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March 05, 2007

Lit Crit

So, Jacob’s studying to be a literature teacher and seems to be brushing up on his English skills brilliantly; quite honestly it has motivated me to pull out my old text books for some brushing up too. So, this weekend I committed myself to two hours to study. I began with a pretty positive attitude, but after about an hour and a half I was feeling a bit cynical and unmotivated. I probably should have studied something other than modern literary criticism and theory, but that’s the kind of stuff Jacob will be learning, and I-quite literally-wanted to be on the same page. The thing is, modern literary criticism relies heavily on its own highfalutin language, which the reader is HAS to learn it if they want to compare and contrast theories. Unfortunately, after not finding several of the textbook terms in my trusty Dictionary, I was a bit put off. My poor brain was packed full of new words (apparently only known in the sphere of literary critics), and that was about all I could endure. Actually, I was kinda jiving with the jargon until the textbook plunged into the first theory which happened to be Derrida’s concept of Deconstructionism (a theory I graciously chalk up to Derrida’s "historical rootedness" meaning he was writing in the sixties and there were a lot of drugs). But I must say, bad move textbook authors! Why they would write a huge text book if they intended to depress the reader with Derrida’s theory of language right after things were starting to make sense (http://www.textetc.com/theory/derrida.html). I mean really? We are JUST starting to understand the language of the literary critic; the last thing we need to hear is that language in and of itself is meaningless! Instead of reading on to see if language ever regained meaning, I decided to circle some of the amusing vocab words for the sake of comic relief. This is the fruit of my labor…a literary critic’s version of a well known fairytale…well I'll let you guess which one:

Once upon a time there lived three embodied transnational witches. These three witches lived in an authentic dialectic with each other in a functional Gothic kingdom. However, one witch stood as a subversive agent to the hegemony of the structured discourse of the narrative ideology. The symbol of the kingdoms interpenetration was legitimized through the situatedness of a princess. However, the antology of the agent became problemitized at the facilitated affectivity of the antagonist. The climax of our textual discourse finds a valorized other reinscribing her responsive affectivity. And thy all lived happily ever after. THE END

P.S. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure some literary criticism is helpful, but I personally prefer the old-school method of studying a novel by examining the author’s worldview and the climate of the time. I just can’t imagine slogging through confusing postmodern methods of analysis for “deeper meaning”. Maybe someday Jacob can teach me how the “situatedness of the other” helps me understand “Catcher in the Rye” better, or why it would be worthwhile to look at “How The Red Fern Grows” from a Deconstructional-Feminist perspective, but until then….ick, ack, hack…in the spirit of Derrida I die gr es s.

| By Heidi V. | 02:31 PM

Comments

Posted by: Laura at March 5, 2007 04:20 PM

Posted by: Heidi Vincent at March 5, 2007 04:32 PM

Posted by: Aimee at March 7, 2007 11:17 AM

Posted by: Heidi Vincent at March 7, 2007 11:30 AM

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