{"id":4189,"date":"2009-10-19T22:19:09","date_gmt":"2009-10-20T02:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=4189"},"modified":"2009-10-19T22:19:09","modified_gmt":"2009-10-20T02:19:09","slug":"re-big-picture-contd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2009\/10\/19\/re-big-picture-contd\/","title":{"rendered":"Re: Big Picture, Cont’d [Updated]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lt\"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Responding to Michael Sinding<\/a>:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, Michael, you make a\u00a0number of good points, and I admit to\u00a0making incidental\u00a0ad hominem characterizations of the motives of contemporary scholars, especially with regard to their response to Frye.\u00a0 But given the toxic degree of misrepresentation\u00a0of his work over many decades now, I think it constitutes fair comment.\u00a0 (Is\u00a0Terry Eagleton<\/a>, for example, capable of producing a single paragraph about Frye that\u00a0does not contain\u00a0at least one demonstrable error? See also Joe Admson’s reading of Edward Said<\/a>.) It’s a matter of value judgment, isn’t it?\u00a0 Frye says that value judgments are inevitable, you just can’t base literary criticism upon them.\u00a0 But I don’t think those who\u00a0advocate Frye intend to do that.\u00a0 I make judgments about the criticism that’s succeeded Frye based primarily upon what it can’t do.\u00a0 Sure, I don’t trust the motives of those who dimiss him as readily and unreliably as they do, and I don’t think I’m required to.\u00a0 But I still turn to the superior method and opportunities Frye offers instead.\u00a0 My judgments are a byproduct of my response to Frye; my response to Frye does not depend upon those judgments.<\/p>\n

So when I am confronted with cant and jargon and endlessly self-perpetuating\u00a0discourse, I may include value judgments in my assessment of it.\u00a0 But in the end I’m more concerned with what Frye makes available to us as readers while assessing what those who supplanted him clearly\u00a0cannot.\u00a0 In a way, your argument\u00a0confirms as much.\u00a0 If you can name critics who\u00a0are more comprehensive and reliable\u00a0than Frye, then please\u00a0identify them.<\/p>\n

Finally, with regard to the “genuine”\u00a0social concern\u00a0of those who address “race, class, gender, ideology, and so on,” one begins to understand what Blake means by\u00a0the road to hell\u00a0being paved with good intentions.\u00a0 Literature doesn’t need much help in identifying injustices of any kind\u00a0or providing a prophetic sense of what we might do about them.\u00a0 As always, the difference between ideology and literature is that ideology\u00a0requires a program of\u00a0belief and literature does not; ideology compels and literature invites, and that’s a distinction that matters.\u00a0 Frye’s singularly literary <\/em>criticism\u00a0(as compared to\u00a0a species of\u00a0sociology whose subject of study happens to be literature) not only gets us where we need to go, but does so by liberating the power of literature that\u00a0most other critics seem hardly aware of — and highly influential critics too,\u00a0like Stephen Greenblatt.\u00a0 It’s why you’ll find some degree of impatience among some Frye scholars on\u00a0 issues of gender, class, and race, etc.\u00a0 It’s not that we don’t care passionately about them\u00a0as\u00a0compelling social issues that must be confronted and corrected, it’s that we appreciate that the power of literature\u00a0offers the best response to and remedy for them.\u00a0 Therefore, the ongoing\u00a0demotion of literature from its proper status as an autonomous authority in its own right by literary scholars themselves\u00a0is the real cause of distress here.\u00a0 It makes me <\/em>cranky, anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Responding to Michael Sinding: Yes, Michael, you make a\u00a0number of good points, and I admit to\u00a0making incidental\u00a0ad hominem characterizations of the motives of contemporary scholars, especially with regard to their response to Frye.\u00a0 But given the toxic degree of misrepresentation\u00a0of his work over many decades now, I think it constitutes fair comment.\u00a0 (Is\u00a0Terry Eagleton, for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-criticism"],"yoast_head":"\nRe: Big Picture, Cont'd [Updated] - 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