The field of literary criticism and studies has changed almost to irrecognizability over the last century. Whereas now literary and cultural theory dominate literary studies, it seems like literary criticism 100 or more years ago was just a white dude talking about how great another white dude was and comparing him to yet another white dude. The art was by no means precise. A Clare poem is “Blakean” and a Shelley poem has “liquid trilling notes of song” and if you don’t know what that means, then clearly you’re not in the literary criticism club.
Now, phrases like “liquid trilling notes of song” (which, I’m sure, somebody said about somebody) are enough to make me want to ralph into the nearest trash can, and I think a lot of critics starting in the ’30s felt the same way. I mean, what does that even mean? And when did praise suddenly pass for critical thought? Thus began the search for more precise and objective ways to analyze a piece of literature. Now, I have no illusions about the fact that true objectivity does not and cannot exist, but with things like literary and cultural theory, an attempt is made to at least use some sort of method or guiding principle when analyzing a work of literature. Theory helps the reader know where you’re coming from, which helps them anticipate your biases and assumptions. And, even if a critic is not using a particular theory, I think it still behooves her to write in such a way that her biases out in the open.
That being said, the process of reading and responding to literature is still highly subjective. How old were we when we picked up a particular work? Who did we have a crush on at the time? Where did we find the book? What was the cover like? Were the pages smooth? Did it smell good? While these things may seem irrelevant, they’re actually crucial to the experience because literary works don’t exist in a vacuum. It’s one of those “if a tree falls in the woods” type of questions. If a literary work exists and no one reads it, well, you can’t deny that it physically exists on paper, but it might as well not exist at all. When you read the work, it depends on you – on who you are as a reader and what kind of experience you bring to it. This is why we find ourselves able to read good works over and over again, because each time we read it, we essentially bring a different person to it who experiences it in a different way.
I’m bringing all this up because, even though saying that a poem has “liquid trilling notes of song” is not really useful to many people as criticism, subjective and personal accounts of literature still have their place and are still important. Those of us who study literature can probably remember a milestone in our lives that is in some way connected to a piece of literature. For instance, I can honestly say that stumbling across the facsimile edition of T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land on a shelf in Barnes and Noble when I was 16 changed the trajectory of my life and led me to where I am now as a student of literature.
And so, one of the things I’d like to do while I’m doing the Thing-a-Day is write some accounts of how I experience my favorite authors. This isn’t going to be “Me and T. S. Eliot: A Love/Hate Story,” but I’d like to shed a little light on how these authors strike me and how they affect my thinking and the ways that I react to the world around me.
I don’t know how many people would consider this a “creative” project (as opposed to knitting a slip cover for my MP3 player?), but to me, it’s definitely more creative and less critical. And I may not get around to it, because it’s something I’m not going to force. So, we’ll have to see.
crossposted at my other blog.
