In his recent column In Defense of Naïve Reading, Professor Robert Pippin speaks to the state of literary criticism as it is taught on university campuses. His contention is that, although the current trend is to scrutinize the literary arts through the lens of the natural scientific research model — with the ultimate end of developing a “science of meaning” — creative works themselves were never crafted to serve research. Rather, their authors penned them as works of art, works meant to speak to us at the deepest level of our being.
In Pippin’s words: “Literature and the arts have a dimension unique in the academy, not shared by the objects studied, or ‘researched’ by our scientific brethren. They invite or invoke, at a kind of ‘first level,’ an aesthetic experience that is by its nature resistant to restatement in more formalized, theoretical or generalizing language.”
Pippin goes on to say: “Likewise ─ and this is a much more controversial thesis ─ such works also can directly deliver a kind of practical knowledge and self-understanding not available from a third person or more general formulation of such knowledge.”
I was reminded of these words during small group discussion at our recent Cell2Soul gathering on Nantucket. One of the presenters, a young physician, published author and director of a narrative medicine course, put forth his observations on illness. Illness, he maintained, separates us from our bodies. Illness diminishes us physically and morally. Illness alters the way we perceive the world and our place in it. Illness threatens us at the core of our being.
This young physician examined illness in various spheres of influence: illness and the self, illness in the doctor-patient relationship, illness and the family unit, illness and the community. He is working to formulate a theory of illness and its impact on the individual, the family, the community and society, in part to provide a framework for and justification of the study of narrative medicine in the medical school curriculum.
I applaud his efforts. In academic settings it is always necessary to justify what students need to learn to become competent in their chosen careers. A well-developed theory lends credence to academic study — and ultimately, acceptance of the particular discipline. In Pippin’s words: “We certainly need a theory about how artistic works mean anything at all, why or in what sense, reading a novel, say, is different than reading a detailed case history.”
When I engaged him in further discussion, the young physician maintained that the illness narrative could not stand alone by itself. It is too soft a subject to garner academic recognition.
Personally, I believe that narrative, like art, whether in written, cinematic, poetic or visual format, is sufficient to speak by itself. Although narrative understandably deals with the particular, it encompasses the universal, and so becomes relevant on a profound level.
Simple vignettes, simple narratives, in the hands of a skilled teacher, can be used to impart universal truths — scientific or moral — which every clinician needs to learn.