Literariness, Again

Abstract

The study of literariness is becoming topical again due to the current status of literature and the role of literary studies in the hierarchy of various disciplines. As early as the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian formalists tried to answer the question of ”What is literariness?”; today, it is easier to provide an answer to this question if it is combined with the more recent question of “When is literariness?”, thus overcoming the binary nature of the essentialist and anti-essentialist explanation of literariness. Although sometimes there is a thin differentiating line that distinguishes a literary text from a non-literary one, it is precisely the knowledge of literariness that eliminates the challenge of differentiation, when the dominant or predominating features are taken into account in comparing various texts. In a literary text, literariness is the essential, defining, and central feature, whereas in a non-literary text it is parallel, marginal, and atypical. Although in the past literariness was explained as the essence of literature, then later as a special way language was structured, and still later as a result of literature, today it makes more sense to understand it as a variable category or a relationship between the features of a text and the processes of its context. The synthetic definition of literariness, which takes into account a generalized synthesis of individual process features, is as follows: literariness is an intersection of various features and processes in a literary text and its context. It is the relationship between intratextual literariness, which is composed of more or less permanent features of literary texts such as destructive construction, universality in singularity, polysemy, self-referentiality, and fictionality, and processes of extratextual literariness (i.e., the literary contract, competence, intention, empathy, and literary evaluation). In dividing literariness into intra- and extratextual literariness I do not proceed from their bipolar opposition, but the organic continuity that is the result of their close interconnection. Even if intratextual literariness takes the tangible constants of a literary text under its wing, these are not completely fixed because they depend on various readings or contextualization, which I have termed “extratextual literariness”. – The first feature of intratextual literariness, destructive construction, is based on the esthetics of identity and opposition, which cause a literary text to resemble a specific model of literary tradition, while already surpassing it due to its individuality. Destructive creativity is closely connected with universality in the singular or the inclusion of the universal in the individual, in which universality affords the literary text the facility of literary communication between the author, the text, and readers of various periods, places, and social environments. Great contributions to universality in the singular are made by polysemy – free referentiality of the text that enables various interpretations – and self-referentiality (i.e., the internal orientation of literature and its thematization of its own keys). Among all of the features of intratextual literariness, literary theory and philosophy have recently been largely focusing on fictionality, which corresponds to the convention of literary communication in which all the participants must be willing to expand their reception through the criterion of real vs. unreal and the criterion of the comparability of reality models. All of these features of intratextual literariness mutually depend on the processes of extratextual literariness, in which the literary contract represents the basic agreement between the author, the text, and the reader, and literary competence is the ability to recognize literary structures and conventions. It is not necessary for the literary intention (i.e., the combination of trusting and doubting the author’s purpose), and empathy (i.e., the reader’s special feeling for or identification with literature) to be coordinated processes. It is more important that they, along with other processes, help create the process of extratextual literariness known as literary evaluation.