The goal is not to pack into our traveling bag only the best that has been thought and said but to find forms of critical talk that will improve the range or depth or precision of our appreciations.This formulation seems to me at once stringent and flexible. (It's from Wayne Booth's The Company We Keep.)
February 21, 2008
The Function of Criticism, in Brief
I just came across this quotation in my notebook and was struck, again, by how well it suits my own sense of the central purpose, or best possible outcome, of criticism:
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5 comments:
Seems obvious, spot-on, common sense... why have I never looked at it that way before? Thanks.
You aren't being sarcastic, are you? I don't think so--but experiences in the 'blogosphere' have made me a bit paranoid....
No, I wasn't being sarcastic - honest! It's an inversion of the normal way of looking, but seems so right.
In the Canonicity course I'm taking, we keep asking what it is that makes a literary work worthy of being in the canon, or rather discounting arguments for canon-inclusion that base themselves in primarily social and political agendas or utopias. This quotation from Booth, I think, might act as a possible measure for inclusion of a work in the canon, even as the terms "range," "depth" and "precision" might be variously defined. The idea of "improv[ing]" the "precision of our appreciations" seems to me particularly interesting--it recalls the question our class encountered when reading an excerpt of Hume's "Of a Standard of Taste" as to whether knowing the properties of a thing was necessary to a deep appreciation of it. Thanks for this :-)
It always sounds as if you have very interesting discussions in that class; a couple of people in my current 'woman question' seminar are in it this term and I think 'East Lynne' and "He Knew He Was Right' have both provided some food for thought along those lines.
I really do think it is important to learn how to appreciate a wide variety of kinds. (Our work as teachers could maybe be explained as demonstrating a variety of appreciations). But then we have to face the question of whether all kinds are equally worthwhile --something that ultimately must be a question of personal judgment, though judgment can and should be as informed as possible. (When I worked up the Close Reading class, I tried to think of it as preparing readers to make those judgments; not coincidentally, I read a lot of Wayne Booth while I was preparing for it.) My own rough set of measures includes craft, thought, and ethics. A work that is shoddy in any of these respects slips in my rankings!
Nice to hear from you.
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