Yeah, they tend to either stick to just the text or minimal context and they gave readers most of the methods we now use as standard close reading. So they gave directly and broadly useful methods and terms that add on to the older study of prosody. Few people just do totally formalist criticism like a lot of ye olden New Critics but I t…
Yeah, they tend to either stick to just the text or minimal context and they gave readers most of the methods we now use as standard close reading. So they gave directly and broadly useful methods and terms that add on to the older study of prosody. Few people just do totally formalist criticism like a lot of ye olden New Critics but I think it’s crucial for students of literature to learn their basic methods and STEM students seem more game for that than English majors who are often more interested in political methods.
Interesting. So the pool of people actually going into English these days are politically motivated. I hadn't thought of that, and that's depressing, but it totally makes sense--your Liza Libes types who are just passionate about great literature are going to get discouraged and go elsewhere.
Yeah, I was considered quite snobbish and conservative for dissing many YA books’ quality. Evaluating quality is a no-no overall. There was a great piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed lately by Michael Clune about how academia was asking for the ramped-up conservative backlash, and one point he makes is that teaching the great works does actually end up making studenrs realise that there are things that matter outside of money or capital or however one terms it. So that ends up potentially meeting leftist goals too but without switching to teaching Instagram slam poetry. That’s what an apparently really intense homeschool lit curriculum did for me, not politically but personality-wise it made me less money-chasing. It benefits everyone. But also political readings of works are really easy to churn out - I recall one fellow undergrad writing a final paper in a senior-level seminar that concluded that Virginia Woolf was feminist. That’s a lot easier than learning technical skillsets like narratology or poetics.
I read that piece, and had to laugh. He had a lot of good points. Nobody ever brought up the fact, though, that leftist interpretations might not be accurate, or even that they might not represent the whole picture. What might conservative sociologists or psychologists discover about the role of family or religion in life? Do you *want* to overthrow Western Civ? We live here, after all. Are you guaranteed to replace it with something better?
Oh, conservative intellectuals have all sorts of obscure, 'obsolete' skillsets. It's kind of fun.
That said there are definitely cases where a more 'conservative' approach might add to the appreciation of the text. For example, readings centered around Christianity would no doubt give you a better appreciation of what Dante was trying to do, since he was undoubtedly writing an allegory. Or Milton--he's trying to 'justify God's ways to man', he says so!
Yeah, they tend to either stick to just the text or minimal context and they gave readers most of the methods we now use as standard close reading. So they gave directly and broadly useful methods and terms that add on to the older study of prosody. Few people just do totally formalist criticism like a lot of ye olden New Critics but I think it’s crucial for students of literature to learn their basic methods and STEM students seem more game for that than English majors who are often more interested in political methods.
Interesting. So the pool of people actually going into English these days are politically motivated. I hadn't thought of that, and that's depressing, but it totally makes sense--your Liza Libes types who are just passionate about great literature are going to get discouraged and go elsewhere.
Yeah, I was considered quite snobbish and conservative for dissing many YA books’ quality. Evaluating quality is a no-no overall. There was a great piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed lately by Michael Clune about how academia was asking for the ramped-up conservative backlash, and one point he makes is that teaching the great works does actually end up making studenrs realise that there are things that matter outside of money or capital or however one terms it. So that ends up potentially meeting leftist goals too but without switching to teaching Instagram slam poetry. That’s what an apparently really intense homeschool lit curriculum did for me, not politically but personality-wise it made me less money-chasing. It benefits everyone. But also political readings of works are really easy to churn out - I recall one fellow undergrad writing a final paper in a senior-level seminar that concluded that Virginia Woolf was feminist. That’s a lot easier than learning technical skillsets like narratology or poetics.
I read that piece, and had to laugh. He had a lot of good points. Nobody ever brought up the fact, though, that leftist interpretations might not be accurate, or even that they might not represent the whole picture. What might conservative sociologists or psychologists discover about the role of family or religion in life? Do you *want* to overthrow Western Civ? We live here, after all. Are you guaranteed to replace it with something better?
Oh, conservative intellectuals have all sorts of obscure, 'obsolete' skillsets. It's kind of fun.
That said there are definitely cases where a more 'conservative' approach might add to the appreciation of the text. For example, readings centered around Christianity would no doubt give you a better appreciation of what Dante was trying to do, since he was undoubtedly writing an allegory. Or Milton--he's trying to 'justify God's ways to man', he says so!