Leo Bersani
IS THERE A SCIENCE OF LITERATURE?
Do we need or even want a "science of literature"? Is a
science of literature possible?
Many of us might at first tend to dismiss such questions as naive
or irrelevant to the most stimulating literary criticism we know. How–
ever, they have become central problems raised by current literary
studies.
In
Europe, at any rate, it is no longer the plodding, virtually
unread scholar who dreams of making the definitive catalog of all
the possible metrical combinations in poetry, or of all the plots pos–
sible in prose narratives. These grandiose and forbidding schemes
have become the concern, especially in France, of many of the most
intellectually distinguished men and women now writing about liter–
ature. The ideal of a literary science is at the heart of the structuralist
adventure. To submit that ideal to some scrutiny is a way of ex–
amining the contribution of structuralism to literature.
As a precautionary introduction, let me say that my subsequent
judgments shouldn't be taken for an attempted write-off. Structural–
ism is far from dead ; it may yet come forth with something which
will expose my reservations about its value as short-sighted. While
structuralists themselves are by no means modest in their ambitions,
they would nonetheless recognize the gap between these ambitions
and what has been achieved so far. Furthermore, I will not begin by
offering a general definition of structuralism. To define the various
uses to which that word has been put is a major study in itself, and
it necessarily includes philosophical, anthropological and linguistic
considerations as well as specifically literary ones. Jean Piaget has
done a remarkable job of synthesizing structuralist approaches in
various disciplines in his short, very dense but always clear presenta-
