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/lit/ - Literature

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3928151 No.3928151[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

"I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States."

What would literature be without the priceless contribution of the critics? I consider them essential not only to the literary debate but to the actual, enhanced enjoyment of reading.

Post your favorite quotes by Harold Bloom.

>ITT: General literary critics thread.

>> No.3928175

Critics are just glorified bloggers, only now that anyone with a computer can review anything they want, it's painfully obvious just how useless and uninteresting professional critics really are.

>> No.3928181

"What matters in literature in the end is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or the color of a particular human suffering."

>> No.3928183

>>3928175
I think OP is referring to the academic discipline of literary criticism, not "people who review things."

I fucking loathe literary criticism, but there is a difference.

>> No.3928185

"I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike — and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two — are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats."

>> No.3928194

>>3928175

I agree with you if we remove the term "professional".

A professional is a person who does something as means of livelihood. How many original bloggers (not critics who then started blogging) make a living off their literary criticism?

Even though I do not like them all, those who make a living of their books and articles on serious, academic literary criticism are just a few --and, by definition, help to promote reading and the betterment of this art.

My two cents, of course.

>> No.3928215

>>3928183

Spot on.

So, why do you loathe literary criticism, anon?

>> No.3928220

>>3928151
RMR argues against literary criticism in its entirety. I kind of agree with him.

>> No.3928221

>>3928215
Because I think it promotes eisegesis. I also strongly disagree with the concept of "death of the author," so it is unlikely we would find much common ground on the issue.

It is a matter of principle, mostly. I am sure most people who are "into literature" would find my views silly.

>> No.3928223

>>3928220
>>RMR

Ronald McDonald Rodriguez?

Nice.

Seriously, care to share RMR's arguments?

>> No.3928229

>>3928221

No, I don't find it silly.

I just wonder (for the sake of argument) if in exegesis there could also be a bias as in eisegesis.

>> No.3928262

>>3928229

Furthermore, can you ever really do exegesis in a completely objective way? You always place your own interpretation on the text. And what's wrong with that anyway?

>> No.3928270

>>3928223
rainer maria rilke

it's in letters to a young poet

you should read it regardless

>> No.3928274

>>3928223
anyways, his argument was something like don't listen to critics; they persuade you away from what your soul gets out of a piece. Only listen to what your soul takes from a writing and you will develop your solitude (he talks about the importance of "solitude" throughout the whole thing).

>> No.3928292

>>3928270
>>3928274

Interesting! It is now in my wish list.

I confess that the only thing I've read from him is the Book of Hours and few insights on prayer have captivated me as much. Loved it.

>> No.3928298

I think lit critics are an important part of the lit world. If it weren't for a certain lit critic, Faulkner's work would have been forgotten and lost in the past. It wasn't until he (I can't remember his name) brought attention to Faulkner's work that it became part of the lit establishment.

To suggest that bloggers could replace serious literary critics is absurd. Whose opinion would you value most, some guy who gives his superficial 2-cent opinions on a book, or someone who has dedicated their life to the craft of reading? Give me a Bloom over a Bloggy McGee anyday.

>> No.3928309

Is it possible to differentiate literary theory from critical theory and the rest of those THE CURTAINS REPRESENT ANGUISHED JEJUNE MELANCHOLY ASSONANCE faggots

>> No.3928315

>>3928309

symbolism is a very important part of literature

>> No.3928325

The death of literary criticism leads to a lot of stupid ideas in the literary public.

You want to see the result of the death of literary studies? Take a look at every person that tells you "I didn't like the book because I couldn't identify with the main character".

I'm incredibly sad of the low interest and the disrepute the field stands in. A lot of literary critics are more interesting than a lot of writers and a lot of writers are incredibly interesting literary critics.

>> No.3928328

>>3928309
>THE CURTAINS REPRESENT ANGUISHED JEJUNE MELANCHOLY ASSONANCE

That's what literary theory has been about since the discipline formed.

>> No.3928334

>>3928328

Anyone who believes that's literary criticism has probably not read any literary criticisms.

Most works are stuff like "The influence of Ruskin on Proust's idea of beauty".

>> No.3929481

>>3928325

I think so too. The ferocious business publishing has become, paired with the open gates of technology, has created a phenomenon which we're all still trying to adapt to.

>> No.3929493

There's a tremendous future for literature studies in the United States, as long as you take into account that the terms of our engagement with literature, the primary mediums that we perceive as literary, and generally how we think of literature are all changing dramatically. Just gotta go along with the change. Even though in a lot of ways it sucks.

>> No.3929706

>>3928298
You're probably thinking of Melville and DH Lawrence. Faulkner was a minor figure in American literature until his Nobel prize, but he was hardly forgotten the way Melville was.

>> No.3929716

>>3928309
There isn't any monolithic "thing" such as "literary theory."

"Critical theory" is a very specific thing, though popular parlance mangles it routinely. It refers primarily to the Frankfurt School tradition.

Your example describes undergraduate attempts at "literary criticism" or interpretive work, but it isn't really what's done at most of the noted graduate programs/by most of the noted scholars today (eg. Berlant, Brown, Mitchell, Greenblatt, Scarry, whoever).

>> No.3929719

>>3929493
Indeed. See the recent trends at the University of Chicago's department, for proof of new directions and revitalisations of various sub-fields. Berkeley is also doing good work.

>> No.3929740

>>3929719

Tell us more about the University of Chicago trends.

>> No.3929763

>>3929740
What would you like to know? The department's been hiring like mad (tenure-track), has organised several major conferences, etc.

Recently, they've hired Hilary Chute and Patrick Jagoda, both of whom work in "new media" (speaking broadly). Chute's known for pioneering work in graphic novels (she co-wrote or edited MetaMaus with Art Spiegelman, I think). Jagoda's doing some really interesting stuff in network aesthetics and the 'digital' broadly conceived in light of 21st C American lit/vis. culture.

In short, the department's keeping up with trends in a way few other places are.

>> No.3930045

>>3929763
I think that big data and the new digital humanities won't go anywhere.

Humanities are trying to take the cure from sciences and enact a process where they can act without having to discuss their philosophical a priori, but forget that unlike the sciences they don't have a principle of utility/prediction that can decide a posteriori who is right or wrong.

I find this super cutting-edge fields a little bit silly when I find myself talking about aesthetics in literature and a princeton grad student asks me "what do you mean by aesthetics? How elegant the words sound?"

>> No.3930374

>>3928183
Agreed. This applies even more for academic film criticism.

What a worthless, hack discipline. All the great writers who had something valuable to say about film were writing at the level of film reviews.

>> No.3930379
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3930379

>>3928151
“I pick up a current Companion to Ibsen and I find articles on ‘Ibsen and the realistic problem drama’ and ‘Ibsen and feminism.’ Why not ‘Ibsen and orientalism’ or ‘Ibsen and Inuit lesbian studies?’ Why not ‘Ibsen and big media” ?

Yeah, /lit/ why not Ibsen and Inuit lesbian studies?

>> No.3930381

>>3930379
"Group criticism, like group sex, is not a new idea, but seems to revive whenever a sense of resentment dominates the aspiring clerisy."

>> No.3930383

>>3930381
"Groupthink is the blight of our Age of Information, and is most pernicious in our obsolete academic institutions, whose long suicide since 1967 continues. The study of mediocrity, whatever its origins, breeds mediocrity.....We do not accept tables and chairs whose legs fall off, no matter who carpentered them but we urge the young to study mediocre writings, with no legs to sustain them."

>> No.3930385

>>3930383
"Milton, like Shakespeare and Dante, is so palpable a genius that it can seem redudant to characterize his gift, rather like attempting to describe the beauty of Sophia Loren in my far-off youth."

>> No.3930388

>>3930385
"I was a sweet person before our universitities yieled to supposed social benignity and chose texts for teaching largely on the basis of the racial origin, gender, sexual orientation, adn ethnic afficilations of the New Authors, past and present, whether or not they could write their way out of a paper bag."

>> No.3930392

>>3930383

This is a SOLID quote. Oh, man, I love that chubby bastard.

>> No.3930398
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3930398

My favourite literary critic of all time, Sir. William Empson. Long live deep reading!


"Many people, without being communists, have been irritated by the complacence in the massive calm of the poem [Gray's Elegy] and this seems partly because they feel there is a cheat in the implied politics; the 'bourgeois' themselves do not like literature to have too much 'bourgeois ideology.'

"Deconstruction is very disgusting"

>> No.3930403

>>3928325
This. Literary criticism is a natural part of the literary life, and any serious writer who cares about what is written in his time will become something of a critic at some point. Actually, any dedicated reader will be a critic at some point. The real problem is when people want to treat art as purely an object of consumption, and start complaining not because the book is not interesting, but because it has not delivered exactly what they expected. But, again, that is an old problem.

>> No.3930410

>>3930403
>>art as purely an object of consumption

Mother fucking this.

>> No.3930411

>>3930383
>>3930385
It seems that Bloom is a sour oldfag, as expected. Does he seriously think we can distinguish the mediocre from the good from the get-go ? It's like this guy doesn't want for the XXIst century to happen: understandable stance, particularly for an oldfag, but nonetheless foolish.

>>3930388

Fair enough.

>> No.3930413

>>3930403
Sure, but literary criticism needs to move on from theory.

I absolutely despise that theory is being tough to undergrads. These kids don't have a basic understanding of most literary concepts and techniques and yet they're forced to have some superficial understanding of theory.

>> No.3930417

>>3928221
Not silly so much as just very, very against the current. Why such distaste for the last 70 years of literary theory?

I'm all for calling out homoerotic readings and the like as projecting as fuck but at the same time I don't quite dig the author having the only say because after all they're human and can't see themselves like an outsider can and are susceptible to blindsiding themselves and can also just flat out lie/be deceptive. I sorta get where you're coming from curious as to how you get the strength to wholeheartedly reject it.

ps I am sorry if my sentences are shit I'm very tired.

>> No.3930421

>>3930413
On top of that there's the problem that there are plenty of theories out there. Maybe we should start by grounging analysis in the particularity of the text. We can never really account for the singularity of a given text, which indeed relates to personal experience. But there's still something to say about how a text is written, how the plot is built, the characters depicted, the point of view set or shifted, etc.

>> No.3930424

>>3930413

I have similar feelings about high schools that put books like The Canterbury Tales and Paradise Lost and Shakespeare on their curriculums. It just becomes part of people's arsenal for pissing contests. No high school student is ready for fucking Canterbury Tales, I don't care how gifted.

>> No.3930818

>>3930045
Oh, for sure. I'm vehemently against Big Data for the sake of sexiness. But some of them are using it in good ways, ways where data-centric approaches can actually excel (usually these involve statistical or other large-sample-based approaches).

Not sure how that relates to what I said about Chicago, though (you should probably check Chute's and Jagoda's pages before assuming what their work is...). Also, the Princeton grad student's question is legitimate, really. Aesthetics is a terribly loaded term that you really must be more specific about. Even I don't know what you mean by aesthetics in literature.*

*Ironically, I'm about to begin my PhD at a place slightly better than Princeton. Not in English, though.

>> No.3930831

>>3930374
Nope, nope, nope. You very obviously don't know what you're talking about. American film studies between the 60s-70s were afflicted by imported French theory, often badly applied, which led to the caricatures frequently used (like yours). Since the 80s we've undergone massive changes and are far more closely aligned with the history of art and philosophy. You should really learn a bit more about this before making silly statements.

Some good places to begin: Miriam Hansen, Wendy Chun, Tom Gunning, Yuri Tsivian, Garrett Stewart, David Rodowick, Francesco Casetti.

>> No.3930954

>>3930818
I kinda know jagoda's work and I was subsiding him under the digital humanities.

As for the Princeton guy I don't find anything wrong in asking a more specific term. What I was shocked is that he equated aesthetics with its being pleasurable to the senses an idea of beautiful that predates the kantian aesthetics let alone stuff like expressionism or romanticism (incidentally that person was defending ethical criticism). So I tried to explain a bit what it could be meant talking about the aesthetic feeling, the free play of faculties, the force of expression and that guy replied to me that mine is a very formalist way to approach literature. I was dismayed because what it showed on his part was a complete lack of conceptual understanding.

As another guy on here said it seems that our humanity are seriously failing to teach the basic conceptual apparatus of the discipline and it's history.

>> No.3930956

>>3930954
Subsuming*

Writing on cell phone

>> No.3930992

>>3930954
Jagoda doesn't really do Big Data though, that was my point. If you read his articles in Critical Inquiry, he's really much more into aesthetics and hermeneutics rather than data-driven work.

As for the aesthetics problem: I kind of feel that it *is* rather formalist on your part. Bear in mind that graduate school is, 90%, about training and apprenticeship. Certain departments, in certain disciplines, lead the way; they push the boundaries and forge new territory. That's the 1% of graduate school, lol. The remainder, the vast majority of grad programs, simply keep the conversation going; they churn out publications, they churn out grads who can't find jobs, etc.

There is a marked difference (class, status, whatever) between people at those 1% departments and those "elsewhere." In any case, graduate students are trained to think in extremely specific ways, and (frankly) at a different level from any non-academic reader. From what you describe, I think it's very likely that the Princetonian was taking what you said in the context of his own (highly specific) studies, and hence responding in a very specific way. In such a context what you're saying comes off as a very reader-response, formalist thing.

Graduate programs don't fail to teach the conceptual apparata. That's what you do in your first two years.

>> No.3931042

>>3930045
>I think that big data and the new digital humanities won't go anywhere.
Wait, what?

Has the 'big data' moronicity infected the _English departments_, of all places?

Really?

Well, we're finally fucked now.

Whoever is the last to leave this gay Earth -- will you please turn off the lights?