/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12562147]

The initial reasons that caused a great work to be widely studied in the past are fundamentally different than why the same work would be studied now. Literature and by extension literary criticism is a product of its time and place; there are no universal rules for what makes a great book. All of the great books older than a hundred years are considered great largely because of their reputation and the immense body of literary criticism surrounding them. You cannot hope to objectively qualify their artistic merit within that context. They have become necessary prerequisites for even engaging with literary criticism by virtue of the countless derivative works that reference them. Such a tradition cannot be properly evaluated by conventional standards of merit because those standards were developed to explain why the works of the western cannon were great in the first place. Literary criticism retroactively gives a work literary merit, thus it is impossible to predict what contemporary works will be considered valuable and the justifications that will be made for said value.

[Anonymous No.12562175]

yep

[Anonymous No.12562220]

I don't know about y'all, but I'm inclined to takin' a likin' to this here belief.

[Anonymous No.12562302]

>>12562147
>Literary criticism retroactively gives a work literary merit, thus it is impossible to predict what contemporary works will be considered valuable and the justifications that will be made for said value.

I disagree. Individuals have a built in system for determining value, after you read a book you intuitively know whether or not you liked it and if you got anything out of it. Every person could objectivity rank how important all the books they read are to them. Some books make profound statements about life in completely new ways. People who are serious literary critics are not going to be dissecting a Magic Tree house book. Very few people, if any, have a paradigm shift after reading a magic tree house book. Dostoevsky completely changed my life and it had nothing to do with his reputation. I thought Crime and Punishment was non fiction before I read it. The reaction and impact Dostoevsky's books have on people is what makes them worthy of being studied in a more serious way.

I don't thing there is an objective way to rank books, but the books that are part of the Western Canon are not chosen arbitrarily to throw praise on

[Anonymous No.12563400]

Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reason, but from prejudice. Some seem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long preserved, without considering that time has sometimes co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing to honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. The great contention of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an authour is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.

To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared, and if they persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour. As among the works of nature no man can properly call a river deep or a mountain high, without the knowledge of many mountains and many rivers; so in the productions of genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind. Demonstration immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimated by their proportion to the general and collective ability of man, as it is discovered in a long succession of endeavours. Of the first building that was raised, it might be with certainty determined that it was round or square, but whether it was spacious or lofty must have been referred to time. The Pythagorean scale of numbers was at once discovered to be perfect; but the poems of Homer we yet know not to transcend the common limits of human intelligence, but by remarking, that nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments.

[Anonymous No.12563426]

>>12563400
The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises therefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood.

The Poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every topick of merriment or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendships and his enmities has perished; his works support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity nor gratify malignity, but are read without any other reason than the desire of pleasure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unassisted by interest or passion, they have past through variations of taste and changes of manners, and, as they devolved from one generation to another, have received new honours at every transmission
But because human judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon certainty, never becomes infallible; and approbation, though long continued, may yet be only the approbation of prejudice or fashion; it is proper to inquire, by what peculiarities of excellence Shakespeare has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen.

Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature. Particular manners can be known to few, and therefore few only can judge how nearly they are copied. The irregular combinations of fanciful invention may delight a-while, by that novelty of which the common satiety of life sends us all in quest; but the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth.