Remembering why literature and scholarship matter: The little matter of duration

After spending the summer months free of school, many students (and, let’s be honest, some teachers) face the new academic year with dread. People who are involved—by requirement or employment—in pursuits that are not immediately recognized in today’s economy, with its unique investment in science and technology, may blanch at the thought of spending their precious time studying literature. Putting aside the issue of how one studies, and the babbling alarm/enthusiasm for Kindles and other new “content providers,” I have three reasons to proffer for why literature, and the scholarship that we are producing, matter.
1. Culture leaves a trace. Assuming that we are all intelligent people, and that we care about the state of our world and the direction that society is taking in our times, culture should matter to us. Culture—the shared field of expression of a people—leaves a trace. If the past three millennia can teach us anything, it should warn us of that. Although we cannot predict which ones will endure, some of our books, art, buildings, and music will live on and profoundly touch future publics.
2. Some cultural traces are more important than others. Let us recall the short duration of most of the chatter produced today. The culture that we will leave to posterity is not the ephemera that enjoys such influence today—podcasts, blogs, cell-phoned conversations, and twitters. Other ephemera were produced before us, and they too have lost luster over time. (Anyone up for a magic lantern show?) Ephemera are forgotten, when the long duration assured by books, art, buildings, and music endures.
3. Scholarship allows people to connect the dots between ephemera and long duration. By studying literature (architecture, art or music) of the past, we are able to “get it”: we get the anxieties felt by peoples in a different time and place, their lack of confidence about government, their curiosity about scientific advances, and their worries about the future. Moreover, we may share in some of the humor, the gossip, and the political jockeying that surrounded famous events and personages of their day, and maybe even gain some wisdom.
4. An illustrative example from the French Revolution.
In an article currently under review, I analyze three novels of the Revolution that undermined the political potency of the famous “Festival of the Federation” (July 14, 1790; see two title pages above). By comparing the literary works, which are preserved to us in libraries worldwide, with the ephemeral cultural traces found in popular culture of the time–newspaper articles, caricatures, and songs–I discovered how writers used strategies still operative among political satirists today: undermining through ridicule, co-optation, and resistance. Writers tried and, judging from contemporary book reviews, apparently succeeded in producing a competing field of performance where the political repressed found full expression. The Festival of the Federation projected an image of unity, but the cultural traces left by literature debunked its legitimacy. By studying these fascinating texts, we are able to relive French social life during summer 1790, and see that their pundits, soothsayers, and officials were not so different from our own.
Future publics will understand us, God willing, not by watching morons like Howard Stern (seen above in one of his more glorious moments) mouth off on TV talk shows, or reading the Huffington blog. Instead, they will most likely stumble upon our trace by reading our poets and novelists, admiring our paintings and sculptures, living in our buildings, listening to our songs and symphonies. The ephemera of popular culture are fun, irritating, and timely, and do much to enrich the cultural echo, but their trace will fade quicker, and dissolve sooner, than the time-honored forms of cultural memory we’ve inherited from the past.
On this eve of the new academic year, I find that fact reassuring.

The wizardry of Oz: French echoes in an American classic?

Have you ever noticed:

– The Cowardly Lion played by Bert Lahr in the 1939 MGM film, The Wizard of Oz, bears a striking resemblance to Louis XIV, king of France from 1654 to 1715…

(Note the arched eyebrows, the hair parted in the middle, Louis’s bouncy coiffure–whose profile is mirrored in the Lion’s perky ears and little red bow– their serious  jowls, and the magisterial gaze.  Moreover, Lahr’s solo, “If I Were King of the Forest,”  spoofs the pretensions of kingship with hilarious effect. )

– General Jinjur’s Army of Revolt, from L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) bears a strong resemblance to 18th- and 19th-century imagery of the “Amazons” of October 1789 and other agents of unauthorized female politicking…

(Note the comely women warriors and the bemused expressions on their erstwhile enemies in these illustrations, and especially their pointed weapons–knitting needles in General Jinjur’s army, pikes in revolutionary Paris.  A textual comparison reveals more similarities; consider The Marvelous Land of Oz, pp. 83-95; and Pierre Roussel’s lampoon of women’s political clubbing in Le Château des Tuileries [1802], 2:36-38.)

Did the Oz team (author L. Frank Baum, illustrator John R. Neill, and comedian Bert Lahr) borrow from French history in their search for the marvelous?  Is the Cowardly Lion skewering Louis XIV’s pretensions with his “woofs” and “growls” to the chipmunks under his command?  Read the lyrics and judge for yourself!