Chapter II: Of Theories and Reasons, Criteria for Literary JudgmentsWithout going into a thorough investigation of literary theory, I should like to clarify the difference between "literary value" and "literary merit." This is not merely an exercise in semantic purity, for the distinction is necessary to the discovery of the criteria which we may apply below to some works of science fiction in order to determine if they are possessed of what is commonly called literary merit; for literary merit is the as yet unresolved issue on which a final verdict as to the worth of science fiction as literature hinges. Literary merit as used above by Finer and others seems to apply solely to the "artistic" aspects of a piece of literature, that is to its form or mode of presentation. Literary value, for the present, can be thought of simply as the measure of the intellectual effects of a work, divorced from how well the ideas are presented by the work. The distinction is along the lines of form as opposed to content, the areas which separately contained the critical arguments discussed in Chapter I. In other words, what I am calling literary merit has its basis in the work itself, without relating what is said to external, real world, values; literary value, on the other hand, is concerned just with the relation of the work to the world. The best way to get at the criteria for the assigning of literary merit is, I believe, by looking at the reasons which critics have offered for the general value judgment "X is a good piece of literature." By virtue of the above definitions of literary value and merit, the reasons found which do not apply to value will be the basis for our literary merit criteria, for the two have been set up as exhaustive. Now the work of sorting out critical arguments over the ages would be far beyond the scope of this thesis; however, in his book Aesthetics (see Bibliography), Professor Monroe Beardsley has done the work for us, and all we must do is report on the types of reasons he cites, and then extract those which pertain to literary merit. Although only five in number, his grouping appears to be exhaustive. I shall merely list them, ignoring with one exception his arguments as to their efficacy in the critical process. In the first place, a class of reasons can be given such as: It is profound. Beardsley has labeled these reasons Cognitive Value types, and I have borrowed the phrase for use in Chapter I. Arguments based upon the implicit acceptance of the cognitive value criterion were a major portion of the charges leveled against science fiction in my section on "philosophical" arguments. A related type of reason could be formulated as follows: It is uplifting and inspiring. These are obviously based upon a work's Moral Value, and Professor Beardsley so labels the type. The importance of the moral aspects of a work of literature goes back at least as far as the Poetics, and forward at least as far as the librarians of Chapter I. The type of reasons which I shall include only for the completeness of the grouping, but then reject for further discussion, are those which Professor Beardsley mentions as being based on the artist's intentions, his powers of expression, workmanship, originality, or sincerity. These reasons which refer "to something existing before the work itself, to the manner in which it was produced, or its connection with antecedent objects and psychological states" he calls Genetic Reasons. They are less applicable in literature than in music or sculpture, probably, and at any rate the case has been frequently made that the intention of most artists is the continued care and feeding of the artist himself. Professor Beardsley gives two reasons why Genetic Reasons "cannot be good, that is relevant and sound, reasons for critical evaluations." The first is that we cannot know the intention of the author with sufficient exactness to base an evaluation on it. The second, and I believe much stronger, objection is that even if we could determine the intention we would then be judging the worker and not the work. When a piece of literature is said to give pleasure, to be interesting, exciting, moving, stirring, or rousing, or when it is attributed a strong emotional impact, we are dealing with Affective Reasons. Beardsley says they refer "to the psychological effects of the aesthetic object upon the percipient." The history of Affective Reasons is long and almost overwhelming: from Aristotle's treatment of catharsis to Pater's "power of being deeply moved by beautiful objects." Although the introduction of virtually any psychology can furnish the grounds for specifying and explaining them (I must confess a distinct partiality to Freud's, myself) and make them quite respectable, Affective Reasons can be appealed to to cover a multitude of vacuous formulations, and for this reason Professor Beardsiey objects to them. The final class of reasons according to Professor Beardsley are Objective Reasons, which refer "to some characteristic--that is, some quality of internal relation, or set of qualities and relations--within the work itself, or to some meaning-relation between the work and the world." He cites three kinds, or sub-types, of Objective Reasons: Unity, Complexity, and Intensity; he then claims that all Objective Reasons may be subsumed under one or the other of these heads. The types of Objective Reasons are those appealed to, frequently implicitly, by "New Critics," "close readers," "analytical critics" (in Empson's usage), or whatever you choose to call them. Actually, it might be observed, the connotations of "objectivity" are somewhat of a misapellation. The Objective Reasons can probably be viewed as a special type of Affective Reasons, with the general classes of the former being canons abstracted from factors which commonly have psychological appeal. Freud's essay on "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, " for example, suggests that the finding of Unity (and especially as a resolution of Complexity) is of universal appeal. There are apparently no other criteria commonly used in the evaluation of literature. Now, clearly Professor Beardsley's first two types, referring as they do to the content of the work, are the criteria for literary value in the diminished sense of the term which we are tentatively employing. The final two represent the sought-for criteria for literary merit, as they refer to formal qualities of the work. That is, the features of unity, complexity, intensity, and "pleasurable" effects are the indicators of literary merit for which we shall look. We have found four usable critical criteria, then, and have seen in Chapter I that works of science fiction can and do satisfy the first two of them (in regard to Cognitive and Moral Values). Before applying the Affective and Objective criteria to a few science fiction works in order to test their literary merit, I should like to stress the fact that literary merit is not the sole criterion for stating that "X is good literature," that is for the finding of literary value as the term is more commonly used, "art for art's sake" claims notwithstanding. It is not "necessary" in the logical sense of the word, for a value judgment can and has been based solely on, say, the moral value of a work. Nor is it "sufficient," I would claim, for the "literarily valuable" label is not to be applied to works which say nothing, but do so in a literarily meritorious way. Let us observe, then, that there are no individually hard and fast criteria for literary value, in the broad sense implied by the title of this thesis, as any reason may strike a particular reader as being sufficient in a particular case. However, a work which satisfies all the criteria implied by the "reasons" has a very high likelihood of warranting an affirmative decision as to its literary value, even in the broader sense implied by my title. Let us turn to such a work.
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