Subject: Re: Literary theory
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Sat Feb 26 2000 - 09:26:42 EST
In a message dated 2/26/00 2:03:54 AM Eastern Standard Time,
madhava@sprynet.com writes:
<< Not ready and willing to let go completely my self I feel a bit like a
yo-yo
sometimes. Which is the only excuse I can offer for these purely
speculative, but utterly theraputic babblings in hopes that this galaxy of
bananafish stars will forgive me for them in time.
Love always,
Madhava >>
wow -
That HTML analogy was probably the best I've heard about what theory is
trying to do.
But let me add just a slight nuance. Theory doesn't let you read the HTML
code itself. All theories are attempts at reading the code, or claim to be
allowing you to read the code, or claim to be explanations of how the code
works. What they all do is show you some facet of the code, explaning some
part of it that other theories ignored or got wrong. None of them are really
comprehensive even though they all claim to be.
And the reason for this is that the explanations are in HTML themselves. We
would need a perfect language outside of language in order to talk about
language as we experience it. Won't happen, so....
Now, to answer your question, yes, there are lots of people out there doing
theological interpretations of literature. There are two ways of finding
them.
1. Find the theological schools and read their criticism. In Christian
circles, Wheaton college is probably about the best you're going to do. The
disadvantage to this is that the conclusions are set before the criticism
takes place. The same thing happens with doctrinaire Marxist, feminist, or
deconstruction critics. You already know pretty well what they're going to
say about the work, and sometimes their approaches are more appropriate with
some works than with others.
2. Find authors that have theological leanings in their writings and read the
criticism. James Joyce has attracted a lot of Catholic critics, many of them
Jesuit priests. Flannery O'Connor has attracted a lot of Protestant critics,
actually. You could probably find a lot of work by adherents to eastern
philosophies in Salinger's body of criticism, and you find people from all
over writing about Beckett. The body of work and the themes treated within
it determine the type of people drawn to write criticism about it. This is
the way I'd recommend. That way you get a lot of the people from Group 1,
but set in a broader context.
So go to your local college library and do an MLA search on Salinger :)
Jim
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