the Greater Nomadic Council

Yeeeeaaaaahhhh . . . you obviously know what he's talking about, though, or else you'd be getting a PhD right away instead of an MFA. Literary criticism, in my experience, consists largely of people telling other people what a book is saying. If it's in the book, why do we need people to interpret it? Granted, sometimes these sorts of exegesis are interesting and insightful, but the whole enterprise sort of smacks of the absurd, doesn't it?

I'm not getting an MFA. I'm getting an MA. And the only reason I'm getting that first is because the only program I was accepted to (I only applied to 4) doesn't offer a PhD. It wasn't a choice based on the perceived amount of work required. I'm not sure I understand your comment, though. Are you saying that I would be going for a PhD immediately because I realize it's less work, more, or something else? I agree that research in the hard sciences is more exacting, more obviously useful (although I have my peeves about the utility of literature), and more demanding, but that doesn't disqualify literary scholarship from properly using the term "research." Do you disagree? If so, why?

No, I was saying you would be getting the PhD if you preferred literary crtiticism over actual literary creation. MFA or MA, it makes no difference, you're clearly interested in writing more than criticism - which is where I saw your common ground with the dismissal above.

Also, I think I might post a little bit about the social sciences here to add to the complexity . . .

Also, humanities faculties really aren't very diverse (politically, that is), and denying that will win you no points.

I didn't even comment on the diversity or lack thereof in humanities departments. The only thing I said was that his post was a retread of the same issues that have already been discussed ad nauseum. As for MA vs MFA, there's a significant difference, as you know. I am more interested in writing literature than writing criticism (although I'll be doing plenty of the latter), but that's different from the idea that what critics do isn't research.

Sorry, the diversity thing was pretty much just my assent to Rorty as I read along. Nothing to do with you.

I guess my point isn't so much that what critics do isn't research, but that it isn't particularly creative, either.

Don't mind me, though, I'm a defector.

Major literary works have greater significance for human kind than ordinary books you understand at the very first reading. Psychiatry has benefited from Classic Greek Literature, and excerpts from Dante and Shakespeare's books are still object of interest and debate in almost all fields. By the way:

* Many movies made nowadays are Shakespeare's plays retold in different manners (West Side Story is one landmark example);

* Geopolitics is full of themes from Don Quijote;

* If you want to understand theocentrism and anthropocentrism, best way is to look at the several literary periods,

Etc.

Of course, but it's only rarely that lit crit these days looks at things from this sort of straightforward historical perspective. Most lit crit is either overtly political - i.e. concerned with subjecting texts to a tribunal of righteousness - or broadly philosophical and concerned with issues of postmodernity/the current human condition, seen through contemporary literature or other forms of culture. I'm much more interested in the latter than the former, because it's at the point of cultural studies that literary criticism becomes historical, concrete, and meaningful, insofar as it moves away from exigesis (sp?) and towards synthesis and creation.

Exegesis is singular. Exegeses are plural.

Yeah, well, fuck you too.

Well, fnck you too, then.

Ummm . . . yeah, that's why I wrote "exegesis." As in, moving away from the general concept of exegesis as a project. Singular.

I can see how you'd misinterpret that, though, what with English being your second language and all.

Sorry, my comments looked like they were bouncing. Just read the third one, it's money.

You wrote:

I'm much more interested in the latter than the former, because it's at the point of cultural studies that literary criticism becomes historical, concrete, and meaningful, insofar as it moves away from exigesis (sp?) and towards synthesis and creation.

I was just trying to be helpful. Since you're being a little punk, though, I point out your lack of parallelism in the sentence I just quoted. Ooo! (See Season 2, "Electric guitar, drums or electric piano?"; joke requires knowledge of later Chappelle commentary on this skit.)

Sleep,

I'm torn on the issue. I'm sympathize with a preference for cultural studies, but I'm partial to the traditional idea behind the humanities. That is, great works of art have an ennobling quality that is deserving of exegesis. In this sense, significant works of art from great historical periods of mankind (the Greeks, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment to name a few) ought to be treasured as pedagocial tools.

Sure, exegesis usually doesn't tell us much that is new, but the practice of exegesis preserves the cultic and/or authoritative value of art--keeping it an alternative to religion or consumer culture. What is important, IMO, is not so much literary criticism as the capacity for lit crit to be used in teaching and the preservation of traditions.

Isn't most literary criticism a form of exegesis? If so, I disagree that it cannot tell us anything new. That's the point of criticism, after all—to provide new perspectives and ways of thinking about texts.

My understanding of "exegesis" is that it indicates a strict focus on the text. Which, almost by definition, doesn't tell us anything new, or at least not much.

It depends on the text and the critic, I would say. The best criticism is precisely that which says something new and says it well. There is what might be called exegetical criticism that is little more than explaining things like plot and characters, but that doesn't exhaust the meaning of "exegesis". Pretty much all contemporary criticism (post-New Criticism) employs a degree of close reading which implies a fairly strict focus on the text. I suppose the distinction is that Exegetical criticism doesn't employ any (conscious) theory or link the text to the society from which it arose. Does that seem accurate? If so, then I would say the sort of exegesis you're discussing is fairly boring, but that's a narrower definition of "exegesis" than I assumed at first.

P.S. That sort of criticism is a bit out-dated nowadays. Most critics of the last 20 years or so employ some sort of framework that takes into account things outside the text.

How did we get on this topic? That is, what are we talking about again? I don't feel like rereading the thread.

Sorry you didn't enjoy my posting. But just to clear up a few points ... I've got an MA in lit, and although I gave up closely following the prof-lit scene a while ago -- with enormous relief, and to the great benefit of my literary enjoyment -- I'm aware of the New Historicism and much else.

I haven't found much of it very enlightening, though, have you? I think it's largely because you can sense the theoretical framework weighing heavily, and because the race/class/gender obsession makes everything that does get turned up so ... dreary.

A problem with lit academics when they do choose to take on the real world is that they're unworldly; they often can't help getting hysterical and moralistic and theoretical about things that are just, y'know, the way the world works. And they get locked into programs: it isn't just that we want to understand Shakespeare in context; no, we want to dethrone him entirely and liberate ourselves from the oppression that he represents.

Sigh: lit academics live among books and see themselves refelected in them. I mean, I followed book publishing for 15 years, and never once in that time did I run into an academic who was looking into the actual publishing world. I mean, there it sits, day to day, ready to be investigated. Er, researched. And as far as I could tell, no one was doing it. How unresourceful can you be?

When I did encounter lit profs during that stretch, they had absolutely no interest in the actual facts of publishing, let alone how the institution of publishing conditions (doesn't determine, but conditions) what we call contempo lit. They had no interest in practicalities, only in whatever academic angle they happened to be obsessed with that season. Me? Once I encountered the realities of the actual world of reading, writing, and publishing, I found myself tossing overboard nearly everything (some dates and names aside) I'd been fed by the academics. Because it just didn't apply to the actual world of reading-and-writing as I was discovering it to be. Which, believe me, has often made me ask myself: "Well, if what they're doing doesn't have anything to do with the actual world of reading and writing, what the hell are the profs carrying on about?" Which has made me conclude: their careers, their seminar rooms, and (New Historicism or not) their own brains.

Nobody has ever asked me to give them a reading list, but if they did I'd say, "Forget Theory, forget New Historicism. Read Gissing's 'New Grub Street' and Balzac's 'Lost Illusions' and Charles Simmons' 'The Belles Lettres Papers' and Michael Korda's memoir of his life in publishing." You'll very quickly get an accurate feeling from these books for how books actually arise: the personalities in it, the business of it, the craziness of it. You won't really need anything the profs so laboriously turn out.

But I've got a bigger beef with the lit professoriate. Lit did fine without them. What have they really added? The critics and reviewers who've sharpened my senses and sensibilities have been as likely to be non-academics as academics. And the academics who did fire me up were pretty heterodox: Hugh Kenner, Marvin Mudrick, Leslie Fiedler ... Most lit profs are really terrible critics: they can't evoke, they've got lead ears. And they don't tend to read for pleasure, no matter how much they've theorized pleasure. They read "texts," not novels or stories. And what they really want to do is analyze them. To what end, exactly? I find reading them -- when they're actually focused on a work -- kind of like reading a wine review by someone with no palate, and who therefor resorts to chemical analysis of the wine. It means absolutely zero to me. And since lit profs generally have less-than-zero idea of how fiction writers create stories and characters, it's even less enlightening than that.

Does literature even need lit profs? Literature in 18th century London and in 19th century Paris did very well without a secular priesthood to preside over it. What really do they add? Couldn't it even be said that -- by muddying up the waters with jargon, and with intellectual disputes that have nothing to do with how books are actually made and consumed -- the academics have done genuine damage? I certainly think the argument can be made.

The history of the literary professoriat is a pretty interesting thing to look into, not that I've done so in a professorial way. But it's an oddball development, an ungainly and unneeded growth that hangs heavily on the world of reading-and-writing. What have they really contributed in the last few decades, besides reasons for a lot of people to laugh at the arts? What good have they even done their students? I got a kick out of doing a lot of reading and earning English degrees. But I finally had to wake up to the fact that what I was really getting instruction in was ... how to be an English professor. Which has nothing to do with the real world of reading and writing. And which -- amusing or not in its own terms -- was of no good to me.

I think if the profs saw themselves more modestly -- if they saw themselves not as Final Arbiters, but as scholarly sorts who have their own little context-setting something to add -- then they really could enhance the world of reading-and-writing. They could do any number of things: go back and re-read books no one else is looking at and tell us what they've found (and not in a race/class/gender way). They could learn a bit about business, economics, copyright, and reading habits, and tell us a bit about what other reading-and-writing worlds were like. They could research today's actual world of reading-and-writing. But the only scholar whose work along these lines I know of who has the right combo of wordliness, modesty, brains, and writing chops of his own is Princeton's Robert Darnton, who I understand is putting together a general history of publishing. I'll certainly be reading it when it comes out.

But anyway, I'd love to know what you get out of lit studies these days. I don't mean that as a challenge. I've entirely lost my taste for the academic approach, and would love to be reminded of how it works for those it works for. I found that it was a fun game, but one that was finally of no use to me.

Sorry you didn't enjoy my posting. But just to clear up a few points ... I've got an MA in lit, and although I gave up closely following the prof-lit scene a while ago -- with enormous relief, and to the great benefit of my literary enjoyment -- I'm aware of the New Historicism and much else.

Well, I enjoyed it, I just disagreed with it. I can't knock a post that has already created this much discussion either.

I haven't found much of it very enlightening, though, have you? I think it's largely because you can sense the theoretical framework weighing heavily, and because the race/class/gender obsession makes everything that does get turned up so ... dreary.

Admittedly, I'm a neophyte at this stuff, but I really enjoy New Historicism. I've read quite a bit of criticism from that standpoint in relation to Chaucer and his poetry and it has been enormously helpful in placing the poems in context and furthering my understanding. Chaucer is a deceptively difficult poet; without good criticism and historical research, it's very easy (for me at least) to misread his poetry. So, in that sense, yes, I have found it useful.

A problem with lit academics when they do choose to take on the real world is that they're unworldly; they often can't help getting hysterical and moralistic and theoretical about things that are just, y'know, the way the world works. And they get locked into programs: it isn't just that we want to understand Shakespeare in context; no, we want to dethrone him entirely and liberate ourselves from the oppression that he represents.

I think this may be changing. It used to be that most people who were going to get a PhD went straight through school. Nowadays people are taking 5-10 years off in between undergraduate and graduate school, giving them that business-world/"real"-world experience.

Sigh: lit academics live among books and see themselves refelected in them.

I thought seeing yourself in books was supposed to be one of the great benefits of reading.

When I did encounter lit profs during that stretch, they had absolutely no interest in the actual facts of publishing, let alone how the institution of publishing conditions (doesn't determine, but conditions) what we call contempo lit. They had no interest in practicalities, only in whatever academic angle they happened to be obsessed with that season.

Well, I know that SMU teaches a graduate seminar on the history of the book, tracing publishing and distribution from Gutenberg into modern times, so there are at least some critics who study such things. You're probably right that's it's a neglected part of the field and one that's ripe for study and theorization.

But I've got a bigger beef with the lit professoriate. Lit did fine without them. What have they really added? The critics and reviewers who've sharpened my senses and sensibilities have been as likely to be non-academics as academics. And the academics who did fire me up were pretty heterodox: Hugh Kenner, Marvin Mudrick, Leslie Fiedler ... Most lit profs are really terrible critics: they can't evoke, they've got lead ears. And they don't tend to read for pleasure, no matter how much they've theorized pleasure. They read "texts," not novels or stories. And what they really want to do is analyze them. To what end, exactly? I find reading them -- when they're actually focused on a work -- kind of like reading a wine review by someone with no palate, and who therefor resorts to chemical analysis of the wine. It means absolutely zero to me. And since lit profs generally have less-than-zero idea of how fiction writers create stories and characters, it's even less enlightening than that.

It's true. Compared to the number of critics out there, there's only a handful that are truly excellent. That's true of almost any field, though, not something that the humanities should be singled out for. I do think that poet-critics or novelist-critics generally have more interesting things to say about literature owing to their knowledge of how things are actually created, but there's plenty of great criticism out there by ostensibly "non-creative" writers. As for what critics have given us, you only need to look back to Dr. Johnson, Coleridge, Eliot, and even Plato to find a rich and useful history of criticism. Modern day criticism, with its reliance on more elaborate theoretical frameworks, is less accessible than that sort of older criticism, so you do have a point that contemporary criticism is, at least, not immediately and obviously useful to the general reader. I disagree that most lit profs and critics don't read for pleasure though. I think that's primarily why most of them read (that's true of all the ones I've ever known). I don't understand why anyone who didn't receive tremendous enjoyment out of reading literature would get an advanced degree in it, but I suppose there are those people out there. They must be in the minority.

Does literature even need lit profs? Literature in 18th century London and in 19th century Paris did very well without a secular priesthood to preside over it. What really do they add? Couldn't it even be said that -- by muddying up the waters with jargon, and with intellectual disputes that have nothing to do with how books are actually made and consumed -- the academics have done genuine damage? I certainly think the argument can be made.

Does French need French professors? Does math need math professors? In ages past both were learned by industrious folk who went on to master the fields on their own in their own little study. No, literature doesn't need professors, but they're helpful. Imagine if we just cut all literature from undergraduate degrees because the profs were useless. What an impoverished educationg that would be, even with the problems of the modern day professoriate.

I got a kick out of doing a lot of reading and earning English degrees. But I finally had to wake up to the fact that what I was really getting instruction in was ... how to be an English professor. Which has nothing to do with the real world of reading and writing. And which -- amusing or not in its own terms -- was of no good to me.

That's why I went back to school. Although I would say that a bachelor's degree in English can be useful to many different fields (what professions don't need literate, articulate employees who can think critically?), you're right that advanced degrees are training to become professors. I thought that was the point. Are you speaking just of BAs?

I think if the profs saw themselves more modestly -- if they saw themselves not as Final Arbiters, but as scholarly sorts who have their own little context-setting something to add -- then they really could enhance the world of reading-and-writing.

You and I have obviously had very divergent experiences. I've yet to have the sort of egomaniacal prof you seem to have met. Mine will gladly describe themselves as little more than scribes, preserving literature and adding a little gloss in the margins now and again.

But anyway, I'd love to know what you get out of lit studies these days. I don't mean that as a challenge. I've entirely lost my taste for the academic approach, and would love to be reminded of how it works for those it works for. I found that it was a fun game, but one that was finally of no use to me.

Well, for one, I get to read about 8 hours a day, which is great fun for me. Plus, I want to be a professor, so the job training aspect, while less enjoyable (grading papers and the like) I recognize is a necessity. I do think that some criticism, particularly a lot of contemporary criticism of poetry, is less useful than I would wish. Some of it seems shallow and repetitive. It's simple exegesis (which we've had quite a discussion about already). The criticism I've found most interesting and varied is that of Chaucer and other medieval topics. It's a truly interdiscplinary field that draws on literature, history, art, music, theology, and philosophy among other topics and seems appropriately richer than much contemporary things. For example, I absolutely love poetry. It's my first and greatest love in literature, but most contemporary criticism leaves me pretty cold. Usually the only thing it's useful for is explaining allusions and factual details I wouldn't have known otherwise. The explication of the poems I can do myself. Chaucer criticism, on the other hand, I've found to be enormously useful and a pleasure to read. I've read New Historicist, Marxist, Feminist (even some Ecofeminist), and other types of works applying contemporary theories to Chaucer and even when I disagree they're interesting and useful. I'm not sure what this means, though. It could just be that I really like Chaucer (even though I just started studying him last semester) or it could be that the greater distance in time allows for more interesting and deeper readings. I don't know.

Fascinatin', tks. Many good things to hear in there, especially that you're having good experiences.

My own probs with the professoriat may be partly down to personal taste: I don't generally like it when I sense a "theory" being brought to bear on arty stuff. (Some exceptions, of course.) I generally feel that, once I "get" the theory, I can predict what's going to come of applying it. And I lose interest right then and there. Or I plow on, feeling like I've got a cage on my head. I'd rather read people who operate more comprehensively, imaginative, and intuitively. And many of them seem to either be one-offs in the academy (Kenner, Fiedler), or to live and work mostly outside the academy.

I honestly don't know why so many academics rely on theories and what look to me like intellectual fads when they chat about the arts. Why choose to apply the "New Historicist" or "Ecofeminist" thing? Why not just wade in and make of your material what you can? As far as I know, that's a post-'70s development. There were New Critics and others around before. But the turning of "approaches" into "theories," and the self-conscious determination to apply them as such ... That all seems to be a consequence of the politicization of lit studies that drove me out of grad school. Which has generally left me suspicious -- well, convinced, really -- that the theories and the application of them all have political agendas.

Any ideas about this?

Well, I think a lot of it does have to do with political agenda. Most of the contemporary theories have, as you know, progressive goals. They're trying to uncover the biases and prejudices they see expressed in a time period or text so that we can be aware of them and not controlled. It's admirable, but does sometimes mean the text becomes secondary.