/lit/ - Literature

>>3637271

It's the best university in my country, top twenty in the world.

>>3637241

That's exactly what I like being 'made to do'. Do you really think that political readings afford the greatest depth? Have you ever read any literary criticism that doesn't belong to these - narrow, however significant - categories?

>>3637228

It's not that I don't want to read literature by the 'marginalised' but that I think you should be able to do either. I'm talking about availability such as it relates to contemporary academic practices, not my personal literary tastes (as so many contributors to this thread seem to think). The 'school of resentment' is Bloom's term. Like him or not, his euphoric readings of Hamlet will make it abundantly clear that someone can do plenty of thinking about literature without necessarily involving politics. Are you really denying the possibilities of other readings? Readings which broadly examine the very nature of reading, writing and reality?

>>3637222

The issue, for me, isn't even strictly textual. I think works like Don Juan should be available, but I could live without them. The major problem I have is that we're forced to understand every text through a very focused lens. I'm not, as someone suggest above, incapable or unwilling to work hard to discover deeper meanings. In fact, to use the same example, I'd say that questioning whether 'Conrad was racist or not' is actually a very shallow response to a text with immense depth.