Just Another Contradiction

While plowing through Catherine Gallagher's essay "Historical Scholarship," it occurred to me over and over and over how little I know about most of her references. But, by sticking to it I was rewarded in that two seemingly separate concepts revealed themselves to be connected: first, her idea in the "READER" section that a text changes in scope and meaning largely due to the passage of time, which affects any given reader's perspective toward the material; second, (and my favorite found in the "AUTHOR" section) -- who is the author of any given text, or is there even really an authentic author for any given text? Combining these two ideas would seem to strongly suggest that all texts could be deconstructed to the nth degree with impunity, since all texts are open to countless interpretations, and all authors are nothing more than "endlessly labile [selves]" (176). However, I believe there is an entirely different way to merge these two concepts, and that in the end, this convergence of ideas will demonstrate that anyone setting out to deconstruct the composition Perceval will unwittingly reveal the very thing deconstructionists most strongly deny -- that a constant, or absolute, running through life can appear in a piece of literature.

In the "READER" section of this essay, Gallagher quotes Hans Robert Jauss who says that the historical authenticity of any literary work is based upon "the preceding experience of the literary work by its readers" (181). To clarify this he tells us that the composition Perceval "as a literary event, is not 'historical' in the same sense as...the Third Crusade, which was occurring at about the same time [Perceval was composed]." Then Gallagher -- using "the words of Wolfgang Iser, Jauss's Konstanz school colleague" -- states, "Perceval happens whenever and wherever it is read; the historical text is...thus multiple in time and place" (181). I do understand this; in fact, it is easy for me to see how someone living during the Third Crusade could read Perceval with a different perspective from a Literature Student in the year 2008. While the former would be in the midst of it all, so to speak, the latter would be far removed from the historical underpinnings of the text. However, I am also convinced that the fundamental message concerning "The Quest" would be recognizable by both the old and the new reader.

There is something timeless in mythology like Perceval; the concept of The Quest has been around ever since we first stood up on two legs, and it will be here as long as we are breathing. Every time we put our feet on the floor as we get out of bed, we are all on some kind of quest, so why muddy the point of the myth by saying now that we can read it on a computer screen rather than in a codex, it has somehow drastically changed? Why -- on the fundamental level of message -- would there be any difference in "the way a thirteenth-century manuscript reader would have interacted with a text of Perceval and the way a student in a French literature course interacts with one now" (182). Granted, both would most likely have dissimilar views on details due to their life experience. However, the mythology of The Quest, one of the structural aspects of Perceval, simply stands on its own. It exists in this composition as a reflection of a constant in life. In fact, the very act of attempting to deconstruct Perceval would be the undertaking of a quest.

I believe the timeless quality of this text is due to the fact that the mythology created the text, and not the other way around, and this idea falls directly in line with an earlier statement in the "AUTHOR" section of Gallagher's essay. When she addresses the creation of consciousness she states, "The notion that discourse creates consciousness (instead of independent minds creating discourse) does not require Foucauldian critics to ignore individual writers... but it undoubtedly makes them seem less active as the ultimate historical cause or source of a literary work" (173). If, in fact, the myth created the text of Perceval then what we have is a text produced not by an individual author, but by and through the discourse of many groups over long periods of time discussing the same-shared experience. And this would suggest (if I can borrow a template from an example of Past Fact/Future Fact in Aristotle's Topoi) -- As every person who has lived on this earth through its many ages has been on a quest, we can be quite assured that this will be the common lot for the rest of us.... To me, what this all means, in condensed form, is that those who would argue that The Quest is not a constant in life would be on a quest while trying to prove their point. Therefore, they would be contradicting themselves.