Literary criticism that I've had the misfortune to encounter hasn't been about de-mystifying a text or revealing something new we didn't know about it. It's been all about showing off the writer's prowess to be spectacularly wanky, boring, and long winded about an aspect of a text, rather than the whole.
I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that academia tends to, mmm, promote a kind of near-sightedness. It's a sad and strange thing, and I suspect it happens because people tend to associate "a person I can't understand" with "a person who's much smarter than I am." (Much in the same way "expensive" and "worth the money" are confused.) It's the Emperor's new clothes, PhD-style -- if no one can untangle what you're saying, no one can prove you wrong.
And it lends itself to a furthering of near-sightedness among the un-academic -- Monette's allusion to a high school teacher using Aristotle's principles of tragedy to dissect Hamlet being an excellent example. Though I'd disagree with her idea that it doesn't work because Aristotle's "perscriptiveness" is inherently flawed. Shakespeare's concept of plays and tragedy are so incredibly different from the Ancient Greek concept of plays and tragedy as to be two different species altogether -- but does that mean one of them is wrong? I mean, Jesus, when there's a space of almost 2000 years between the two, there's bound to be changes in ideology.
Also, Aristotle wasn't setting up Oedipus Rex as an example of Greek tragedy as a whole -- he said it was the best tragedy. He liked it because it was clean and elegant, not because it had so much in common with other offerings in the genre. People tend to forget that A) this was his opinion, not a God-given edict and B) he was a philosopher, not a playwright, and not even speaking as an audience member to other audience members. He was part of a school of philosophers who wanted to find a system of determining the value (the first academics!) of things, so this was right up their alley.
Anyone who is struggling just to understand Austen is going to be completely lost in the world of cricitism concerning Austen. Thus, criticism defeats itself.
Often? Yes. But always? Generalizations are dangerous things.
Also, keep in mind that, just as Aristotle was writing for other philosophers, critics are writing for other critics. They're speaking their own cultural shorthand with an aim unique to their profession -- just as Shakespeare's work was attuned to his own audience, political atmosphere, and personal circumstances.
It's just two different ways of writing and interacting with the text. I don't think it's inherently flawed -- I've read criticism which was immediately accessible, but I've also seen the kind the article deplored, filled with confusing jargon and inscrutable standards. Sometimes they were worthless, but sometimes, with a little effort and concentration, I was able to garner something worthwhile from them.
Alright, let me put it this way -- lit crit is often a mental experiment. Scientists have their own "thought experiments" which they can't completely prove, and so those in the humanities. They impose an arbitrary set of values on a text just to see what happens. A lot of them forget the results are unprovable, but is the experiment a loss just because its conductor was a pompous jackass?
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Date: 2007-01-18 03:55 am (UTC)I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that academia tends to, mmm, promote a kind of near-sightedness. It's a sad and strange thing, and I suspect it happens because people tend to associate "a person I can't understand" with "a person who's much smarter than I am." (Much in the same way "expensive" and "worth the money" are confused.) It's the Emperor's new clothes, PhD-style -- if no one can untangle what you're saying, no one can prove you wrong.
And it lends itself to a furthering of near-sightedness among the un-academic -- Monette's allusion to a high school teacher using Aristotle's principles of tragedy to dissect Hamlet being an excellent example. Though I'd disagree with her idea that it doesn't work because Aristotle's "perscriptiveness" is inherently flawed. Shakespeare's concept of plays and tragedy are so incredibly different from the Ancient Greek concept of plays and tragedy as to be two different species altogether -- but does that mean one of them is wrong? I mean, Jesus, when there's a space of almost 2000 years between the two, there's bound to be changes in ideology.
Also, Aristotle wasn't setting up Oedipus Rex as an example of Greek tragedy as a whole -- he said it was the best tragedy. He liked it because it was clean and elegant, not because it had so much in common with other offerings in the genre. People tend to forget that A) this was his opinion, not a God-given edict and B) he was a philosopher, not a playwright, and not even speaking as an audience member to other audience members. He was part of a school of philosophers who wanted to find a system of determining the value (the first academics!) of things, so this was right up their alley.
Anyone who is struggling just to understand Austen is going to be completely lost in the world of cricitism concerning Austen. Thus, criticism defeats itself.
Often? Yes. But always? Generalizations are dangerous things.
Also, keep in mind that, just as Aristotle was writing for other philosophers, critics are writing for other critics. They're speaking their own cultural shorthand with an aim unique to their profession -- just as Shakespeare's work was attuned to his own audience, political atmosphere, and personal circumstances.
It's just two different ways of writing and interacting with the text. I don't think it's inherently flawed -- I've read criticism which was immediately accessible, but I've also seen the kind the article deplored, filled with confusing jargon and inscrutable standards. Sometimes they were worthless, but sometimes, with a little effort and concentration, I was able to garner something worthwhile from them.
Alright, let me put it this way -- lit crit is often a mental experiment. Scientists have their own "thought experiments" which they can't completely prove, and so those in the humanities. They impose an arbitrary set of values on a text just to see what happens. A lot of them forget the results are unprovable, but is the experiment a loss just because its conductor was a pompous jackass?