anghraine | Entries tagged with literary criticism

I don’t really regret getting my MA in English, but I never expected the number of people who think it means I’m available to edit their manuscripts.

Tagged: #you're getting a phd in english? awesome! could you fix my book? #me (getting a phd in early modern and eighteenth century british lit) uhhhh #in fairness i've done creative writing concentrations at every opportunity—but neither of my degrees are in it! #idk

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Someone Like You (Adele)

Angst is in scare quotes because it's just silly.

But anyway, I have this argument about how:

1) Historical context is profoundly important to consider when engaging with early modern literature and
2) This lens should not take precedence over the internal elements of a text and
3) Historicist critics should not only attend to the powerful influence of cultural context on early modern literature but also to the effects of critics' own cultural contexts, cultural anxieties etc on their literary analysis and their understanding of the periods they study and
4) It is not actually possible to understand your present "historical moment" and its impact on you with the same perspective you have on an era long past like early modern England because of uhhhh the nature of linear time and
5) You should still try.

The angst is that my first phrasing was "This is not actually possible because of the limitations of the space-time continuum" and then I was like "I don't think this is the project for referencing space-time or even the limitations of linear time lmao" and then I was like "I guess I could just reference 'human' limitations" and then I was like "but does that obscure the matter of chronological perspective that I'm trying to get at" and then I was like "this is a tangent of a tangent about at least trying to put in a modicum of critical thought about how you might be affected by your own culture and preconceptions so you're not a 21st-century version of the 1890s critics whining about the indelicacy of early modern drama..."

Now I kind of want to put the space-time continuum back.

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy (Queen)

I've been thinking about ways in which Austen criticism has often fallen down wrt class analysis. Back in the 90s Julia Prewitt Brown wrote a "review" that is actually a guided tour through the failings of feminist analysis of Austen due to many things, but one of them was a failure of substantive class analysis in terms of gender. But I still see a lot of what she was talking about in both academia and more fandom or pop culture oriented interpretations—I'm inclined to think particularly when it comes from a contemporary US perspective.

I have way more thoughts about this than I have time to articulate, but I think US fans and academics in particular (though not exclusively) struggle to understand class in Austen's novels or other literature of the time in a way that is not simplified and enormously dependent on largely unfamiliar formal or legal categories rather than complex, sometimes contradictory or unpredictable, highly, highly striated structures that a quick consult of population breakdowns or tables of precedence is not going to explain. And at the same time, I think we (speaking as a US American!) often focus on the more (to us) exotic elements of 18th and early 19th-century British class dynamics rather than analyzing those dynamics in terms of class interests. These interests aren't purely financial (the understanding of class priorities purely in direct financial terms also seems very much a US perspective on it—maybe not exclusively again, idk).

Easy example, but: analysis of class in P&P tends to focus overwhelmingly on questions of exact legal status, precedence and large-scale categories (military, clergy, gentry, upper vs lower servants...), and reported income. And those things matter, for sure. But this tends to neglect how the characters perceive their own class interests (and how accurate their perception may or may not be), who their "natural" allies are, what larger social structures they benefit from or fail to benefit from (again, not only financially, though also that), their conflicts and alliances. Anne de Bourgh and Charlotte Lucas likely have either the same or quite similar ranks in formalized terms before Charlotte's marriage (as daughters of knights*) and are just about exact contemporaries, but the class structures around them are very different in ways that extend even beyond Anne's vast inheritance and Charlotte's lack of one. The image of Charlotte standing in the cold wind while a closely supervised Anne talks at her from her phaeton without any awareness of Charlotte's possible discomfort makes this seem especially stark.

This is even more glaringly apparent in something like William Godwin's Caleb Williams, in which the terrifying, relentless extent of aristocratic power over common people is represented by a country squire with six thousand a year. Legally that squire, Falkland, is no less a commoner than Caleb himself (relatedly, every member of the extended Fitzwilliam family appearing in P&P are also legally commoners). But that doesn't tell you anything about the sheer degree of power afforded Falkland and what six thousand a year signifies beyond direct buying power (that is very wealthy for the country gentry of the 1790s; it turns out a major part of his income, significantly, derives from slave plantations rather than his property in England; moreover, Falkland is able to bring power to bear everywhere Caleb goes in a way that only partly involves direct purchases).

I do seriously have to go write other things, but I wanted to get some part of this out of my head before I forget.

*Anne de Bourgh could be the daughter of a baronet rather than a knight, and thus higher-ranking than Charlotte in terms of strict precedence, but a) the distinction in precedence is so unimportant to understanding what she represents in class terms that we aren't told, and b) Sir Lewis is more likely to have been a knight than baronet IMO from what contextual information we do have.

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Seven Seas of Rhye (Queen)

An anon said:

I don’t have a dog in this fight but I am absolutely fascinated at the evidence that academia has these kind of hot takes about P&P. Not that having a PhD makes one infallible, but I kinda expected people who were taught to think critically about literature and have certainly read more literature than I have have these kind of wrong analyses.

I responded:

It’s really odd.

I think part of it is the culture of academic literary studies that heavily prioritizes theory and thus selects for people who are deeply grounded in theory, which can lead to perceptive and valuable insights into texts, but can also create a square peg/round hole problem. I think a lot of academics get so attached to their pet theories that they apply them to literally everything without considering whether they’re the most appropriate or relevant lens for a given situation or text.

Moreover, readings of texts frequently become vehicles for application of the pet theory more than … well, readings that really attend to the details of the text (sometimes very basic details). I think that’s also part of the reason that you get the problem that my fave Richard Strier talks about in Resistant Structures; a lot of critics spend so much time digging beyond the obvious that they disregard what is plainly stated and can’t seem to countenance the concept of authors actually meaning what they say.

It’s not that sensitivity to subversion and the like, and application of theoretical paradigms aren’t ever appropriate! Some texts really benefit from them. But (twist!) critics can be kind of uncritical in their approach to and application of their preferred theories and information.

Tagged: #i got seriously into fandom bc i was so frustrated with academia so i have my bias #but i do think texts as vehicles rather than primary subjects of study leads to a lot of this #it's led to really important insights too but can go astray #if not handled with care #(fandom also has its frustrations that sometimes overlap #but also often don't #it's just... academia has its problems)

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: My Life Would Suck Without You (Kelly Clarkson)

I’m halfway through the current monster essay and the temptation to just say “I’m a doctoral student, not a historian!” is very strong.

Tagged: #me: *earnestly talking about how literary depictions and historical practice are very distinct things* #in general but also in this specific instance #...i think #but i don't know because I AM NOT A HISTORIAN

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Do Ya (Electric Light Orchestra)

One of the critics I’m reading is talking about the underrated importance of the obvious in literary criticism, and criticizing the tendency towards the incessant “it might seem like xyz, but a truly sophisticated/knowledgeable/insightful/whatever reader will see that actually…”

That is, the idea is that if your readings constantly ignore or dismiss the obvious … maybe it’s a you problem.

He’s talking about early modernist lit-crit, but tbh I’m really reminded of fandom.

Tagged: #lol especially silm fandom

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Bitch (Meredith Brooks)

I read an interesting post this morning about the rhetoric around "trauma porn" and "misery porn" and so on. It's here.

I'm not reblogging directly because my response is fairly tangential, so I'm handling it in ye olde journal fandom way by making a separate post. But the short version of the other post is that "porn" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in those formulations in ways that reflect on cultural discourse around pornography, tragedy, exploitation, and spectacle. Also, there's something iffy about the way things like trauma or tragedy are conceptualized as intrinsically flawed and excessive if they don't directly further the core of the story or have a clear "point."

That's all true, though I think the "x porn" formulation extends faaar beyond dismissal of tragedy or misery or dark fiction. In these formulations, "porn" becomes a convenient shorthand for "this exploits [something, usually real] for the benefit and enjoyment of others, frequently others who are not otherwise involved with [thing]."

For instance, as someone with a disability, I'm accustomed to hearing criticism of "inspiration porn"—in which actual or fictionalized disabled people are exploited and reduced to hopeful inspiration for other, usually non-disabled people (in short, so others can feel good). You could say "inspiration exploitation" but ... meh. So it's important to be clear that this terminology is far from just disapproving of grimdark or whatnot.

That doesn't mean that "[x] porn" isn't worth interrogating as a catchphrase in terms of how it relates to cultural perspectives on pornography etc etc. Just that it's used in a much broader context than this particular issue.

( Read more... )

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: O Fortuna (Carl Orff, John Williams)

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