[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 59 KB, 500x631, 3544d783-1423-40c2-a040-e5822c713784.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3014252 No.3014252 [Reply] [Original]

Apart from Bloom, are there any contemporary alternatives to post-modern aesthetics?

What will be the next big movement in terms of aesthetics?

>> No.3014258

> that pic
> my sides

gets me every time.

>> No.3014263
File: 152 KB, 670x865, MF BLOOM.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3014263

>>3014258

>> No.3014275

new sincerity? i don't really know

i do have sympathy for bloom. bloom at his worst is better than most post-structural aesthetics. or at least its less annoying

>> No.3014289

>>3014252
In terms of the study of the nature of humans comprehending "the beautiful"? You could always try some fucking Marxism, in particular the Australian Lukacs school.

>> No.3014361

>What will be the next big movement in terms of aesthetics?
We won't know until we're in it, or after it.

>> No.3014376

whats the essential bloom to read?

>> No.3014397

>>3014376
If you're a new, probably check out The Western Canon or Genius. It's what most people know him for. It's pop literary criticism. Written in his latter period after he's disregarded academia and gone full grampa and is writing to the masses to try to encourage reading quality books or else reading books will be a dead art form.

>> No.3014408

>>3014397
Im new to lit, but not literature. I feel a bit silly that Ive never heard of Bloom. Ill check him out. Any other suggestions? Anyone here fond of Jack Spicer's lectures on The Outside?

>> No.3015131

>>3014397
> The Western Canon or Genius
> quality books

His 'Canon' lists Freud as one of the best authors of All Time, but doesn't include Dostoyevsky.

Please, please, don't take Bloom seriously. He's the Dan Brown of literary criticism.

>> No.3015927

>>3015131
He puts Dostoevsky in the canon. Do you even read?

>> No.3015945

>>3015927

Just went to Amazon. Here's the table of contents from his 'Western Canon':

* Shakespeare
* Dante
* Chaucer
* Cervantes
* Montaigne & Moliere
* Milton
* Samuel Johnson
* Goethe

* Wordsworth & Austen
* Walt Whitman
* Emily Dickinson
* Dickens & Eliot
* Tolstoy
* Ibsen

* Freud
* Proust
* Joyce
* Woolf
* Kafka
* Borges & Neruda & Pessoa
* Beckett

(The retarded grouping is Bloom's, not mine. I just copy-pasted the table of contents.)

Seriously, this is a shit-tier Dan-Brown-level list.

>> No.3015976

>>3015945

Just the statistics. His 'Western' canon is:

* 12 British authors. (Out of 26!)
* One each of Italian and Spanish.
* Two Frenchmen, and none of them from the 19th century or later! (Wat?)
* Only one Russian author. (Wat)
* Only one American author -- Walt Whitman! (Double 'Wat')
* Freud. Who didn't even write fiction, for God's sake.
* Three totally different Latin American authors, grouped together. (I guess because all them spics look all the same to Bloom anyways.)
* And Ibsen. OK, 'Peer Gynt' was very cool, but the fuck does this have to do with literary canon??


4 1111
5 11111
3 -11

>> No.3016007

>>3015976
>Only one American author -- Walt Whitman! (Double 'Wat')

Emily Dickenson is American, and also Whitman is fucking godly.

>> No.3016016

Bloom himself hates the list and only made it up in about an hour when the publisher demanded it. Do not take it seriously.

>> No.3016031

>>3016016
> Bloom himself hates the list and only made it up in about an hour when the publisher demanded it. Do not take it seriously.

I could make up a better list in an hour.

Fuck, just reading /lit/ archives for an hour will get you a much better list.

>> No.3016029

Bloom's full list is here
http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

>> No.3016035

>>3016029
What's the point of even having a "canon" when it's that fucking expansive?

>> No.3016072

Harold Bloom has this perpetual look on his face like he just realized he shit his pants.

I like a lot of his criticism, but goddamn if that guy clings to the idea of canon like it's the last chopper out of Saigon.

>> No.3016103

>>3016035
That's a tiny, tiny fraction of Western Literature.

>> No.3016120

>>3015945
I feel like half of that list has merit while the other half just inspired a shit ton of hack writers.
>Freud
>Emily Dickinson
Why?

>> No.3016130

>>3016035
>What's the point of even having a "canon" when it's that fucking expansive?

And at the end, despite being a list of over 9000 books, there is still no Tolkien on that list.

I mean, come on -- you can argue about the merits of his writing, but Tolkien is nothing if not canonical. (In all senses of the word.)

It almost seems like Bloom has no clue as to what the word 'canon' means -- he probably thinks it's shorthand for 'patrician books that I happen to like'.

>> No.3016132

>>3016120
>Why?
Read the book and find out. It's not just a list: he spends a chapter each explaining his decision.

>> No.3016191

>>3016103
Yeah, but not everything is "significant" just because it's good.

>> No.3016595

Why is everyone so retarded in this thread?

Bloom wants the idea of a canon. He wants literature departments to continue to have some notion that works are better than others and not just "lol its all subjective" and "we should teach shitty books because its only fair"

Seriously, you guys are fucking dense.

And Tolkien is not fucking canonical. Tom Bombadil? Are you fucking kidding me?

>> No.3016598

i think the term should be "Do You Even Lit?". sounds much better than "Do You Even Read?"

>> No.3016640

>>3016598

I think you're kind of vapid.

>> No.3016645

What are 'post-modern aesthetics'?

Define your terms, OP.

>> No.3016668

>>3016029
>every single play and poem by Shakespeare is "of great aesthetic interest"
What a lazy hack.

>> No.3016685

>>3016645

Since when did we have to define every single thing we say? Usually, we say them for the convenience of shorthand.

>> No.3016691

>>3016668
> hasn't read Bloom's actual comments on Shakespeare's plays

He hates a handful of them. He still thinks they're worthwhile, mainly because it's Shakespeare and he's (rightly) interested in the work(s) in the life and not the life in the work.

>> No.3016693

>>3016685
We should have a word filter on /lit/ that changes 'define' to 'can you tell me what this word means:'

>> No.3016698

>>3016685

Well, partly I'd like to see if you can even attempt to say what you mean by it.

You see, there's this big, ignorant crowd going around that just use terms like 'post-modern', 'post-structuralist', 'deconstruction', etc. to just mean 'bad' or 'liberal' or 'leftist'.

I want to see what kind of person is asking this question.

I also genuinely have no idea what that term is supposed to mean.

>> No.3016706

>>3016698

I am not OP. You are ignorant. I am out.

>> No.3016708

>>3016706

I know I'm ignorant. I just said so.

"I genuinely have no idea what that term is supposed to mean."

>> No.3016709

>>3016698
> there's a bunch of people who are ignorant and don't even know what it means
> i'm ignorant and don't even know what it means

cool, thanks bro

>> No.3016712

>>3016709
>>3016708

I don't know what it means in regards to aesthetics. I know what post-modern means in other contexts. I know what post-structuralist means. I know what deconstruction means.

You still have defined it in this context.

>> No.3016715

>>3016712

have not*

>> No.3016728

>>3016712
In a nutshell, "there's no such thing as a great work of art, whatever you think is good is just a result of your culture, history, blah blah...the author is dead...therefore we don't necessarily need to read the so-called great works and we don't have to analyse books in terms of what makes this book so great and universal and timeless but we can ask questions like, how does this book reflect its culture and how does it present women and why is it so mean to black people and check your cis privelige"

Not OP, btw, but there you go.

no tears, only dreams now

>> No.3016733

po-mo aesthetics means the sublime doesn't exist

don't worry, for once i side with bloom, post-structuralist thought will not last. there's a really growing sense that we're exhausted from all this "discourse"

>> No.3016735

>>3016728
You mean like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OX77Qv66qw

>> No.3016736

>>3016691
>Since the literary canon is at issue here, I include only those religious, philosophical, historical, and scientific writings that are themselves of great aesthetic interest.
That's from the introduction to the list. Obviously everything Shakespeare did, shitty or not, is of some interest, but the same applies to any great writer. Yet he's perfectly capable of, for instance, picking seven plays by Ibsen as more canonical than the others. He of course excludes A Doll's House, because Harold needs to show those feminists.

>> No.3016742

>>3016736
But does he put all of Shakespeare into the canon? Does he put Titus Andronicus into the canon?

I can't remember what else by Shakespeare he dislikes. I don't find Bloom that great a reader/critic of Shakespeare. I do like that Bloom exists and he's always doing in his thing.

>> No.3016756

>>3016742
Yes. Just open the link provided above and ctrl+f Shakespeare.

>> No.3016765

>>3016756
> click link
> terence mckenna
> 10 minute "discussion"
> youtube comments


What the fuck are you trying to say.

>> No.3016766

>>3016733
>po-mo

stop that

>> No.3016771

>>3016765
Okay, I'll hold your hand: http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

>> No.3016774

>>3016765
I think that Terrence Mckenna thing was a partial joke. Mckenna was denouncing relativism, and he was posted in response to an insincere comment saying all art is equal.

>> No.3016778

>>3016728

>we don't have to analyse books in terms of what makes this book so great and universal and timeless

>but we can ask questions like, how does this book reflect its culture and how does it present women and why is it so mean to black people and check your cis privelige

How are these two ideas divorced?

In particular, it would seem that to argue for a works universality you would have to take how it reflects (or fails to reflect) its culture. You'd certainly need to account for women, blacks, and trans people, unless they're outside what you consider 'universal'.

>> No.3016785

>>3016778
Please, only straight white middle-class men are universal.

>> No.3016792

>>3016031
Alright, post your list on pastebin---you have an hour.

>> No.3018212

>>3016778
Have you read Invisible Man? That's how you write fiction that is about black people yet universal and is an aesthetic achievement.

Writing mediocre fiction and then saying "well its about a minority so we gotta be fair" is just retarded logic and is not going to last more than another 10 miserable years.

>> No.3018223

Post-modern aesthetics just means art is only good if it can have the "leftist stamp of approval."

>> No.3018256

>>3016595
> Bloom wants the idea of a canon. He wants literature departments to continue to have some notion that works are better than others

I reiterate: 'canon' doesn't mean 'patrician books I happen to like'.

"A literary canon is a classification of the most representative or central works in a period or genre."

> And Tolkien is not fucking canonical.

Yes, Tolkien is canonical. See above.

>> No.3018291

>>3016645
This is funny if you know anything about modern aesthetics.

>> No.3018301

>>3018212

I've watched an interview of Harold bitching about good black authors getting ignored because they weren't political enough; i think it was a charlie rose interview.

>> No.3018491

Bloom wants art to be measured by quality, not by politics.

A work of art should be considered good because it agrees with the politics of whoever is critiquing it.