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FRYING_CRITICISM

                                               May      7, 2013
                                               July     2, 2013
                                               October 16, 2013

    Noam Chomsky has a cynical take on the origin
    of post-structuralism, which I summarize as:
    "The Maoists needed a new religion."                CHOMSKY_UNDERGROUND

    I like this a bit better
    than Paul H Fry droning                 (The video
    through "An Introduction to             is online.)
    Criticism" at Yale in 2009:

    "Literary criticism is skeptical about its subject matter and
    often in many cases about the foundations of what it itself is
    doing.  ...  So the question is how on earth did this come
    about?  It's a historical question, as I say ...  Why should
    doubt about the veridical or truth-affirming qualities of
    interpretation be so wide-spread in the 20th century?  Now
    here, a big glop of history: I think it arises out of what one
    might call and what often is called 'modernity'-- "


    Fry states that literary theory is skeptical
    about the foundations of it's subject matter     I might say it's
    and about what it itself is doing.               skeptical about some
                                                     parts of the project,
    According to Fry, this air of skepticism         but it often tries to
    is supposed to be something criticism has        skate by with arrogant
    over philosophy (huh?) and it is, I gather,      assertions in others.
    the difference between today's criticism
    and the passionate take-a-stand criticism
    of the 60s.

       So the 60s then, was a flare-up of
       a pre-modern style of thought?
       Perhaps a revival of Romanticism?



            Fry makes a point that *does* make sense:
            traditional "literary criticism" was
            about cannon formation, elevating
            heroes, hagiography.  There's an implicit
            assumption that you *can* know the best,
            that there's an objective scale of quality...
            That sounds pre-modern all right.  





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