*Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, Penguin
[Part 1] Definitions and Distinctions
<Chapter 1>Literature and Literary Study
문학과 문학의 연구는 구별되어야 한다. 문학 연구의 두 극단적 해결책은 첫째, 과학적 역사적 방법과 동일하게 사실의 단순한 수집, 일반적인 법칙의 정립이고, 둘째는 문학 연구가 학문이라는 것을 부인하고, 문학의 ‘이해’의 개별성, 개인성, 독창성을 확인하는 것이다. 하지만 문학은 이 두 극단의 어느 한 방법으로 해결될 수 없는 특질을 지니고 있다. 상보적인 노력이 요구된다.
<Chapter 2>The Nature of Literature
'Literature'라는 말은 무엇을 의미하는가? 모든 문헌을 다 포함하는가? 아니면 ‘위대한 책’으로 제한되는가? 이것보다는, ‘Literature'를 ’Imaginative Literature'로 제한하는 것이 바람직할 것이다. 그렇다면 무엇이 ‘Imaginative Literature'인가 하는 문제가 대두될 수 있는데, 그것은 언어의 과학적 사용과 언어의 문학적 사용의 측면으로 나누어 생각해 볼 수 있다.
<Chapter 3>The Function of Literature
전체적으로 볼 때 문학의 기능은 기본적으로 바뀌지 않았다고 할 수 있으며, 그 기능은 Horace가 말한 dulce(sweet)와 utile(useful)의 결합이라고 볼 수 있다.
*On the whole, the reading of a history of aesthetics or poetics leaves one with the impresstion that the nature and the function of literature, so far as they can be put into large genearal conceptual terms, for comparison and contrast with other human activities and values, have not basically changed.
The history of aesthetics might almost be summarized as a dialectic in which the thesis and counter-thesis are Horace's dulce and utile: poetry is sweet and useful. (29--30)
<Chapter 4> Literary Theory, Criticism, and History
문학 이론은 문학의 원칙이나, 범주, 표준 등을 연구하는 것이고, 문학 비평과 문학사는 ‘구체적인 작품’을 연구하는 것으로 구별할 수 있다. 문학 비평이나 문학사에 있어서 상대주의나 절대주의는 각각 오류가 있으며, 투시주의(Perspectivism)적인 태도가 요청된다.
*It seems best to draw attention to these distinctions by describing as 'literary theory' the study of the principles of literature, its categories, criteria, and the like, and by differentiating studies of concrete works of art as either 'literary criticism' (primarily static in approach) or 'literary history'. (39)
*The whole supposed immunity of the literary historian to criticism and theory is thoroughly false, and that for a simple reason: every work of art is existing now, is directly accessible to observation, and is a solution of certain artistic problems whether it was composed yesterday or a thousand years ago. It cannot be analysed, charaterized, or evaluated without a constant recourse to critical principles. 'The literary historian must be a critic even in order to be an historian.' (44)
<Chapter 5>General, Comparative, and National Literature
비교 문학과 민족 문학을 대조해 보는 장. 비교 문학적인 고찰의 필요성이 강조되고 있다.
[Part 2] Preliminary Operations
<Chapter 6>The Ordering and Establishing of Evidence
문학 연구를 시작하기 위해서는 판본이 여러 개일 경우 그것을 수집, 정돈할 필요가 있다. 필사본과 인쇄본의 경우 문제가 다르며, 편집도 중요하다. 주석을 다는 문제, 편지의 편집, 위작이나 정확한 저자의 판명 등은 옛시대일수록 어렵다.
[Part 3]The Extrinsic Approach to the Study of Literature
<Introduction>
문학 연구에 있어서 널리 퍼져 있는 방식은 작품의 배경과 환경, 외부적 원인을 연구하는 것이다. 이것은 어느 정도의 타당성은 지니고 있으나, 이것이 작품과의 유일한 연계라고 보는 극단주의는 오류이다.
<Chapter 7>Literature and Biography
문학 작품과 그 사람의 전기적 상황은 상관 관계가 있음은 분명하나, 문학 작품에 나타난 내용이 그의 전기적 상황을 그대로 반영한 것은 아니라는 점을 명심해야 한다.
예술 작품이 단순히 체험의 구체화가 아니라는 것을 전기적 접근은 망각하고 있다.
*We should certainly distinguish two types of poets, the objective and the subjective: those who, like Keats and T. S. Eliot, stress the poet's 'negative capability', his openness to the world, the obliteration of his concrete personality, and the opposite type of the poet, who aims at displaying his personality, wants to draw a self-portrait, to confess, to express himself. (77)
*The biographical approach forgets that a work of art is not simply the embodiment of experience but always the latest work in a series of such work; it is drama, a novel, a poem determined, so far as it is determined at all, by literary tradition and convention. The biographical approach actually obscures a proper comprehension fo the literary process, since it breaks up the order of literary tradition to substitute the life-cycle of an individual. (78)
<Chapter 8>Literature and Psychology
문학 작품에 있어서 심리학적 유형과 법칙의 연구는 흥미롭다. 하지만 문학가가 신경증을 앓고 있다는 프로이트의 견해는 어느 정도 수정되어야 한다. 무의식이 문학 작품의 창작에 중요한 역할을 하지만, 의식적인 작용의 중요성도 간과해서는 안 된다.
*. . .at the zenith of its power the creative energy is both conscious and unconscious. . . controlling consciously the throng of images which in the reservoir(the 'well' of the unconsciou) have undergone unconscious metamorphosis. (Lowes, 89)9
<Chapter 9>Literature and Society
문학은 과연 사회 제도인가? De Bonald 같은 사람은 “문학은 사회의 표현”이라고 할 정도로 둘 사이의 관계가 밀접한 것으로 본다. 그러나, 작가의 사회적 기원이 속류 마르크스주의자들이 주장하는 것처럼 작품에 전적으로 영향을 미친다고 보기는 어렵다. 물론 사회적 변화나 상황이 작품에 반영된 예가 무수히 많은 것은 사실이지만. 현대로 올수록 작가의 계급 결속력은 약화되었으며, 독자도 많이 분화되었다.
*The relation between literature and society is usually discussed by starting with the phrase, derived from De Bonald, that 'literature is an ｅxpression of society'. But what does this axiom mean? If it assumes that literature, at any given time, mirrors the current social situation 'correctly', it is false; it is commonplace, trite, and vague if it means only that literature depicts some aspects of social reality. (95)
*Sorokin, who has analysed the various possibilities clearly, has concluded that the degree of integration [between literature and society] varies from society to society. (108)
<Chapter 10> Literature and Ideas
*. . . the ideas in poetry are usually stale and often false and no one older than sixteen would fine it worth his while to read poetry merely for what it says. ( George Boas, 110)
*He [Rudolf Unger] rightly argues that literature is not philosophical knowledge translated into imagery and verse, but that literature expresses a general attitude towards life, that poets usually answer, unsystematically, questions which are also themes of philosophy but that the poetic mode of answering differs in different ages and situations. Unger classifies these 'problems' in the following rather arbitrary manner: the problem of fate, by which he means the relation of freedom and necessity, spirit and nature; the religious 'problem', including the interpretation of Christ, the attitude towards sin and salvation; the problem of nature, which would include such questions as the feeling for nature, but also questions of myth and magic. Another group of problems Unger calls the problem of man. It concerns questions of love; and finally there is a group of problems of society, family, and state. (115)
*The close integration between philosophy and literature is frequently deceptive, and arguments in its favour are overrated because they are based on a study of literary ideology, professions of intentions, and programmes which, necessarily borrowing from existing aesthetic formulations, may sustain only remote relationship to the actual practice of the artists. This scepticism about the close integration of philosophy and literature does not, of course, deny the existence of many relationships and even the likelihood of a certain parallelism reinforced by the common social background of a time, and hence by common influences exerted on literature and philosophy. (121)
*문학과 철학과의 관계를 생각할 때 여러 가지 층위가 있을 수 있다. 문학이 ‘사상’ 즉 철학에다 옷을 입힌 것이라고 보는 견해도 있고, 또 George Boas처럼 ‘문학에 들어 있는 사상이라는 것은 얄팍한 것에 지나지 않는다’라고 볼 수도 있다. 어쨌거나 문학을 철학의 한 형태로 보는 견해는 위험하다고 보지 않을 수 없다. 그보다는 문학과 철학이 다루는 제재에 있어서 공통적인 부분이 있다고 보는 Rudolf Unger의 견해가 타당하다고 할 것이다. 문학이 철학적인 문제를 담고 있다고 해서 더욱 훌륭하다거나 좋은 작품이라고 생각하는 견해도 재고해야 할 것이다(123 볼 것).
<Chapter 11>Literature and the Other Arts
*But the relation between music and really great poetry seems rather tenuous when we think of the evidence afforded by even the most successful settings into musical terms. Poems of closely knit, highly integrated structure do not lend themselves to musical setting, while mediocre or poor poetry, like much of the early Heine or Wilhelm Muller, has provided the text for the finest songs of Schubert and Schumann. (127)
*[This shows that] the 'medium' of a work of art (an unfortunate question-begging term) is not merely a technical obstacle to be overcome by the artist in order to express his personality, but a factor pre-formed by tradition and having a powerful determining character which shapes and modifies the approach and ｅxpression of the individual artist. The artist does not conceive in general mental terms but in terms of concrete material; and the concrete medium has its own history, frequently very different from that of any other medium. (129)
*The various arts--the plastic arts, literature, and music--have each their individual evolution, with a different tempo and a different internal structure of elements. No doubt they are in constant relationship with each other, but these relationships are not influences which start from one point and determine the evolution of the other arts; they have to be conceived rather as a complex scheme of dialectical relationships which work both ways, from one art to another and vice versa, and may be completely transformed within the art which they have entered. (134)
*문학이 다른 예술과 서로 영향을 주고 받는다는 것은 자명하다. 그러나, 문학이 미술의 상태를 혹은 음악의 상태를 지향한다는 말은 타당한가? 예술이라는 매개를 통해 예술가가 자신의 개성(personality)을 표출한다고 할 때, 예술가는 기술적으로 넘어서야할 여러 가지 측면뿐만 아니라, 각 예술의 장르가 지닌 전통과 여러 요소들도 생각하여야 하기 때문에, 위의 말은 좀 더 심도 있게 재고해야 할 것이다. 그리고 한 예술 장르의 변화가 다른 예술 장르의 변화 혹은 진보를 결정한다고 보는 문제도 우리는 신중해야 할 필요가 있다.
[Part Four] The Intrinsic Study of Literature
<Chapter 12> The Mode of Existence of a Literary Work of Art
*Divergence between conscious intention and actual performance is a common phenomenon in the history of literature. Zola sincerely believed in his scientific theory of the experimental novel, but actually produced highly melodramatic and symbolic novels. Gogol thought of himself as a social reformer, as a 'geographer' of Russia, while, in practice, he produced novels and stories full of fantastic and grotesque creatures of his imagination. (149)
*Linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure and the Prague Linguistic Circle carefully distinguish between langue and parole, the system of language and the individual speech-act; and this distinction corresponds to that between the poem as such and the individual experience of the poem. The system of language (langue) is a collection of conventions and norms whose workings and relations we can observe and describe as having a fundamental coherence and identity in spite of very different, imperfect, or incomplete pronouncements of individual speakers. In this respect at least, a literary work of art is in exactly the same position as a system of language. We as individuals shall never realize it completely, for we shall never know an object even its qualities, but still we can scarcely deny the identity of objects even though we may see them from different perspectives. We always grasp some 'structure of determination' in the object which makes the act of cognition not an act of arbitrary invention or subjective distinction but the recognition of some norms imposed on us by reality. (152)
*The work of art. . . appears as an object of knowledge sui generis which has a special ontological status. It is neither real (physical, like a statue) nor mental (psychological, like the experience of light or pain) nor ideal (like a triangle). It is a system of norms of ideal concepts which are intersubjective. They must be assumed to exist in collective ideology, changing with it, accessible only throught individual mental experiences, based on the sound-structure of its sentences.
*문학 작품의 존재 양식(mode of existence)은 어떤 것인가 하는 것을 생각해 볼 때 다음과 같은 답변(시의 경우를 예로 할 때)을 생각해 볼 수 있다. 1) a poem is an 'artefact', an object of the same nature as a piece of sculpture or a painting.(142) 2)the essence of a literary work of art is the sequence of sounds uttered by a speaker or reader of poetry(144) 3)a poem is the experience of the reader(146) 4)the poem is the experience of the author(147) 5)the genuine poem is in the total experience, conscious and unconscious, during the time of the creation.(149) 6) the work of art is social and collective experience 등등이 있으나, 이러한 주장은 모두 반박에 부딪히고 만다. 문학 작품을 다음과 같이 보는 견해가 타당성이 있어 보인다.
The work of art. . . appears as an object of knowledge sui generis which has a special ontological status. It is neither real (physical, like a statue) nor mental (psychological, like the experience of light or pain) nor ideal (like a triangle). It is a system of norms of ideal concepts which are intersubjective. They must be assumed to exist in collective ideology, changing with it, accessible only through individual mental experiences, based on the sound-structure of its sentences.
<Chapter 13> Euphony, Rhythm, and Metre
*We must first distinguish between two very different aspects of the problem: the inherent and the relational elements of sound. By the former, we mean the peculiar individuality of the sound a or o, or l or p, independent of quantity, since there cannot be more or less a or p. Inherent distinctions in quality are the basis for the effects which are usually called 'musicality' or 'euphony'. Relational distinctions, on the other hand, are those which may become the basis of rhythm and metre: the pitch, the duration of the sounds, the stress, the frequency of recurrence, all elements permitting quantitative distinctions. (159)
*It can be shown, as John Crowe Ransom has amusingly done, that the sound-effect of a line like 'the murmuring of innumerable bees' is really dependent on the meaning. If we make only a slight phonetic change to 'murdering of innumerable beeves' we destroy the imitative effect completely. (162)
*Sound and metre. . . must be studied as elements of the totality of a work of art, not in isolation from meaning. (173)
*문학 작품에는 시뿐만 아니라 산문의 경우에도 소리나 운율이 있다고 주장되어 왔고, 그것을 보여주는 많은 연구 사례들이 있다. 그러한 주장이 타당하다고 할 지라도, 소리나 운율을 의미와 분리된 상태가 아니라, 작품의 총체성을 이루는 요소로서 연구되어야 할 것이다.
<Chapter 14> Style and Stylistics
*Stylistics. . . cannot be pursued successfully without a thorough grounding in general linguistics, since precisely one of its central concerns is the contrast of the language system of a literary work of art with the general usage of the time. (177)
*The whole relationship between psyche and word is looser and more oblique than is usually assumed. (184)
*As art history has established a widely accepted series of styles, e. g. the Classical, the Gothic, the Renaissance, and the Baroque, it seems attractive to try to transfer these terms into literature. But in so doing, we have come back to the question of the relation between the arts and literature, the parallelism of the arts, and the succession of the great periods of our civilization. (185)
*언어가 작가에게 있어서 중요한 재료라는 것은 두 말할 필요가 없다. 그렇다고 해서, 문학 작품의 언어가 언어사의 일부라고 몰아부치는 것은 문제가 있지 않을까? 작가는 언어에 영향을 받으면서도, 또 동시에 영향을 주기도 하는, 변증법적인 관계에 있으니까. 결론적으로 다음 말을 생각해 보자.
As art history has established a widely accepted series of styles, e. g. the Classical, the Gothic, the Renaissance, and the Baroque, it seems attractive to try to transfer these terms into literature. But in so doing, we have come back to the question of the relation between the arts and literature, the parallelism of the arts, and the succession of the great periods of our civilization. (185)
<Chapter 15>Image, Metaphor, Symbol, Myth
*Is there any important sense in which 'symbol' differs from 'image' and 'metaphor'? Primarily, we think, in the recurrence and persistence of the 'symbol'. An 'image' may be invoked once as a metaphor, but if it persistently recurs, both as presentation and representation, it becomes a symbol, may even become part of a symbolic (or mythic) system. (189)
*시를 제재나 메시지의 측면에서 벗어나 살펴볼 때 시에서 중요시되는 요소로, 이미지와 은유, 상징, 신화 등을 꼽을 수 있다. 이미지에는 시각적인 이미지만 있는 것이 아니라, 청각, 운동감각, 후각, 미각 등등의 이미지가 있으므로, 시각적인 이미지에만 집중하는 것은 피해야 할 것이다. 상징의 중요한 특징은 반복성이라고 할 수 있을 것이다. 이러한 요소들을 연구하는 데 있어서 또 하나 주의해야 할 점은 문학 작품에 표현된 것과 작가를 동일시하는 오류일 것이다.
<Chapter 16>The Nature and Modes of Narrative Fiction
*The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the time in which it is written. The Romance, in lofty and elevated language, describes what never happened nor is likely to happen. (Clara Reeve, 216)
*What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? (Henry James, 216)
*소설과 관련된 문학 이론이나 비평은 시의 그것과 비교해 볼 때 양이나 질 모든 측면에서 뒤떨어진다. 그 까닭은 소설이 심각한 문학 장르라기보다는 흥미거리라는 생각이 암암리에 스며 있기 때문일 것이다.
소설에 있어서 중요하게 생각해야 할 점으로는 소설 속의 세계가 소설 내에서 갖는 진정성, 그리고 플롯과 모티브, 인물, 배경 등이다. 소설의 기술 방식도 여러 가지를 생각해 볼 수 있다.
<Chapter 17> Literary Genres
*Most modern literary theory would be inclined to scrap the prose-poetry distinction and then to divide imaginative literature (Dichtung) into fiction(novel, short story, epic), drama(whether in prose or verse), and poetry(centering on what corresponds to the ancient 'lyric poetry'). (227)
*In general, our conception of genre should lean to the formalistic side, that is, incline to generize Hudibrastic octosyllabics or the sonnet rather than the political novel about factory workers: we are thinking or 'literary' kinds, not such subject-matter classifications as might equally be made for non-fiction. (233)
*Modern genre theory is, clearly, descriptive. It doesn't limit the number of possible kinds and doesn't prescribe rules to authors. It supposes that traditional kinds may be 'mixed' and produce a new kind (like tragi-comedy). It sees that genres can be built up on the basis of inclusiveness or 'richness' as well as that of 'purity'(genre by accretion as well as reduction). (235)
*장르를 어떻게 나눌 것인가 하는 문제도 문학 연구에 있어서 중요하다. 고전적인 이론에 있어서 장르는 그 장르가 지켜야 할 규칙을 작가에게 부가했으나, 현대에 와서는 그렇다고 보기는 힘들며, 장르의 혼합을 통해 새로운 장르가 탄생하기도 한다. 장르를 규정하는 데 있어서 생각해 보아야 할 점 중에서 중요한 하나는 장르를 주제로 나눌 수는 없다는 점이다.
<Chapter 18> Evaluation
*Upon the character of the unique aesthetic experience, there is large agreement among philosophers. In his Critique of Judgement, Kant stresses the 'purposiveness without purpose'(the purpose not directed towards action) of art, the aesthetic superiority of 'pure' over 'adherent' of applied beauty, the disinterestedness of the experiencer (who must not want to own or consume or otherwise turn into sensation or conation what is designed for perception). The aesthetic experience, our contemporary theorists agree, is a perception of quality intrinsically pleasant and interesting, offering a terminal value and a sample and foretaste of other terminal values. (241)
*문학 작품의 평가(evaluation)를 위해서는 우선 기준이 필요하고, 또 그러한 기준은 다시 ‘문학이란 무엇인가’하는 원론적인 문제로 환원된다. 문학 작품의 평가는 계속해서 변화해 왔지만, 그렇다고 무원칙적인 상대론만을 주장할 수는 없다. 위대한 작품은 기준의 변화에도 불구하고, 여러 기준을 골고루 만족시켜줄 수 있는 요인을 갖춘 것으로 보여진다.
<Chapter 19> Literary History
*Literary genres, once they reach a certain degree of perfection, must wither, languish, and finally disappear, taught Burnetiere. Futhermore, genres become transformed into higher and more differentiated genres, just as do species in the Darwinian conception of evolution. (256)
*It should be frankly realized that a period is not an ideal type or an abstract pattern or a series of class concepts, but a time section, dominated by a whole system of norms, which no work of art will ever realize in its entirety. The history of a period will consist in the tracing of the changes from one system of norms to another. While a period is thus a section of time to which some sort of unity is ascribed, it is obvious that this unity can be only relative. It means merely that during this period a certain scheme of norms has been realized most fully. (265)
*문학사를 쓴다는 것은 과연 가능한가? 지금까지의 시도들은 대체로 실망스럽다. 그 이유는 다음과 같다.
One deterrent is the fact that the preparatory analysis of works of art has not been carried out in a consistent and systematic manner. . . Another difficulty is the prejudice that no history of literature is possible save in terms of causal explanation by some other human activity. A third difficulty lies in the whole conception of the development of the art of literature. (253)
이 밖에도 문학의 시대 구분을 어떻게 할 것인가? 장르의 성쇠, 문학의 진보 개념 등이 문학사의 기술을 위해서 우선적으로 해결되어야 할 부분이다. 현재 우리는 문학 작품을 그 자체로 분석하기 시작했을 따름이기 때문에 좀 더 시간을 두고 결과를 기다려야 할 것이다.
<촌평>
문학 작품을 어떻게 읽고, 문학을 어떻게 연구할 것인가하는 문제를 이 책은 포괄적으로 다루고 있기 때문에, 앞으로의 독서에 상당히 도움이 될 듯하다. 아직도 내 영어 실력이 이러한 정도의 책을 좀 더 명확하게 읽어내기에는 부족하다는 걸 느낀다. 영문학을 다시 한 번 체계적으로 읽어 나가도록 하자.