1.5 Organic unity

Organic unity is a concept in literary theory that sees literature as a cohesive whole, with all elements working together harmoniously. Rooted in Romantic aesthetics, it emphasizes the interconnectedness of themes, structure, language, and imagery in creating a unified effect.

The idea of organic unity has evolved through various schools of literary criticism. From Coleridge's conception of imagination to the New Critics' focus on close reading, it has shaped how we analyze and interpret literature.

Definition of organic unity

• Organic unity is a concept in literary theory that suggests a work of literature should function as a cohesive whole, with all elements working together harmoniously to create a unified effect
• The term "organic" implies the work grows and develops naturally, like a living organism, rather than being artificially constructed
• Organic unity emphasizes the interconnectedness and interdependence of the various parts of a literary work, such as its themes, structure, language, and imagery

Origins in Romantic aesthetics

• The concept of organic unity has its roots in the Romantic period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries
• Romantic aesthetics emphasized the importance of imagination, emotion, and the natural world, in contrast to the rationalism and artificiality of the Enlightenment era
• Romantic writers and thinkers, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, viewed art as a means of expressing the artist's inner vision and connecting with the divine or transcendent

Coleridge's conception of organic unity

Imagination vs fancy

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• Coleridge distinguished between two types of creativity: imagination and fancy
• Imagination, according to Coleridge, is the higher faculty that allows the poet to perceive the underlying unity of the universe and create works that reflect this unity
• Fancy, on the other hand, is a lower form of creativity that merely combines and rearranges existing elements without creating anything truly new or unified

Reconciliation of opposites

• Coleridge believed that the imagination had the power to reconcile opposites and create a unified whole out of disparate elements
• This idea of reconciling opposites is central to the concept of organic unity, which seeks to bring together seemingly contradictory or conflicting elements into a harmonious whole
• Examples of opposites that might be reconciled in a work of literature include reason and emotion, the individual and society, or the natural and the supernatural

New Criticism's organic unity

Poem as self-contained object

• The New Critics, a group of literary theorists and critics active in the mid-20th century, adopted the concept of organic unity as a key principle of their approach
• New Critics viewed the poem as a self-contained object, independent of its author's intentions or historical context
• They emphasized close reading and analysis of the text itself, focusing on how its various elements worked together to create a unified effect

Harmony of form and content

• For the New Critics, organic unity meant that the form and content of a poem should be perfectly matched and mutually reinforcing
• The poem's structure, language, and imagery should all work together to convey its meaning and emotional impact
• Examples of formal elements that might contribute to a poem's organic unity include rhyme, meter, figurative language, and symbolism

Organic unity vs intentional fallacy

• The New Critics' emphasis on organic unity led them to reject the "intentional fallacy," the idea that a work of literature should be interpreted based on the author's intended meaning
• They argued that the author's intentions were irrelevant to the poem's meaning and that the text should be analyzed on its own terms, as a self-contained object
• This view contrasts with other approaches to literary criticism, such as biographical or historical criticism, which seek to understand a work in the context of its author's life and times

Organic metaphor in literary theory

Influence on Russian Formalism

• The organic metaphor, which compares a literary work to a living organism, has been influential in various schools of literary theory beyond the New Criticism
• Russian Formalism, a movement in the early 20th century, drew on the idea of organic unity to develop its concept of "defamiliarization" or "estrangement"
• Defamiliarization refers to the way in which literary language can make the familiar seem strange or new, by disrupting the reader's habitual ways of perceiving the world

Influence on Chicago School

• The Chicago School of literary criticism, which emerged in the 1930s and 1940s, also drew on the organic metaphor in its approach to literature
• Critics associated with the Chicago School, such as R.S. Crane and Elder Olson, emphasized the importance of understanding a work's "intrinsic genre" or underlying structure
• They viewed the critic's task as discerning the work's organic unity and how its various elements contributed to its overall meaning and effect

Critiques of organic unity

Poststructuralist challenges

• In the late 20th century, poststructuralist theorists challenged the concept of organic unity and the assumptions underlying it
• Poststructuralists, such as Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, questioned the idea of a stable, unified meaning in literary texts
• They emphasized the inherent instability and multiplicity of language, arguing that texts are always open to multiple interpretations and cannot be reduced to a single, unified meaning

Historicist objections

• Historicist critics, such as those associated with the New Historicism movement, also challenged the idea of organic unity
• They argued that literary works cannot be understood in isolation from their historical and cultural contexts and that the notion of a self-contained, unified text is an illusion
• Historicists emphasized the ways in which texts are shaped by the social, political, and economic forces of their time and place, and how they in turn shape those forces

Organic unity in contemporary criticism

Reconciling with reader-response theory

• Despite these challenges, the concept of organic unity continues to be influential in contemporary literary criticism, albeit in modified forms
• Some critics have sought to reconcile the idea of organic unity with reader-response theory, which emphasizes the role of the reader in creating meaning
• These critics argue that a work's organic unity is not an inherent property of the text itself, but rather emerges through the reader's interaction with the text and their own cultural and personal contexts

Applications in ecocriticism

• The organic metaphor has also found new applications in the field of ecocriticism, which examines the relationship between literature and the natural environment
• Ecocritics have drawn on the idea of organic unity to explore how literary works can reflect and shape our understanding of the natural world and our place within it
• Examples of ecocritical approaches that draw on the organic metaphor include studies of how nature writing creates a sense of unity between the human and non-human worlds, or how ecological themes and imagery contribute to a work's overall meaning and impact