Can literature tell the truth? I have been thinking about this question lately and I was hoping to get some insight
literature is a very broad term, what exactly do you mean?
So is truth for that matter.
But to answer the question, yes it can. It’s the idealistic foundation that the whole of it’s artifice is built upon. Literature is the most tangible of all the arts, and because of this it’s medium has the greatest possibility for the transferance of truth.
Literary figures can illustrate concepts like authenticity and self-deception. Tolstoy’s Ivan Illich demonstrates this, and so does Meursault, from Camus’ The Stranger. We can relate to these fictional characters because they do reflect reality, more so than character’s such as James Bond and Hannibal Lector. J. Alfred Prufrock is an example of a subjugated, unself-actualized individual. Compare him to William Ernest Henley’s character in Invictus, someone who is fiercely independent and self-actualized. We learn about ourselves and reality by studying these characters. They are fictional, but they are multi-dimensional and, in a way, more real than some of us.
Good authors will challenge prevailing notions of honor and virtue. They will present situations where murder may be justified, perhaps to stop child abuse. Great literature makes us think. It shows us someone who has everything we would think, on our superficial levels, we would want to have, like Richard Corey, and shows us how this guy went home and put a bullet through his head. If he wasn’t happy with everything we wish we had, then what is worth living for? Great literature makes us wonder.
Great literature is not making the good guy win and get the girl in the end. It puts us into situations where we have to choose how we would rather be. Would we rather be Creon or Antigone? Would we have the guts to do what Sydney Carton did? Was his choice better than it would have been if he had slipped away and chickened out? What really makes life matter? Sartre’s and Camus’ fictional literature really makes us wonder about that.
bis bald,
Nick
well, the question is supposed to be kinda vague (there is no way around that) and i did not really ask what i wanted. what i wanted to ask was: can literature “tell the truth” better than other arts or areas of knowledge? there was a discussion about that in my tok class at school and i was left with more questions than with answers.
How about responding to my response?
Do you think logic systems and expository writing can illuminate things such as human nature and love and put people into moral dilemmas as well as plays, short stories, novels, and poems can?
Does this constitute telling the truth to you?
bis bald,
Nick
Exactly. You can say this of any character in a work of great fiction. There is a portion in us which desires to be them, and in fact because of this desire we take upon their influence and in some way become or at least yearn towards what we wish to possess from the character but have yet to discover in ourselves. Whether this transformation is drastic or subtle matters only in the sense of what we are capable of coaptating or stealing, or what we are able to learn from them, which in a great degree is understood in terms of potential, or intelligence. Or conviction, or ambition, or determination ect.
From another perspective it opens up an avenue of thought which coincides with the idea of art imitating life, and because this imatation is empirical in nature we know of it as if it had been an expirience of our own. It becomes a piece of knowledge, a portion of truth because it is desired as an expirience in our own lives. But then again maybe it is only an epistomological mechinism, and we simply store it away to be brought out and utilized at some later point as an example when you encounter a similiar person or circumstance.
I choose Antigone. Sydney Carton I’ve never heard of and am curious to what novel he was created for. I agree however that fictional makes us consider more. It has the power to transport us into a life that was worth living, and any other judgement capable of being passed down upon a singular indivdual. This is why it is the most tangible of the arts. I group theatre and movies for that matter under it’s folds.
Oops. I performed a D.P.
Yes
Sydney Carton is the apothetic and cynical lawyer in A Tale of Two Cities who loved Lucy but saved her lover in the end, taking his place on the guillotine, saying, “…tis a far better thing I do than I have ever done before…”.
bis bald,
Nick
And that is the first example as to why literature can tell the truth. A noble act of self sacrifice makes you think, does it not?
literature can never tell the truth because it is the devil stuff who hates the truth and love to abuse of tools to say all say the truth in One real being acting with soul in love of thoughts of God and if you are assuming that loving God can be in words expression i say NO because words of God are not literature they are
Literature delves inside of the mind and souls of humans it brings out the many facets of our character so that we can share and learn. It is truth after a fashion but, not truth itself.
Double Penetration?
I am biting my tongue for Mastriani , in light of Bessy’s thread I will be chaste and bite my tongue.
well to start, nick, i didnt even see a question directed at me in your first response. second, i understand what you are saying about logic systems and expository writing. those tell truths differently than plays, novels, poems, etc.
creative writing delves deeper into human nature and emotion than does just a simple expository. this reveals a more deeply burried truth about human nature that we may or may not hove seen before or were never fully conscious of. most fiction is used to magnify true human experiences (even if the book is of the fantasy or scifi genre). expository writing or logic systems, on the other hand, attempt to present the subject as objectively as possible.
now about literature telling this truth “better” than other arts or areas of knowledge?
I don’t think literature could ever have the truth. Of course “truth” is a word and therefore literal, but I don’t think that text content affects the conditions for the “truth,” which is to say, even if I have contradicted myself it is still only possible to be either right or wrong. So is the nature of the “truth” whether or not it is contingent to a literal term.
The heavier arguments of the modernists who oppose positivism regards the point that “truth” cannot be objective in a language game. This is questionable. To suppose that a meaning of a word is not universal outside of context is to assume that there are such things as contexts which are universal to all language “truth” constructs. That amorphous blob Xanderman’s buddy Rorty said something about. Furthermore, experience can produce “truth” without words or thinking or imaging in the mind. For example, the difference between the hardness of the wall and the coldness of the water is a tactile difference with distinct temperature sensation. If one were to walk into a wall and then jump into some cold water, the experiences would be quite different without any complex cognitive awareness through thinking and/or concepts and imaging.
It doesn’t matter how I define the experiences and behavior patterns and with what words I represent them in a conversation, to make the difference well known between the experiences themselves.
Ultimately and skeptically I take a reductionalist position for the sciences, a fat-free solipsism position for the rational, and a dionysian position for politics.
Anyway, all literature can do is cause processes in the mind which compare word meanings to familiar or recent contexts where the qualities of those words were exhibited in previous experiences. In short, you could not think about the statement “the ball is blue” until you had at least once, if not many times, been involved with another person who had assmilated you through behavior interaction and communication reinforcement. Its programming. The mind works the same way.
What is a more interesting question is this: If I just test myself and suddenly say something arbitrary…where I blurt out “Algonquian war chiefs!”…I must wonder why it was that that I said, of all things I could have possibly said.
This poses the question that if thoughts are preceded by executive functions in the mind which organize the context of the statement, what was is that could have possibly evoked that statement? Why didn’t I say “well its about damn time, Ernest?” Is it truely “random” mind data or is it conditioned directly by external contexts which I am in.
Other than that its quite impossible to confirm any truth in literature that isn’t general. At best you can signify certain terms to mean certain actions and/or activities that would be the same in any meaningful context, but titles, identities and adjectives is a problem. “Here,” for example, has only two possible contexts. Anytime you hear that word, expect certain following procedures to take place, such as indicating the point which one has decided to signify with the term “here,” or indicating that one wishes to give a possession to you and speaks the word during the gesture.
The word “here” is the truth, and even it can be deconstructed into nonsense.
I’m gonna have to go with Wittgenzsche. The world (truth) is the case, and it is only perspective.
Well my guess is that you are the kind of person that approaches the word ‘truth’ with a fine degree of distrust. I can appreciate that because I too desire a truth but when I look around me I find none. The word itself is spurious and can be taken too many ways, and it is more readily applicable to mundane affirmations such as; I ate cereal today, and that is the absolute truth. Truth is a word that should not be involved in such uneventful, unfilling activities, but such is the state of our language, and as you tangentily mentioned, of logic as well.
As you mentioned in your last phrase
it is all perspective, but throughout your whole post you failed to give the appropriate consideration to perspective itself.
Perspective is in most cases the basis for all epistomological gain. What are we capable of understanding outside of our immediate perspective? And if you respond to anything in my post I wish for you to respond to that statement because that is the question which has bothered me the most recently.
In literature, which is most often a narrative of perspective through character, theme, and plot what else does a writer conceive of except the narrow road of conflict, ideal or meaning, and interaction?
Is there a great possibility for truth as you laid it out? Probably not.
But there is truth within perspective.
Same as previously becuase I am being impatient. And yes siatd it is double penetration.