tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post2237595483463409162..comments2024-01-06T10:36:04.084-05:00Comments on A Commonplace Blog: Criticism’s returnsD. G. Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-18198005565918686412009-07-30T23:28:03.350-04:002009-07-30T23:28:03.350-04:00Nigel,
I most decidedly do not mean “new thinking...Nigel,<br /><br />I most decidedly do <i>not</i> mean “new thinking.” I mean new facts, new information, new circumstances, new principles, new conclusions arrived at on empirical grounds. I mean the previously unknown, including newly published or newly rediscovered texts and new corrections of old mistakes. <br /><br />I mean “new” in the sense that J. V. Cunningham meant the word: “There is less to be said about literature than has been said,” he opens the Introduction to his <i>Collected Essays</i>, “and this book adds a little more. What it adds is, or was when first published, new, though it would take a lifetime of biliographical search to be sure.” <br /><br />In the book, Cunningham famously establishes, for example, that Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is written in the form of a logical syllogism, that Nashe’s oft-praised line <i>Brightness falls from the air</i> must be corrected to “Brightness falls from the hair,” that Shakespeare learned the laws of tragedy from his schoolbooks, <i>et cetera</i>. He did not merely reinterpret Marvell, Nashe, and Shakespeare. He added substantively to our knowledge of them.<br /><br />The texts need not be new, but the knowledge—not merely the interpretation—of them must be.D. G. Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-50432236570658387392009-07-30T23:15:24.856-04:002009-07-30T23:15:24.856-04:00Nigel . . . there is, indeed, in my humble opinion...Nigel . . . there is, indeed, in my humble opinion, safety in not venturing beyond accepted, tried-and-true approaches in academia. The paradox is, I think, in the fact that academia is ostensibly a bastion of liberalism but the tenure-track professor who does not conform to the accepted patterns of research, writing, and publication runs the risk of losing out on tenure and retention. However, as I am not in the tenure-hunt, perhaps someone more familiar with the pitfalls and challenges of the process can correct any of my inaccuracies (especially with respect to the old publish-or-perish chestnut as I have described it above).R/Thttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07791522136032565027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-45874929473097115632009-07-30T22:03:29.281-04:002009-07-30T22:03:29.281-04:00Here's a non-rhetorical question: Doesn't ...Here's a non-rhetorical question: Doesn't it make obvious sense, if 'new' thinking, new 'intelligence' as you put it (this term requires clarification if you are to base an entire argument on it)...is the objective, to achieve it by examining 'new' works?<br /><br />This practice you speak of smacks of the bureaucrat afraid to take any risks/too lazy to come up with original thinking for fear of being mocked...or fired.NigelBealehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06094387597632333192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-79756672978994271062009-07-28T18:17:36.119-04:002009-07-28T18:17:36.119-04:00As a postscript to my earlier comment(s), and as a...As a postscript to my earlier comment(s), and as anecdotal evidence of the problem(s) in graduate school, I knew not long ago of a student who wanted to base her thesis on Arundhati Roy's THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, which had just previously won the Booker Prize; the student's thesis proposal was rejected (not on the merits of the novel, which I am not planning to either defend or attack in this anecdote) because it was too new and had not yet generated sufficient criticism (beyond reviews) in the field. This example may not be completely indicative of what I was talking about earlier, but the incident at the time seemed unfair to the student and unnecessarily dismissive by the thesis committee. Should the student have been permitted to succeed or fail in her effort? Was the nonexistence of secondary sources directly related to Roy's novel a substantial reason for the thesis committee's summary judgment? Now, with a decade gone by, I wonder about the mindset of the student (now an instructor at a junior college); perhaps she is a bit wary of new territory since she was reined in so abruptly and forced to focus on something canonical rather than the novel that powerfully held her interest.R/Thttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07791522136032565027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-44141860816307646682009-07-28T16:51:59.923-04:002009-07-28T16:51:59.923-04:00I take it that your questions are rhetorical. Neve...I take it that your questions are rhetorical. Nevertheless, let me ask a series of question that may or may not be perceived as rhetorical: Do some (or even many) literary scholars avoid new territory because there is so little in the way of secondary sources which they can use (either through contrast or comparison) to further their own arguments? Aren't undergraduate and graduate students (as English majors) trained to apply secondary sources to their thesis? Isn't your experience with seeking out other critiques of Russo's novel some sort of evidence of what I am suggesting in the first two questions? Now, with those questions thrown out there, for whatever they might be worth, I would say that I agree with you that literary criticism ought to focus more on newer and different texts; however, the points I was attempting to make in the earlier posting (and in this posting) are observations about the status quo and the reasons for the problems. Let me take all of this in a different direction: if I had proposed an unconventional (non-canonical) text or topic for my M.A. thesis, I would have had no success in getting it approved within the department (with the staffing as it was at the time), so--with an understanding of the conservative, canon-loving realities--I comfortably settled upon Flannery O'Connor's WISE BLOOD because (in part) of almost all that I have previously noted. No, I could not be a maverick in that situation. Yes, I and others could and should be mavericks after the graduate school constraints have been removed. Still, though, the curriculum of an English department and the constraints of a semester force me to make choices based on those same old limitations.R/Thttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07791522136032565027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-60313164137564786492009-07-28T16:34:27.964-04:002009-07-28T16:34:27.964-04:00Why must literary scholars teach the same books th...Why must literary scholars teach the same books they write about? Or, better put, why does it never occur to them to venture beyond their own reading lists—something they criticize their students for failing to do—in writing criticism?<br /><br />Why, for that matter, is interpretation not merely the dominant mode but the exclusive mode of literary study in the classroom? What my students need, I have found, is a wider acquaintance with literature: wider than I can possibly give them, by assigning books for them to read, in a single semester. Why shouldn’t my lectures provide the literary background they can’t get on their own?<br /><br />Mark McGurl’s recent history of the American novel since the Second World War, <i>The Program Era</i>, has garnered a lot of attention precisely because McGurl screws on a wider lens. I don’t agree with many of his conclusions, but I admire his sweep and ambition.D. G. Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-58161574895840177962009-07-28T15:33:35.924-04:002009-07-28T15:33:35.924-04:00First, let me cite your comment:
"Rather tha...First, let me cite your comment:<br /><br />"Rather than another intensive examination The Sound and the Fury, perhaps some news about Faulkner’s contemporaries and the novels they published the same year [. . . ]"<br /><br />Perhaps some of the problem can be found in the course content of many English departments; the tried-and-true canonical texts are properly required reading, and that often leaves little time and space within a course or a program of study for the overlooked, noncanonical works that you suggest are "news"[worthy] for either published or thesis-level literary criticism. There is, in my humble opinion, a tendency to avoid deviations from the canon (which means you have too many articles and books about Faulkner and too few about his noteworthy contemporaries because students have never been exposed to the latter and remain more comfortable with revisiting seemingly inexhaustible materials). Even in graduate school programs, students tend to focus mainly on the orthodox canon, which they then go on to teach when they move to the front of the classroom as instructors/professors. So, with that having been posited, doesn't it seem correct that the academy must do a better job of incorporating the new canon (whatever that might be) and judiciously marginalizing the more traditional canon? Now, with that having been suggested, is that even possible in English department environments where the limited amount of time for students must be focused at a minimum on the traditional texts? I don't know the answer to the tension between the two approaches. Any suggestions?R/Thttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07791522136032565027noreply@blogger.com