/lit/ - Literature

what makes anything good?

>>4312913
intersubjectivity

the criteria of 'great' change over time and there are far too many inputs to track

Relevance to the time. For example Hemingways work has lasted a while. It is based on the "lost generation" mostly and is reflective of the life style of the western people and our problems. People don't realize that westerners have crippling physiologic damage from our swift change in lifestyle. We tried to transition to fast. Our technology and habits are outpacing our understandings of them. Just when we realize one thing we are moving on to the next.

Look at cellphone radiation for example. We have no idea about the effects of wifi all over and cell phones. We don't really understand much of this and by the time we do we are going to be wearing phones internally or through implants.

Sorry for the rant. What i mean is that what makes a book great is its ability to speak to the reader, to be able to put the reader in one of the characters shoes. It is about deeply understanding habits and ways. I however feel with ignorant folks a character like Mike in The Sun Also Rises would appear to be not a bad guy for acting th way he does.

Are you autistic OP? Are you unable to understand that opinions and facts are different?

Well, why are authors like King, Patterson, etc. considered bad (yet to some extent)? Plot over substance?

Relations to other literature.

And conveying philosophical ideas is far from the marker for good literature. It should be well written first, if a text is well written it'll probably convey ideas or context whether the author intended to or not.

>>4313306
to some extent good*

>>4313183

wow define them for me

>>4313183


on the contrary, it would seem the pernicious (and ultimately futile) attempt to separate facts from value has largely been the demense of autistic nominalists/atomists/positivists throughout the history of philosophic thought.

>>4313312
What? How would alluding to other works make it good? That seems majorly pretentious.
And you say well-written; do you mean that in terms of it relations to other literature, or good prose?

>>4313390

I don't mean intertextuality, I mean you measure how good something is by comparing it to something else. Look up Bourdieu's Cultural Capital theory.

Imagine there was a single piece of literature in the whole world, let's say it's Jane Eyre. You wouldn't say that Jane Eyre was literature, it'd simply be Jane Eyre. However, let's say another piece appears, let's say it's Lord of the Flies, you would be able to group them together as 'Literature' and make comparisons to decide which is better. You can't define a single thing as 'Good', you can just say it (or certain aspects of it) is better/worse than other things,

You can decide a technical system of what makes certain aspects better or worse, but that does nothing for the whole thing and in the end it will always end up being subjective as even with a technical system, there will be subjective disagreements about the technical system.

>>4313422
That makes sense, but do critics and such actually employ some sort of rubric? Is so what is the system, and why is gatsby considered to twain? Or Paradise Lost or Don Quixote even better?

>>4313555

Well as you probably know, there isn't one type of criticism. Even when critics apply certain technical systems, they apply them within their realm of criticism (New Criticism, Historicism, Post-Colonialism, Feminism, etc.) However depending on what manner of criticism you are concerned with, books are capable of being both bad and good. So I guess in order for a book to be better than others, it has to be pleasing to more types of criticism. However some people just don't give two shits about certain types of crit (Feminism comes to mind). So defining universally 'Good' books is difficult. I think what you're looking for is new criticism though.

to analyze the "what", we might go about it by way of two different routes, first we might describe the physiological domain and catalyst leading to an experience of greatness-perceived (this would be the second oder elaboration).

or we might speak on first order, and thus, direct terms about the experience of greatness and how it ties in to our other semantic constructs (which are of course synthetic manifestations of that brain-state, though first order in the sense that it is what is immediately perceived and most readily available to cognition)

going about it the first route, the second order route, we experience greatness-tropes whenever something produces in us a sense of universality, a sense of fundamental applicability. whenever something seems to "transcend" its direct manifestation, its literal form, that thing is said to be great. this all comes from a more fundamental brain perception, a primal aesthetic consideration, that of "external presence". And i don't mean this as in existing outside of one's body. I mean it in the sense of existing outside of the accumulated total of all particulars in the world, existing as an external presence within a Universal realm, one very much like that of Plato's realm of the Forms. it is from this feeling of external, universal presence, that all feelings of greatness and awesomeness come from. it is from the human's undying struggle to "transcend" his rotting meat, that we get the fundamental drives for all aesthetic consideration.

Now,
on slightly more concrete terms:

this feeling of "external presence" gets its catalyst from the inherent anxiety of existence, the inherent anxiety which comes from fear of the unknown and fear of death. it is from this psychological catalyst that the human brain has evolved the brain-state of "external presence".
The physical parts of this actual brain state have been found to reside somewhere in the right side of the brain, within the temporal lobe. a system of neurons in the right side of the brain is directly responsible for eliciting a feeling of "external presence", a feeling of transcendence. as a defense mechanism from the anxieties of our own immanence, as a defense mechanism from the anxieties which are product of us being fundamentally alone, thrust into world and trapped within the solipsism of the flesh, fearful of the unknown and fearful of the moment in which our solitary existence comes to an end, THUS, as a response to the inherent anxieties of the PARTICULAR, our brains give rise to notions of the UNIVERSAL, all through a physiological neural-quirk which gives us the sensation of "external presence". various experiments using a direct electromagnetic stimulation of this right part of the brain have confirmed the existence of this set of neurons, as nearly all participants experienced this feeling of "external presence", this feeling of "transcendence", of the "universal", of"god".
>>4313320

>>4313624
meant to tag the cunt >>4313320
and call him an idiot fukc but i forgat

>>4313624

Jinkies, Stan Christ!

2deep4me

>Was there something I missed?

Just give up OP

>>4313624

All right. I read this about thrice.
I'm pretty sure you're trying to tell me that God doesn't real.
You sneaky dick

>>4313624
So, what? You're saying that by some parameter derived from the calculations taken in these neurological, psychological or whatever other scientific study of the brain meant to somehow objectify our sense of pleasure or "external presence" (which is, according to you, the mechanism responsible for our enjoyment of literature) we can determine an equitable measurement of 'quality' in books?

>>4313624
you went from being right to moaning about your own death anxiety which has nothing to do with good literature

>>4312913
because its supposed to be creative and make you feel things you fucking faggot

>>4313747

learn to reading comp you daft twat that parameter is clearly not "derived" from the study merely that the brain region responsible for feelings of "greatness" as "transcendence" and "external presence" was confirmed by these studies.
These feelings give rise to all other aesthetic consideration, which clearly does not preclude a further elaboration of "quality" and material-specific and other trait-specific discourse of said quality. merely pointing out the geneaology of all feelings of "greatness" which come from feelings of "transcendence". Notions of the "universal" are those which makes it possible for all aesthetic considerations to have a form of their own, a universal form separate from its token application, a form which can then be applied to everything else, hence forming a valuative standard. by this universilization of form, all aesthetic judgement is possible. note that i am pointing out more the structure of aesthetic qualities rather than their substance, which is then filled out according to whatever material and trait-specific discourse you want to plug in

>>4313758

learn to read ace. i have no fucking death anxiety. merely pointing out the evolutionary catalyst for us having such a brain-state

>>4313758

that was merely the genealogic root of the part which you found "right", but i guess there are certain trigger words that the common plebe just cant resist reacting against,

>>4313799
i can see clearly now, thank you

>>4313828

wrd

>>4313778
That isn't something I deduced that from the reading, it was my attempt at drawing something relevant from your useless blather. If your post was in no way an attempt to address the immediate topic, but only to provide scientific background to the nature of human stimulus in relation to reading books, then kindly fuck off and stop wasting everyone's time. But don't worry, we all get it, you're a genius.

tickle me pink

>>4313856

you seem confused ace

>>4313856

>this isn't something I deduced
>therefore it cant be deduced
>no wait, i'm just a fucking idiot

kek

>>4313856
>If your post was in no way an attempt to address the immediate topic, but only to provide scientific background to the nature of human stimulus in relation to hrhrhrhrhrhr

i no way in fuck even came close to doing this.
that shit was like, 9deep for you derek,

try harder or end yirsel

>>4313856

one mair fir tea rood

pillin this cunt oot the 10th page i cannae llit it daie ken

>>4316556
>>4316571
>>4316589
>>4316593

stan christ, just because some inebriated african american toddler cannot realize the scope of fertile truth pilled out the depths of the godhead, does not mean that you're not the greatest tripfag on /lit/

>>4316608

thank you stan christ, i agree