lost in Goodman's attempts to create an Aristotelian analytic method.^[24]

In The Structure of Literature, Goodman repeatedly concedes that he is abstracting structures within the work rather than probing for the meaning of the text itself.

Among Goodman's analyses of individual texts, some stood out to reviewers. Two praised his analyses of the translation of Baudelaire's "La Géante",[2]^[35] particularly when he focused less on structure and wrote with greater clarity.^[35] The Times Literary Supplement complimented Goodman's Catullus analysis,^[2] but Levin said his reading had no textual basis.^[23] Widmer considered Goodman's metrical analysis to be hackneyed and beyond the scope of his method.^[26] Reviewers criticized some of Goodman's plot definitions as being either unfitting,^[42] imprecise,^[32] circularly defined,^[30] or lacking consistency or rigor in their application.^[43] For instance, although Goodman defines Oedipus and Philoctetes as serious plots, one reviewer wrote that the two are so disparate in final effects that the categorization loses its definitional value.^[32]

Legacy

The poet