| Contemporary literary theory has generally favored a structural rather than a functional approach to language. Recent interest in pragmatics, however, encourages literary analysis based on the particular circumstances of individual speech acts. Like pragmatics, operant psychology regards language as action rather than as a system of forms. This dissertation applies an operant analysis of verbal behavior derived from B. F. Skinner and other behaviorists to works by Shakespeare, Herbert, and Donne, as well as to Emily Dickinson and Adrienne Rich, whose poetry shows echoic connections to the seventeenth century.; Although the operant taxonomy of verbal behavior is probably not in its final form, its basic distinctions raise important issues for literary study. The definitions of "mands," "tacts," and "intraverbals," for instance, suggest questions about the degree to which literary behavior is occasioned by deprivation, as in mands, by the writer's immediate environment, as in tacts, and by verbal memory, as in intraverbals. Treating textual responses and echoing as distinct classes of verbal behavior puts reading and misreading, whether by critics, editors, or poets, in a new light. The operant analysis stresses social contingencies and the effects of particular environments rather than Freudian dynamics or linguistic determinism.; Extending the tact category to literary analysis shows that the relevant features of a writer's environment often include facts about the text in progress. The word "cause" in Othello seems to have been so motivated. In intraverbal usages, such as "well" in several of Shakespeare's plays, the associational stream of the writer's own verbal behavior forms the stimulus environment. Behavioral theory also emphasizes multiple causation, in which many strands of environmental influence come together to produce complex speech acts. Herbert's The Temple, which is both intraverbal and traditional, draws power from multiple causation.; This dissertation rejects linguistic forms as causes for literary speech acts, looking instead to environmental influence and personal history. The resulting criticism, which seeks evidence about the physical and social reality of authors and readers rather than about linguistic models, suggests that a general literary theory built on such grounds could make substantial contributions to the interdisciplinary study of language behavior. |
