Re: A Sensibility of Worth

Ha. I think Scottie's question was a good one. In an earlier post I
asked how worth was being defined, or toward what goal was it being
defined. Scottie's question suggests that the worth of a piece of
literature may be defined in terms of how it addresses moral or social
or political issues. So, in his perverse example, of course you
wouldn't be excited about a student getting into the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion.

Worth here is defined in terms of literature as a pedagogical tool. We
could extend estimations of worth for pedagogical purposes to how the
literature exemplifies the good use of language: worth as a teaching
device in rhetorical instruction. I think this is the background to
Robbie's approach to the issue of worth, even if he doesn't necessarily
hold to this idea itself.

When you talked about worth, John, you seem to speak about it in terms
of the "meaning" of the work to the individual reader, presumably how it
reflects back to the reader the reader's concerns or issues. Since this
can vary from reader to reader, there's no sense appealing to any
external standard of worth. Worth can still be estimated pedagogically,
but in terms of what captures a student's attention enough to motive
him/her to close study of the work.

Good lord I know how THAT feels.

We could also talk about worth in terms of entertainment value,
popularity, "what sells." We can talk about worth in terms of influence
-- how much did this work affect future works? Literary types tend to
estimate worth in terms of the complexity of structure and the interplay
of symbols and the ability to "map onto" the work many, many different
meanings. Other literary types value literature for the way it
illustrates a specific philosophical viewpoint of the history of class
conflict or gender construction. We could go on and on, in other words,
and never come to an end of the ways we could estimate worth, because
that's always dependent upon the goal or end we have in mind for
literature.

We could try to be highminded about it and say that we value literature
for its own sake. But that's just a way of concealing its worth for the
purpose of the sheer pleasure of reading or whatever else we happen to
have in mind. My wife refused to watch the movie _Ghost_ when it came
on last night because she wasn't in the mood for a good cry. But if she
was, well...I wouldn't have been able to watch _Swordfish_ on the other
channel, the worth of which, my wife declared, was primarily determined
by the relative degrees of Hallie Barrie's nekkid body.

Well, that and the cool action scenes.

To me, it's ok to talk about "worth" so long as we have a specific
purpose in mind. It's somewhat a waste of time to talk about worth
otherwise.

Jim

PS Have your neices been infected with Harry Potter or Tolkein yet? I
think this depends on what they've read and what they like. There's
Louis Sachar and Lemony Snicket and the Chronicles of Narnia and Francis
Hodgson Burnett (Little Princess)...such a wide range of available
material...

Omlor@aol.com wrote:
>
> Scottie,
>
> No, but for completely different reasons.
>
> --John
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Received on Sun Dec 14 14:14:15 2003