Toward literary text production : an empirical and third force psychoanalysis of literary mediation between authors and editors

202 Pages·1994·5.4 MB·English

by  Franklin, John Thomas

TOWARD LITERARY TEXT PRODUCTION:
AN EMPIRICAL AND THIRD FORCE PSYCHOANALYSIS
OF LITERARY MEDIATION
BETWEEN AUTHORS AND EDITORS
BY
JOHN THOMAS FRANKLIN
A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
1994
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA LIBRARES
Copyright 1994
by
John Thomas Franklin
to ABDs: it can be done
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank the following persons and institutions:
Graduate School and Dept. ofEnglish, U. Florida, particularly Kathy
Williams;
Dept. ofEnglish and Philosophy, Stephen F. Austin State University;
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, U. ofTexas;
the people I interviewed, including those whose transcripts do not
appear in this dissertation;
the members ofthe dissertation committee, particularly the chair:
Robert de Beaugrande; and,
the people who have helped with the word processing: Margaret,
Patty, Carolyn, Jill and Debbie.
IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS
page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
iv
ABSTRACT
vii
CHAPTERS
THE CASE FOR EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF LITERATURE
1 1
Literature as an "Empirical" Phenomenon? 1
The Present Project 14
DISCOURSE INTERACTION AND PERSONALITY TYPE
2
EXEMPLIFYING LOWER DEGREE OF COLLABORATION 31
Typical Moves ofExpansive Authors 31
Discourse Moves Away from Expansiveness 54
Expansive Solidarity 66
Living with Expansiveness: The Editor's View 72
Conclusion 86
3 DISCOURSE MOVES AND PERSONALITY TYPES IN
SITUATIONS OF HIGHER COLLABORATION 89
Between Expansiveness and Self-Effacement: Primarily Fitzgerald's
Great Hopes and Great Doubts for The Great Gatsby 89
Conclusion 123
4 WHEN EDITORS EXPAND: STEERING THE DEGREE
OF COLLABORATION
125
Editors' Strategies for Managing without Appearing To Do So 125
Negotiating Book Covers 130
Increasing the Pressure 137
More Drastic Expansions 156
Conclusion 171
5 CONCLUSION 174
REFERENCES 186
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 192
VI
Abstract ofDissertation Presented to the Graduate School
ofthe University ofFlorida in Partial Fulfillment ofthe
Reqviirements for the Degree ofDoctor ofPhilosophy
TOWARD LITERARY TEXT PRODUCTION:
AN EMPIRICAL AND THIRD FORCE PSYCHOANALYSIS
OF LITERARY MEDIATION
BETWEEN AUTHORS AND EDITORS
By
John Thomas Franklin
April, 1994
Chairman: Professor Robert de Beaugrande
Major Department: English
Drawing from an empirical analysis ofcorrespondence among Ernest
Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Maxwell Perkins as well as interviews
with contemporary writers and editors, this dissertation identifies lower and
higher degrees ofcollaboration, determines editorial attempts to insure
collaboration, and explains the psychological motivation for discourse
strategies in terms ofThird Force psychology as both authors and editors
attempt to meet their literary needs. Pedagogical applications are implied in
that the student-professor writing relationship is analogous to the author-
editor literary collaboration.
vu
CHAPTER
1
THE CASE FOR EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF LITERATURE
Literature as an "Empirical" Phenomenon?
Since ancient times the study oflanguage has largely been equated
with the study ofliterature. Scholars were doubtless aware that literature
represented a special area oflanguage rather than the language as a whole;
but they presumably believed literature to represent language at its best and
hence to be the most meritorious domain for study and description. This
view would have been all the more entrenched when the literary text in
question also had a religious quality, as we can see for instance in extensive
study ofSanskrit texts combining literary with sacred matters and
techniques.
The study ofliterature as an academic discipline in contrast is a
relatively recent creation. It has its roots in the study ofclassical languages,
notably Latin and Greek, for which we have to be content with the study of
surviving texts. To the degree that literature was cultivated and its survival
encouraged, it naturally continued to occupy center stage. Other types of
texts such as historical, philosophical or scientific treatises were also studied,
but often from rather literary standpoints, e.g., with a close attention to
"style." Moreover, the academic decorum ofancient times had not yet
promulgated the strict separation between the "literary" and the "scientific"
so forcefully imposed in our own century.
The most direct forerunner oftoday's "literature programs" was the
trend ofreapplying methods for the study ofclassical to medieval and
modem languages. Again the focus ofattention was literary texts, but
several shifts ofemphasis can be detected. The fact that medieval texts were
much less well-preserved or that classical Latin texts had been transcribed
compelled the scholars to pay much more attention to the niceties ofthe
language system itself, such as patterns of sound and grammar. As a result,
a train ofstudy split offfrom the purely literary into "philology," which
eventually gave us "modem linguistics" (Beaugrande, 1991). The coexistence
between a study ofliterature and the study oflanguage as systems ofsounds
and forms has understandably been a bit uneasy as Beaugrande (1993) has
also noted. Language departments have been typically divided into two
relatively autonomous subdivisions with regrettably small interaction
between them. The literary scholars tend to view the linguists as insensitive
to the finer sides oflanguage, often overlooking the richness, complexity and
ambiguity as eminently presented by poetry. The linguists tend to regard the
literary scholars as somewhat subjective and unsystematic in their treatment
ofdata, and particularly in their disinterest in clarifying the status of
literature as a brand oflanguage and notjust as an aesthetic category or a
stream within the history ofculture and ideas. Beaugrande (1993) argues
that the standoffbetween literary studies and linguistics stems from cogent
motivations in terms ofprocedures and agendas but is currently in the
process ofbeing resolved. On the one hand, "literary theory" represents the
genuine attempt to come to grips with the status ofliterature as language.
On the other hand, discourse analysis has greatly increased the sensitivity of
linguists for the complexities ofdiscourse represented among other domains
by literature and poetry.
An important strand within this recent convergence has been an
attempt to situate hterature as a phenomenon ofhuman communication.
The "empirical fact" that hterature is produced under certain personal and
social conditions has been increasingly highlighted from a range of
perspectives. Whereas traditional studies tended to "monumentaUze" the
literary author as a solitary and exceptional being struggling along in a
vitalistic process ofinspiration and creativity, we are now more interested in
the concrete factors influencing the day-to-day activities involved in literary
authorship as a category ofcommunication production, involving labor,
collaboration among an army ofinstitutional necessities such as authors,
editors, pubUshers and so forth. We see this outlook not so much as a
contradiction or defiance oftraditional literary concern for the author but as
a complement to it. The public image ofauthors is an intimate part ofthe
general construction and negotiation ofliterary domain. But a literary study
which so strongly contributes to these images in its daily work might
reasonably be made an object ofinquiry in its own right. The question then
is notjust which authors are "great" or "minor" and so on, but how the role
and status ofauthors come to be established in the first place, given the fact
that everybody has to begin somewhere outside the literary establishment.
Moreover, literary history is filled with instances in which the status of
"great" or "minor" has undergone considerable fluctuations with respect to
particular authors. Not surprisingly, "contemporary literature" tends to be
the least stable in this regard, because here is the domain in which so much
ofthe actual "labor" ofproducing text and constructing images has to be
A
carried out without the advantage ofhistorical hindsight. relatively recent
and lesser known undercurrent in this general trend has been constituted by
lines ofinquiry whose basic principle is to regard literature as an "empirical