Topics Literature

Question Can literature "tell the truth" better than other Arts or Areas of Knowledge?

Accepted:
December 29, 2006

Comments

It's an interesting question. I note that you don't ask whether literature can "establish" the truth, or "discover" the truth, or "distinguish" the truth. It's also interesting that you ask about "truth" and not "knowledge" or "wisdom"--though you do seem to suggest that literature is one among a number of other areas of "knowledge." And what of "tell"? What does it mean exactly to "tell" a truth? And what of "better"? What can it mean to "tell better" or "tell worse"? Of course, one question I'd have at the outset would be what you consider literature to be. I take it that you mean fiction and poetry. But of course some also would speak of biography, journalistic writing, history, film, song, and what has become known as "creative non-fiction" as literature, too. Philosophers like Stanley Cavell have explored the question of whether or not philosophy might be read as a kind of literature, whether it might even come to regard itself as literature.

So far as it goes, I am inclined to say that literature (or literatures) can tell the truth better in some particular contexts, for some particular purposes, where the criteria for "better" are somehow related to those contexts but ought not be thought of as better always and everywhere. For example, a literary account of falling in love with someone might be able to "tell" the truth about falling in love, at least about a fictitious character's falling in love. That truth might be "told better" than, say, the way a psychological or biochemical description would tell it. For some purposes in some contexts the literary way of telling might be better (e.g., in private contexts, for purposes of empathy or entertainment or detail or understanding "what it's like" personally). But the more scientific descriptions might be better in other contexts and for other purposes (e.g. the purposes and contexts of scientific investigation, psychological therapy, etc.). Perhaps one might think of different "areas of knowledge" as different musical instruments. The saxophone, the piano, and the electric guitar can each play (or tell) a C sharp. Does any instrument play the C sharp better than another? Each certainly plays a C sharp with a different timbre, a different sonority, a different "feel"; but that's not to say that any is always and everywhere better, that it's unqualifiedly better. Different instruments will be better suited to play the same note in different contexts.

Perhaps one might say that there are sounds (truths) that only each instrument can produce (tell). I think that's true. So, perhaps while one can't say that literature is able tell the same truth unequivolcally "better" than other "areas of knowledge," one can say that there are certain truths that only literature can tell. And, alternatively, there are other truths that only other areas of knowledge can tell.

Question Can literature "tell the truth" better than other Arts or Areas of Knowledge? Accepted:December 29, 2006

Question Can literature "tell the truth" better than other Arts or Areas of Knowledge?

Accepted:
December 29, 2006