The Challenge of Literary Movements

Author(s): François Jost

Source: Comparative Literature Studies , Sep., 1981, Vol. 18, No. 3, Papers of the Seventh
Triennial Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (Sep., 1981), pp.
278-286
Published by: Penn State University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40246266

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 The Challenge of Literary
Movements

FRANÇOIS JOST

What is a literary movement? Apparently, this is an easy question

to answer. Merriam- Webster says: a movement is an "act or process
of moving." Therefore, a literary movement is the act or process by
which literature moves: there is a progression. And literature moves,
the whole of it, not only certain parts or particles of it. Thus, at the
end of a specific movement, literature will be in another place, posi-
tion or posture - to paraphrase my dictionary - than it was at the
beginning. But what is literature? In the present context a simple
definition may suffice: it is the aesthetic expression, by means of
words, of all that which concerns man. It is neither only poetics, nor
only aesthetics, neither just sociology nor just philosophy. It is not a
mere Wortanschauung or a mere Weltanschauung, but both, and not
separately, but jointly.
It happens that Merriam- Webster has been relegated to the rare
book room and that, oddly enough, everything I have said so far
smacks of common sense, a tool perfectly inept for the pursuit of
criticism. We should not wonder, therefore, that in handbooks on
literary studies "movements" are discussed as static phenomena,
while in manuals on physics they are examined in chapters on dynam-
ics. A movement, in our distinguished profession, has come to mean
a period or an epoch, an era or an age. There are quite a few other
pseudo-synonyms, such as trends and schools, circles and coteries.
Some critics have doubted the usefulness of movement studies and
of literary periodization as well. Each work, they have argued, stand-
ing by its own virtue and merits, is unique. Its evaluation, therefore,
should not take place within the framework of a period or a genre.
There is at least one obvious answer to that objection. No appraisal
is possible without implicit or explicit comparisons. Value judgments
are based on a set of rules governing the field of aesthetics; clearly, by
itself and viewed in isolation no poem is either good or bad. Thus, to
ignore comparison amounts to discarding critical appraisals. But who
made the rules? The authors themselves by tacitly or overtly compet-
ing with their peers; in doing so they give momentum - a word re-
lated to movement - to literary life.
The analysis of the driving forces, the dynamics of literature, the
study of its motor, so to speak, to use again a term derived from
movere like movement, suggests some challenging thoughts. I should
like to divide them into three parts. It is first necessary to clarify the
©1981 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
0010-4132/81/0900.0279/100.90/0
278

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 JOST 279

nature of literary mov

the role of aesthetic an
finally, to ask ourselve
of aesthetics and stylis
literary history but fo

History teaches us that philosophies have long gestation periods:

several decades, most often. By the time one philosophy reaches ma-
turity, after centuries, perhaps, the next one may already have been
conceived. Since philosophy, by which I mean a basic view and inter-
pretation of all things human, is an essential part of literature, literary
movements have to encompass a substantial span of time. Gongorism,
or Jugendstil, or costumbrismo are not literary movements properly
speaking. It appears that Western Literature, so far, has experienced
very few movements and a hundred moves. One may possibly distin-
guish six or seven: Classicism, Medievalism, Renaissance, Enlighten-
ment, Romanticism, Realism, and, the movement which has not yet
been christened and to which I would give the name of Socialism or
Materialism, if the terms were not encumbered with so many politi-
cal and economic implications.
This is not the place to expound on the characteristics of the ma-
jor movements of the West. Within the stream of the present reason-
ing, however, a few remarks about their qualities and properties hâve
to be made. Classicism happens to be the locus classicus of the in-
separableness of form and content. The supreme principle of Peri
Poietikes rests on imitation, on mimesis, that is, imitation of real life,
of significant situations that may present themselves in life, and funda-
mental attitudes towards life. Sophocles' tragedies are not just plays,
but applied theology and psychology, and Homer's poems are not
just songs: they are history and mythology, anthropology and geog-
raphy; in brief, both works are epitomes of the Weltbild, of the hu-
man condition at the time of their authors. The Romans showed
views similar to those of the Greeks. De Arte Poetica may find in the
"utile et dulce" its summary, and the phrase means that in every
masterpiece reason and aesthetic emotion have to merge, a conditio
sine qua non for excellence. In this work, Horace does not even men-
tion lyrical poetry, and obviously Aristotle assumes that his friends
and disciples read his poetics with his whole philosophical thought
in mind.
Classicism is not confined to specific centuries. Its doctrine per-
vades all individual literatures of the West, not simultaneously nor
always to the same extent, to be sure. Classical highlights are seen in
seventeenth-century France with Corneille and Racine, and in late

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280 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

eighteenth-century Germany, culminating in Goet

and "stiller Grosse," in thought and form. Yet, cont
cism, sometimes, shows a tendency to emphasize t
classical forms at the expense of the exegesis of clas
a sense, however, classicism is beyond the traditiona
ment in so far as it is a recurring phenomenon, defy
tation in time.
This is not the case with medievalism, although it encompasses a
full millenium and spurred remarkable interest within other literary
movements, especially that of Romanticism. Most relevant to our
subject is the fact that medievalism is endowed with a philosophical
soul, theocentrism, which will be converted into anthropocentrism,
a change that gave birth to the Renaissance, a movement which im-
parted new orientations and new meaning to human existence and,
therefore, had far reaching implications for the arts, including the
letters. Yet, some modern critics have isolated the formal elements
of the entire Renaissance movement; thus the baroque was declared
a full-fledged literary movement, even though it seldom transcends
aesthetics or poetics.
Let us briefly look at another metamorphosis. After the emergence
of an enlightened bourgeoisie, Romanticism dominated several coun-
tries, but rather quickly changed into Realism, Materialism and So-
cialism, this word being stripped of any specific overtones referring
to modern ideologies, and used merely in a literary sense. If in Ro-
manticism we consider only issues related to philosophical substance
and basic interpretations of our existence, the movement may be de-
fined as a quest for the self, a victory of the individual over the col-
lective, the proclamation of sovereign independence of the human
person from any group of human beings. Romanticism rests on the
antagonism between the self and society. Socialism, literary Social-
ism, on the contrary, rests on the alliance between the self and so-
ciety, since society is called upon to protect the self. The crucial idea
of Rousseau's Contrat social, published in 1761, bore abundant fruit
over the following two centuries.
All these reflections may be those of a "terrible simplificateur";
they are intended as an introduction to my major issue: in literary
movements, which are necessarily related to primary cultural units,
we have to identify and reconcile thematics and styles, matters and
manners, "Gehalt" and "Gestalt". This identification and reconcili-
ation is the object and objective of literature, the body of which may
conveniently be divided into movements as suggested and practiced
by many historians of literature. For a movement is the expression
of a certain way of life, and life is movement.

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 JOST 281

II

The study of literary movements is not a study in dilemmas, in

some "either, or". To think or to shape, that is not the question.
Never was philosophy by itself literature, nor was aesthetics by itself
literature. Never did two molecules of hydrogen by themselves pro-
duce the smallest trace of moisture, nor did one molecule of oxygen
quench the thirst of a single fly. The study of literary movements,
however, may pose a question of priorities. The question of the
chicken and the egg? By no means.
Primacy has to be granted to the thought or to the emotion. As
stated before, critics have often labelled movements according to
some particular or peculiar modish vogues, or according to some
stylistic innovations characterized by the use of specific poetic de-
vices. We are thinking of trends which are less concerned with ad-
dressing or answering a human problem, than with initiating or cap-
italizing on some temporary preoccupations. One of the reasons why
the lyrical muses are today lying on their death-beds is that they have
run out of music-inspiring themes. They lack objects worthy of their
songs. Deprived of their original literary powers and, therefore, short
of breath, they are humming esoterica and exotica, erotica and sex-
otica. We know only of two creators: God and the poet. As creators,
they should both make something out of nothing, if we remember
the prime meaning of the verb to create, and if we believe in the role
and mission of the literary vates. The poet, to be sure, has always
been called a creator only by mere analogy. The Bible and Voltaire
teach us that Yahweh alone succeeded in creating ex nihilo the best
of all possible worlds, while the poet, in order to create the best pos-
sible poem, needs an idea, needs motion and emotion. A poet writ-
ing ex nihilo ends up with an accusative, he creates nihil. A school
like l'art pour l'art is not a literary school, but an aesthetic school.
By this I do not necessarily mean to express a value judgment, de-
spite the fact that this school aggravated the illness of the muses and
that any subsequent poet writing in the same vein may hasten their
demise.
Style and other formal qualities not only grant a literary work ex-
trinsic beauty: they ensure that its content endure, provided that
content is worth such a happy fate, "Denn das Gemeine geht klanglos
zum Orkus hinab," as Schiller says. From the colder parts of the North
Atlantic smoked and salted herring are shipped to warmer regions,
where they are consumed without hazard to one's health. Thus mas-
terpieces are handed down to us from previous centuries: their style
remains their conserving and preserving element. Clearly, style as-
sumes a function and does not exist by itself. In the modern pantry
where poetry has been stored for at least one hundred years we find

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282 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

more sacks of salt than cans of fish. Brecht illustrates the situation
with a story. "Bei der Bemuhung um die Form," he says, "geht der
S toff verloren." Mr. Keuner, Brecht's character, worked once with a
gardener. One day he had to trim a laurel and give it the shape of a
globe for decorative purposes. He worked and cut, and finally the
sphere was perfect. His master, inspecting the result of so much labor
said: "Well, I see the sphere, but where is the laurel?" Surely, Brecht
could have written some other stories in a similar vein. They might
have ended like this: "Well, I hear the notes, but where is the music?"
or "Well, I see shapes and colors, but where is the painting?" Saint
Paul may forgive me if, after Brecht, I paraphrase a passage of his
first epistle to the Corinthians. If the poet speaks without a message
to be delivered, he is nothing but sounding brass, or a tinkling cym-
bal. He indulges in a movement that may be listed under the rubric
"cymbalism" - not symbolism. Literature expresses a Weltanschauung;
it is not a mere Wortanschauung, if I may repeat my dichotomy.

Ill

These ideas concerning the function of style are far from being
new. Let us briefly examine the judgment of two well known eigh-
teenth-century naturalists, famous also in the history of French liter-
ature, Buffon and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. In his Discours sur le
style (1753) the former declares: "Les ouvrages bien écrits sont les
seuls qui passent à la postérité," a thought I have already expressed
here. "Si l'objet en lui-même est grand", he continues, . . . "le ton
sera non seulement grand, mais sublime." These statements lead up
to the well known sentence: "Le style est l'homme même," that is,
style is man's heart and mind, an idea echoed the following century
by Schopenhauer who declared: "Der Stil ist die Physiognomie des
Geistes."
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's view on the relationship between con-
tent and form is similar to that of Buffon. No work passes the test
of time without complying with the traditional prerequisites: it has
to show formal beauty and has to contain some prominent thought.
In the Avis preceding his novel Paul et Virginie he proclaims that
form and content jointly produce a work of art, explaining that "le
style est à la pensée non ce que l'habit, mais ce que les muscles sont
au corps." More than Buffon does, he insists on the primacy of the
content. Quoting Horace, he observes that words naturally are born
out of the subject matter, out of the thought, out of the physically
palpable and the spiritually tangible, that is, ex rebus: "Rem verba
sequuntur," literally, "the words follow the thing." The thing, action
and meaning, give birth to the word.
The philosophy of stylistics developed and expounded by the two

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 JOST 283

Frenchmen does not ap

ported by Emerson, w
tains didactic element
for whom "the finish
Poet, dated 1844, he s
argument that makes
ing: "The thought and
in the order of genesis
later, the hierarchy of
his "Art poétique" wit

De la musique avant to

finishing the poem wi

Et tout le reste est litté

that is, futile literary

limits himself to an an
volved. Literature has become mere form.

IV

The reason that we have insisted on the essential and vital unity of
content and form in literature should be obvious. While there are
movements in which we clearly see literature in its fullest meaning,
as previously noticed, there are others in which only certain specific
aspects of literature are involved. In other words, movements vary
greatly as far as their nature and their function are concerned. Some
excerpts from the litany of all isms may immediately spur our aware-
ness of that variety. Overlooking the numerous variants of manner-
ism and conceptism in all major linguistic areas of Renaissance and
Baroque, let us mention without any logical or chronological order
some literary or artistic phenomena closer to us: we have existential-
ism and socialist realism, dadaism and surrealism, symbolism and
modernism, impressionism and expressionism, formalism and con-
cretism, avantgardism and futurism, cubism and absurdism. Some
"ismomaniacs" speak of receptionism (meaning the Rezeptionsàs-
thetik) or of cinematism, some others of negrism or of horrorism.
None of these "isms" qualifies as a movement in a fundamental sense.
It would be possible to establish a bona fide scale indicating the ap-
proximate proportion of each of the two basic literary elements -
content and form - within every single move or school. Some of
them, obviously, are more concerned with aesthetics for aesthetics'
sake than with the aesthetic expression of some significant aspect of

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284 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

our human condition or of the ultimate meaning of o

often the lines of the "Parnassiens," for example, eith
ally expound - like a sonnet to the sonnet - or illus
creed. Art, and in particular literary style, has becom
self and is not anymore a means to an end. In recent t
lum of movements has shifted more or less regularly
to aesthetics and back. A synthesis and a system are m
needed, holistic rather than atomistic interpretations.
One might ask why exclusive "cénacles" and "chap
drastically multiplied especially during the last one hu
years. Their priests and chaplains rarely indicate their
and philosophical affiliation, while they are always
of the specific denomination of the church they are p
collecting from. As a result, a history of recent litera
moves and movements might resemble a grandiose col
with no frame of reference or organizing concept, a "
di" without any unified up-stage. This relatively recen
tion of moves and movements, incidentally, sometime
erroneous impression that in former periods, whateve
ity, each poet had to swim or drown in the same curr
fact he proved to follow some secondary drift or to b
pendent personality. The reasons for the recent prolif
"groupuscules" should be sought not only in the ste
effectiveness of the media, but also in the writer' eve
awareness of his right to propagate principles born ou
tices out of any tradition. By fragmenting the histor
and philosophy theorists have contributed to the ac
history as a whole.

Where, then, does the comparatist see the challenge of literary

movements? Before addressing that question, let me briefly return
to my point of departure. Why should criticism be concerned with
movements rather than with periods defined by sets of formal traits
and ideational norms? Because time is passing, moving, and therefore
the Heraclitian approach to any fragment or aspect of history -
whether social, political or literary - is the only valid approach.
Pan ta rhei: all studies on anything human are basically studies in
changes. A literary period is an abstraction, while literary movements
reflect facts. Literature is static only during the short span of time
needed for the reading of one single work. As soon as I move to the
next, I will be noticing an intriguing change, and therefore facing the
question of literary movements.
At no point, I should insist, have I suggested that literary criticism

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 JOST 285

should consist solely

I insinuated that we m
a frivolous occupatio
thetical author of a
sixth circle of the "In
ter with some other
and altogether, at lea
thermore, I am not p
when applied to a nou
fully literary, but on
may continue to deco
centrates only on par
to quibble over words
ary" often has to be
the whole being given
It was and is definite
differences in breadt
scores of movement
differences into accou
the history of ideas i
thoughts and emotion
motion, and that tho
movements, to cultur
tial to cultural statics
templation and to the
comparatist, the chal
tautologically - a ch
be made at least on tw
does not restrict him
knowing that withou
understand even one,
literature without kn
study of a particular
the other half of a co
comprises several m
nator or some differ
of literary movemen
element in each of th
make these movemen
der Kulturwissenscha
cultural movements
is necessary to identi
a search for a unity o
prise. The entire cul
which may not be d

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286 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

elude with a comparison, the study of literary movem

at the same time a differential and an integral calculu
challenge!

FRANÇOIS JOST- University of Illinois

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