The Road Not Taken to Hell is Paved With Pretensions
There have been three main threads I've pursued in my academic career: math, music, and (French) literature. Of these, the third is the one where I met with the greatest success-highest GPA, best relationships with professors, honors thesis, etc. However, I never had any interest in pursuing a graduate degree in French literature (or comparative literature or any of the related fields).
This incredibly well-written opinion piece by a Yale English PhD dropout essentially explains my feelings on the matter, only about 100 times more articulately than I could have. funwithrage, dj_clawson, and xse99, I think you especially among my f-list will find it extremely interesting. And samedietc, I'm very curious to get your reaction.
As academic fields, neither math nor music, in my experience, suffer from the same types of problems as literature. There is a movement or trend or fashion in recent classical music directly away from being enjoyable, which is unfortunate, but this ideology does not seem to dominate any longer. The composition students I know mostly seem to write whatever the hell they want, and this is as it should be. (There is experimental music which I can respect even if it's not to my taste, but there's a big difference between "experimental" and "having contempt for the listener.")
I think the difference comes down to authenticity, in the education-jargon sense of the word. In math classes and many music classes, students are asked to perform the tasks associated with whatever it is they're studying, be it the performance (or composition!) of sonatas or the writing of valid mathematical proofs. Whereas in the vast majority of literature classes, students are never asked to actually write literature. The style and standards of literary analytical papers are not the same as the style of the pieces to be analyzed. (Why aren't students exposed to more good literary criticism, instead of just literature itself, if the goal is to have them produce criticism?)
I'm not sure that all literature professors are terribly happy with this arrangement, or that they're not open to other paradigms. On two occasions during my academic career, once for Sophomore Seminar and once for a class on Medieval French Tales and Stories, I wrote a short play instead of a traditional literature paper. (Hey basseykay, do you remember helping me edit my Soph Sem play?) It was incredibly refreshing, I received good grades on both assignments, and I think I still managed to demonstrate mastery and understanding of the material in question.
I'm not suggesting that we do away with literary criticism and analysis as part of the English curriculum. I'm a much better analytical writer than creative writer (which is why, for creativity, I prefer the collaborative processes of RPGs), for one thing, so it's nice to have an area where I can shine. And being able to understand symbolism, allegory, and all that jazz is damn useful for appreciating literature. I know I wouldn't have been able to appreciate some of the more challenging books that I've read, like The Satanic Verses for instance, without all my literary training. But I do think making what should be only part of the curriculum into the entire curriculum is a waste.
In fact, critical skills can be useful for music, too; I took a class at Brown entitled "Writing About Music" which was really fabulous. What I remember about that class is that the focus was always on enjoying and appreciating music; while learning to write about music was the goal, there was never an implication that our writing was in some way superior to the music itself. And yet it is just this sort of sneering contempt for literature as a form of enjoyment, and as an art-form worthy of emulating, that is poisoning the well, according to the Yale article.
In conclusion, I simply think that, as an end-goal for professionals in the field of literature, critical analysis is ultimately a hollow pursuit.
This incredibly well-written opinion piece by a Yale English PhD dropout essentially explains my feelings on the matter, only about 100 times more articulately than I could have. funwithrage, dj_clawson, and xse99, I think you especially among my f-list will find it extremely interesting. And samedietc, I'm very curious to get your reaction.
As academic fields, neither math nor music, in my experience, suffer from the same types of problems as literature. There is a movement or trend or fashion in recent classical music directly away from being enjoyable, which is unfortunate, but this ideology does not seem to dominate any longer. The composition students I know mostly seem to write whatever the hell they want, and this is as it should be. (There is experimental music which I can respect even if it's not to my taste, but there's a big difference between "experimental" and "having contempt for the listener.")
I think the difference comes down to authenticity, in the education-jargon sense of the word. In math classes and many music classes, students are asked to perform the tasks associated with whatever it is they're studying, be it the performance (or composition!) of sonatas or the writing of valid mathematical proofs. Whereas in the vast majority of literature classes, students are never asked to actually write literature. The style and standards of literary analytical papers are not the same as the style of the pieces to be analyzed. (Why aren't students exposed to more good literary criticism, instead of just literature itself, if the goal is to have them produce criticism?)
I'm not sure that all literature professors are terribly happy with this arrangement, or that they're not open to other paradigms. On two occasions during my academic career, once for Sophomore Seminar and once for a class on Medieval French Tales and Stories, I wrote a short play instead of a traditional literature paper. (Hey basseykay, do you remember helping me edit my Soph Sem play?) It was incredibly refreshing, I received good grades on both assignments, and I think I still managed to demonstrate mastery and understanding of the material in question.
I'm not suggesting that we do away with literary criticism and analysis as part of the English curriculum. I'm a much better analytical writer than creative writer (which is why, for creativity, I prefer the collaborative processes of RPGs), for one thing, so it's nice to have an area where I can shine. And being able to understand symbolism, allegory, and all that jazz is damn useful for appreciating literature. I know I wouldn't have been able to appreciate some of the more challenging books that I've read, like The Satanic Verses for instance, without all my literary training. But I do think making what should be only part of the curriculum into the entire curriculum is a waste.
In fact, critical skills can be useful for music, too; I took a class at Brown entitled "Writing About Music" which was really fabulous. What I remember about that class is that the focus was always on enjoying and appreciating music; while learning to write about music was the goal, there was never an implication that our writing was in some way superior to the music itself. And yet it is just this sort of sneering contempt for literature as a form of enjoyment, and as an art-form worthy of emulating, that is poisoning the well, according to the Yale article.
In conclusion, I simply think that, as an end-goal for professionals in the field of literature, critical analysis is ultimately a hollow pursuit.