/lit/ - Literature

>>17134981
>>17135051
>>17135054
>>17135081
>critics are just failed artists bro
FUCK this shitty ass workshop-derived postmodernist drivel. Most great English poets since Shakespeare have produced scholarly criticism--Milton, Donne, Dryden, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Whitman, Pound, Eliot, Stevens. Criticism is not some derivative act a mere shade of the original, possessing one fewer degree of reality than the poem or novel on which it comments. From the Elizabethans to the moderns, criticism used to be considered a duty of the man of letters. Criticism and "literary writing" such as poems, plays, and novels, are two aspects of one activity, the way batting and fielding are two aspects of a baseball player. It was only at the dawn of the workshop era, following WWII, and concurrent with the age of New Criticism, that poetry began to be seen as separate from and above criticism--that a poet merely needed to practice poetry simpliciter. This couldn't be further from the truth. If you have ever wondered about the decline in American arts and letters since the 50s, look no further than the fact that "writers" are no longer expected to produce academic criticism, but rather, to repudiate it. Criticism is not encouraged in the M.F.A., and instead writers are taught that persistence (often in the face of critics) is the key to success. Poetry since Eliot's death, with a few rare exceptions, has been growing more and more lax, unformed/anti-form, and simpler in the realms of imagery, metaphor, lexicon, ideation. This is precisely because poets (as well as novelists and playwrights) no longer study the critical art--which is every bit an art as literature--no longer study the old forms and aesthetic principles, but are instead always reaching for a novelty that has no basis in tradition. I have yet to meet a bonafide practicing poet who has even read Auerbach's Mimesis. In this woeful, instantly-gratified age of the internet, it's as if history had been erased. My jimmies are acutely rustled by people with no understanding of literary history who bastardize and demean all critics uniformly. Yes, there are bad critics, and there are schools of criticism that are founded on cultural trends and political ideologies (can one ever escape ideology?). But that does not mean all criticism should be dismissed out of hand. Some of it is still dedicated to seeking truth.

Literature is problematic (for me) in that it is useless. It's a game of symbols and referents. Like other games, it is entirely self-contained. It borrows objects from the world to use as starting positions, but lends nothing in return as outputs. There are no practical lessons to be had from literature. I'm being completely sincere. As Pound states, "You can prove nothing by analogy." Literature, being essentially mimetic, metaphorical, is merely an analogy of physical and imagined objects in the world--a matrix created by the inputs. It does not edify or clarify--all that talk about literature being an education in empathy is a misreading instituted by liberal arts advocates who need to acquire funding for their departments. Think about it. When was the last time you wept over a character's suffering, then caught yourself in embarrassment for being stirred by a phantom of your imagination's making? When was the last time you were cold and indifferent, perhaps even contemptuous, toward a real person weeping in front of you? If literature were educational, then all of us literati, being trained in the pathetic arts (for all great characters are ultimately pathetic--from pathos, "passion"), would be utmost kind and indulgent to human suffering. And yet we are not. We are equally as stingy and capricious in the application of compassion as all our betters and lowers.

This is only one aspect of the problem that assails me. When I am trained by Wordsworth to detect “The still sad music of humanity” in autumn sunlight or the haunt of a morning pond, what I am being instructed is not how to FEEL more complexly or fully. Instead, I believe, Wordsworth is training me to EXPRESS. For it is often the case that we don’t know what we truly feel until those feelings filter through language, and we grasp them in their full definition. Wordsworth is engaged (among other things) in a process of transcribing human emotion onto the metaphorical, abstracted vale. And the type of expression he trains me in is his own, the poetic variation. After a jaunt through nature or some heightened experience of beauty or pain, long recollected, I return to compose my feelings in meager verses…. Thus, what Wordsworth “gives” me does not leave the arena of literature. (As demonstrated earlier, literature’s education doesn’t always translate to right action. However, I don’t deny that literature can spur moral introspection that then alters one’s behavior. But in this case, it is the introspection, separate from the literature, that produces recognizable change.)

If anyone has any insight into this, I’m welcome to hear it. My thoughts are a confused array and in no way systematic or logically coherent.

>>13078678

>>12073633
touched a nerve, eh? I see you were rustled into responding

>>11832645
>>11827980
>>11830658
>>11830960
>>11834870
Yeah guys, the ivy leagues are a scam. Those dumbass ivy league kids only get good jobs because of their degree. They're not as hard working as me but their parents have more money. Privileged little cunts.

>>8053007
some new copypasta material right here

oh look it's marcusaureliusposter again. you didn't get btfo'd hard enough last time?