I'm still not sold on this whole "reading" thing: Let's try literature!

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > I'm still not sold on this whole "reading" thing: Let's try literature!

vandalism: Aug 4, 2003

Read motherfucking Lord of the Flies.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2018 18:03

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:10

vandalism: Aug 4, 2003

Mel Mudkiper posted:

They are both books that seem be taught by public schools (at least in my experience) as an Easter Egg hunt for "symbols" that are meant to be concrete and inarguable

It reinforces the most pedestrian sort of reading, an author-centric riddle box that needs to be "correctly" "solved"

I like hearing others' interpretations of the various pieces of symbolism. I think the various instances of symbolism can be debated, but that the novel is fairly clearly and objectively an allegory. He uses the boys to explain what he experienced in the war.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2018 19:33

vandalism: Aug 4, 2003

I havent read Lincoln in the Bardo yet but I read a short story by George Saunders called escape from spider head and it owns.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2018 19:41

vandalism: Aug 4, 2003

my bony fealty posted:

in my reading Hamlet's dad's ghost is actually a hologram projected by space aliens and Yorick's skull is that of the starchild, therefore Shakespeare is arguing ancient aliens are real, prove me wrong!!

I have known someone who was an obstinate believer in "objective readings" and would say dumb poo poo like this to prove that subjectivity is wrong or w/e, and they were an English major :/ :/

I dont take poo poo that far. I like to attribute various things to other things since my mind works through symbols and metaphors. I guess there really is no objectivity. I thought golding said some poo poo that he wrote lotf about his war time was where I was thinking "objectively". Hmm. im objectively gay.

Edit golding was just a bit of a oval office it seems.

vandalism fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Nov 16, 2018

# ¿ Nov 16, 2018 20:23

vandalism: Aug 4, 2003

Ccs posted:

He was pretty intense. He has this quote from Richard Rorty emblazoned on his website, and was relentlessly critical of the other professors in the Department (he didn't have to worry about them hating him cause he had tenure):

" I think that the English departments have made it possible to have a career teaching English without caring much about literature or knowing much about literature but just producing rather trite, formulaic, politicized readings of this or that text. This makes it an easy target. There's a formulaic leftist rhetoric that's been developed in the wake of Foucault, which permits you to exercise hermeneutics of suspicion on anything from the phonebook to Proust. It's an obviously easy way to write books and articles, and it produces work of very low intellectual quality. That makes this kind of thing an easy target from the outside. It permits people like Roger Kimball and D'Souza to say these people aren't really scholars, which is true."

So is this guy a rare non left literature professor? Is he critical of this... hermeneutic? I'm kinda lost here.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2018 05:55

vandalism: Aug 4, 2003

A human heart posted:

Lots of english academics aren't left wing at all, what the hell

I've had a few, I suppose. I feel like it's really safe to be left leaning in any humanities field.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2018 06:34

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:10

vandalism: Aug 4, 2003

Ccs posted:

That quote is from Richard Rorty who was a liberal but who thought injecting identity politics and cultural studies into literature analysis was destroying the field and creating a lot of irrelevant readings.

While I enjoyed a lot of the English courses I took I learned the most from that professors class. Other instructors who allowed identity politics to influence their teaching seemed more interested in making connections between the text and current political movements and struggles as opposed to understanding the works on their own. Maybe they felt that gave the English field some relevance as a tool for discussing current social trends since it couldn�t provide the applied skills in the workforce of other majors.

Sounds like a good class and a good dude.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2018 21:02

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > I'm still not sold on this whole "reading" thing: Let's try literature!