Subject: Re: Literary theory
From: Benjamin Samuels (madhava@sprynet.com)
Date: Fri Feb 25 2000 - 14:24:21 EST
Why couldn't they call it literary appreciation?
Jim- by "this" I had meant perhaps a theological approach, like the ones you
mentioned.
As I said, I havn't had much experience with criticism, I'm afraid I
currently have a cliff notes level of understanding on it. From many
discusions with a friend more informed than myself I've got the idea that
there are these schools of thought as how to interpret what a work is all
about. And the summation of these is something like decontructionism,
taking a work all apart into seperate interpretations based on anything from
the the authors early childhood to the color of their socks. Which is
probably pretty close to how I try to understand life. The interesting part
is trying to put all these interpretations into relation with each other.
Maybe some form of constructionism, or reconstructionism. The dillema is
that it seems impossible to construct anything without doing so from simply
another interpretation, no more or less True than any other. Once we've
started taking things apart we get stuck in pieces, never able to get them
back together again. To draw an ever so cyberpopular metaphor, it's as if
the story (or work of art, or reality itself) is all the html code on the
www and each school of criticism is a browser one can use to look at that
code- 26 letters and some punctuation marks. Literary Criticism becomes
like learning how to read the code itself, and understand how a really good
artist, by whatever miraculous, coincidental, or ridiculous means, can
interact with people through these many browsers, different as they would be
in the imaginary world where this metaphor was much stronger. A powerful
tool, but it comes with the price of not holdig to any one of these
constructions and so being left Truthless, so to speak. Better than
clueless though.
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
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