Via The Globe and Mail:
What’s missing from our classrooms and our culture, Eagleton says, is discussion of the literariness of literature, of what makes a poem different from a stop sign, or a novel about grief different from the account of grief in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. As an English professor might say, we’re good on content, not so good on form. We go straight for what the play says, and ignore how it says it.
A major critic says we’ve forgotten how to read. Does it matter? – The Globe and Mail
Literature as a counterweight to overemphasis on science and technology?
Points:
- “…practical tips for understanding literary fundamentals such as style, characterization and narration; the last two teach literary interpretation and evaluation.”
- “…extensive examples through close readings of the canon’s usual suspects, with an occasional detour into folk literature like “Baa Baa Black Sheep” or the Harry Potter novels.”
- “Eagleton argues that like literary analysis, literary evaluation must be learned through practice.”
- Criticism: “In his final chapter, Eagleton argues that like literary analysis, literary evaluation must be learned through practice. Taste, he says, can justifiably prefer peaches to pears. But “there comes a point at which not recognizing that, say, a certain brand of malt whisky is of world-class quality means not understanding malt whisky.” To reach that point, you have to learn the public criteria for what counts as excellence – you can’t just make up criteria, for fiction no less than for Scotch – and you have to practise those criteria in public, testing and adjusting them against new books and other judgments. We learn how to understand and appreciate literature through public practice, whether in a book club, a classroom, or the set of social practices known as literary criticism.”
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