Writing about Fiction

We ran out of time before we ran out of class today, and the response to A Midsummer Night's Dream will be due Sunday 4/22 without fail, so I thought I'd try to kick off a discussion online.

Writing about Fiction and Drama

Often people wonder how to do research in response to fiction. After all, if a story's made up, what does one research? Sure, fictions have meaning, but so often the meaning seems to involve all factors of the fiction working together, and seems to fall apart the second one moves to explain it. Years ago I saw a talk-show host ask a novelist "What did you mean by that last book?" The novelist blanched, lifted both palms up and responded, "If I could tell you that in so many words, I'd have never written it." When authors claim such mystery and their mystery sounds with such authenticity, one may wonder what chances for are left the critic.

Nevertheless, a major way humans consider our colleagues' observations is to compare and analyze stories. And if all the things one receives are partly or in some sense fiction -- that is, if one does not believe everything about anything one reads -- then the problems of responding to fiction must infect all other reading and viewing.

To use Toulmin's vocabulary, the fictional work makes a claim. In the case of what we call literature, that claim tends to be exquisitely nuanced, fraught with contingency, even downright debatable -- but a claim nonetheless. Applying Toulmin to essays, we might remember that an objection might come at any point. A reader might object to the abstract reasoning behind a thesis, to the raw data on which it's based, or to any step of the logic in between. Once the reader knows his or her objections, he or she may fashion hypotheses and theses from those objections, then research proposals, outlines, and finally essays from those hypotheses. Responding to a story, whether acted or written, works similarly.

In a play, authors, actors, and directors imply certain observations by the ways they act, move and talk; by what we call "content;" and by small details of production. The principals arrange such details to provoke readers and viewers to certain ideas. In a sense, the claim of good fiction is generally implied. The reasons may be likewise implied, but may reveal themselves on examining the events of the story and the language in which it is couched. The plausibility of the argument depends on the authenticity of the characters' reactions, not the exact plausibility of events described. For instance, if Bottom turns into an ass, a viewer's notion of plausibility within the fictional world of A Midsummer Night's Dream may have little to do with the unbelievability of the action -- of a man turning into a donkey because he acts like a fool, just because both things and his name can be called "ass." The plausibility may have more to do with whether he conducts as one might expect such an ass as Bottom the Weaver to do in the presence of the Faerie Queen, and if his actions remind us of what we know of human frailty and imperfections. It seems plausible to assume that if Bottom were turned into a donkey and wed to the Queen of Fairies, that he would manage philosophically to make the best of it, and not complain for too long that he has to return to his wife.

The response process, then, generally involves recognizing some pattern of relationships between an author's notions and the familiar world, and then describing the principle that governs those relationships, and possibly even suggesting something that viewers might do with the knowledge granted by observation of those relationships. Once that principle is identified, the essayist should defend it with whatever material seems most convenient and appropriate. Material from the play can be used, of course. Critical material can be used as well -- that is, what others have written may be of interest. And outside material may be used as well, although it may only relate in terms of the essayist's thesis.