The First thing a Good Literary Critic should do…
Enjoying Praising it New: The Best of the New Criticism, edited by Garrick Davis. In his introduction William Logan cites the best advice I’ve yet read on how to criticize. It’s from Matthew Arnold: "…have always in one’s mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry." Not that other poetry must resemble the lines of your chosen greats. Rather the great should be used as a method, a yardstick, a gold standard against which the relative presence of quality in other, new works is measured.
Logan then follows through with this splendid flourish: " Beyond the holy trinity of race, class and gender; beyond the murder of the author (hardly the death of him); beyond jargon ridden, vatic, riddling "methodologies" fond of sophomoric wordplay and genial mystification… contemporary "theory" remains largely inoculated against the way poems work. In the end, it is a very dull way to look at poetry."
Despite its pretense of tolerance and dispassion, "theory" says Logan, is surprisingly judgmental. It wallows in the age’s prejudices, female over male, anarchy over order, etc. You can’t, he says, have it both ways. You can’t pretend to moral relativity and embrace such prejudices. You can’t, as certain obnoxious blog commentators do, attack criteria for judging literary value, and then argue for the superiority of one text over another without adhering to a set of your own. As Logan puts it "For a criticism that prizes non-conformity and "difference," theory proves alarmingly fond of orthodoxy."
Ezra Pound piles on later in the book in his essay ‘How to Read,’ with: "The first credential we should demand of the critic is his ideograph of the good; of what he considers valid writing, and indeed of all his general terms….He must begin by stating that such and such particular works seem to him "good," "best," "indifferent," "valid", "non-valid."
I’d only add to this: and then explain in detail why he has chosen what he has chosen.
July 30th, 2008 at 1:27 AM
Good post, Nigel, especially calling out the hypocrisy of the hyper "make it new, new, new" crowd (misappropriating Pound’s advice), which is just an excuse to goof off in narcissistic regard, giving mutual kudos for the "seminal" coterie.
August 3rd, 2008 at 1:11 AM
Oh blah blah blah. Everyone likes to bop "theory" on the head but no one takes the time to read good academic literary criticism, for if they did they would see that the best of it does not take a poem under the microscope of theory and view it uniquely through that lens. Rather, "theory" offers us certain tools and ways of thinking that are, on occasion quite useful. There are many tools in an academic’s toolbelt!
August 3rd, 2008 at 8:20 AM
Thanks Brian.
Maitresse, I agree with you, Barthes is always interesting, and Foucault on ‘power’ structures is fascinating…esp on Madness and how the medical establishment took over the defining and categorizing of mental illness from the clergy…the point though is that good literary critics must pass aesthetic judgment, establish relative literary merit: to do this they can’t be captive to any theory. They might wish to point out a particulary strong Marxist reading for example…or identify how such readings have influenced other writers and critics but this should always be done in the sunlight.
August 3rd, 2008 at 7:51 PM
I don’t think it’s always the job of academic critics to pass aesthetic judgment– but to use the tools at their disposal to see how the text works. That’s the difference between academic and non-academic literary criticism, don’t you think? Whether or not a book possesses literary merit is sometimes beside the point.
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:13 PM
I don’t think so either. It’s the job of the academic, among other things, to teach students how to think. If they want to do this by analyzing a literary text in light of post colonialism, or some semantics theory, that’s fine.
But if they want to teach literature, and how to appreciate it, how to identify the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’ — in other words, what’s worth spending time with and what isn’t — if they want to convey lessons on how to assess, compare and rank the merit of literary work, which I think is the most valuable aspect of studying literature. putting words to feelings…then I think it is their duty to pass aesthetic judgment, and to explain in detail how and why they came to pass it.
As to literary merit being beside the point…well, again, in studying the political or cultural or linguistic context of a work, then no, merit may not be relevant, but if you approach literature from the perspective of the intention with which it is primarily written [and yes, I know there is a long tiresome debate surrounding this] ( to entertain, to convey life lessons, different perspectives etc), and given limited time, are looking for the best way to spend it, then merit is at the very centre of the point.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:57 PM
I think we see pretty much eye to eye then!