I have been giving far too much thought lately to the idea of Literary Theory. This is part of my effort to understand my fellow writers and other people in the writing industry. My college degree is in Engineering, not one of the social sciences, so my understanding of social theories is pretty limited. You can make your own jokes about my abilities in social anythings if you’d like.

What is Literary Theory? I’ll start with a definition that satisfied me, even if its source, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, doesn’t sound like the greatest source. They were remarkably succinct, however, when they said that Literary Theory “can be understood as the set of concepts and intellectual assumptions on which rests the work of explaining or interpreting literary texts.”

I like this because it establishes the limitations of any one flavor of Theory that any one person might apply. Each approach in Theory is nothing more than the toolbox that you bring to the situation, regardless of how useful those tools are. Naturally, to a person with a hammer nearly everything is a nail, but in practical terms it goes without saying that they make lousy plumbers.

Having read up on the various branches of Theory, I have to say that I don’t see any of them as remotely universal. I don’t think anyone claims that they are, in fact. To me, it follows rather logically that these approaches are useful only to the extent that we understand their boundaries even as the practitioners tend towards expounding their own pet approaches beyond where they can be shown to be useful. Without even an attempt at universality, the result is that confusion and sophistry are inevitable.

All of the various approaches to Theory start from some vantage point. Some emphasize the writer, some the reader. Some start with the culture the writer came from, while others the psychology of the reader. None of this seems to be particularly important to me in the light of why all of what can be called Theory exists in the first place.

It is always about the relationship between the writer and the reader.

This may seem obvious, but any attempt at universality has to start with the obvious. My perspective is as it always is, a strong half-step back from the situation. From that viewpoint, it goes without saying that language is something of an illusion to start with. Characters represent words which represent ideas, none of which are actually the thing that they are describing in and of themselves. The reader has to reassemble all the various bits back into the item in question in the best way that their imagination allows them to.

There are so many places that this process can go astray. It always behooves any writer to use standard forms as much as possible so that the reader can focus energy on forming the images and ideas the writer wants to convey. The elements of a compelling story can cause the reader to invest energy towards this effort they might not otherwise. The process in general is one of getting inside each other’s head in a very personal and connected way that it could almost be described as something like a marriage; it should be taken that seriously as well.

So what about the relationship? What can I possibly say about this relationship that hasn’t been said in so many ways by other approaches to Theory? Quite a lot, actually. Sometimes the author’s intent doesn’t matter one bit as a new generation takes up classic works by Twain or Austen and makes it their own. Sometimes the reader is largely shut out by first person narratives by Kerouac or Faulkner. Why do people keep reading? Because the relationship gives them a reason to keep reading; there is something there for them. It is food for their head. If it wasn’t, they would stop reading – and, I would like to note, many people are concerned that fewer are reading all the time.

A good writer takes note of that relationship and gives something back to it, just like a marriage. If you ignore the relationship, it dies. Every relationship between writer and reader is unique, just as every couple has their own way of relating. They change even with time as a relationship grows closer or further apart.

As far as I can tell, that’s what a more universal Literary Theory of writing starts with. More to the point, it is very practical when it comes to informing a new generation of writers how to write effectively. But what else would you expect from an Engineer?