A case for literary critics and other humanists to stop wallowing in their aestheticized helplessness and instead turn to poetry, comedy, and love.
Literary criticism is an agent of despair, and its poster child is Walter Benjamin. Critics have spent decades stewing in his melancholy. What if, instead, we dared to love poetry, to choose comedy over Hamlet’s tragedy, or to pursue romance over Benjamin’s suicide on the edge of France, of Europe, and of civilization itself?
Paul A. Bové challenges young lit critters to throw away their shades and let the sun shine in. Love’s Shadow is his three-step manifesto for a new literary criticism that risks sentimentality and melodrama and eschews self-consciousness. The first step is to choose poetry. There has been since the time of Plato a battle between philosophy and poetry. Philosophy has championed misogyny, while poetry has championed women, like Shakespeare’s Rosalind. Philosophy is ever so stringent; try instead the sober cheerfulness of Wallace Stevens. Bové’s second step is to choose the essay. He praises Benjamin’s great friend and sometime antagonist Theodor Adorno, who gloried in writing essays, not dissertations and treatises. The third step is to choose love. If you want a Baroque hero, make that hero Rembrandt, who brought lovers to life in his paintings.
Putting aside passivity and cynicism would amount to a revolution in literary studies. Bové seeks nothing less, and he has a program for achieving it.
"At once a lament for the decline of the humanities and a manifesto on how to save them…Bové‘s summons to his fellow academics and aspiring cultural critics [is] to step out of the long shadow of Benjamin’s melancholy and to come into the light reflected by poetry, comedy, and the essay—a more expansive form of expression." - Boston Globe
"Bové’s close readings make for a critical tour de force. This passionate call offers a refreshing contribution to the philosophy of criticism." - Publishers Weekly
"Providing a sweeping look at the history of literary criticism, Bové argues that the proper (Aristotelian) goal of the critic is to choose the framing of the poet and essayist, and to learn new humanistic insights from them, instead of simply seeking a reaffirmation of one’s own melancholic mindsets." - Choice
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Literary criticism is an agent of despair, and its poster child is Walter Benjamin. Critics have spent decades stewing in his melancholy. What if, instead, we dared to love poetry, to choose comedy over Hamlet’s tragedy, or to pursue romance over Benjamin’s suicide on the edge of France, of Europe, and of civilization itself?
Paul A. Bové challenges young lit critters to throw away their shades and let the sun shine in. Love’s Shadow is his three-step manifesto for a new literary criticism that risks sentimentality and melodrama and eschews self-consciousness. The first step is to choose poetry. There has been since the time of Plato a battle between philosophy and poetry. Philosophy has championed misogyny, while poetry has championed women, like Shakespeare’s Rosalind. Philosophy is ever so stringent; try instead the sober cheerfulness of Wallace Stevens. Bové’s second step is to choose the essay. He praises Benjamin’s great friend and sometime antagonist Theodor Adorno, who gloried in writing essays, not dissertations and treatises. The third step is to choose love. If you want a Baroque hero, make that hero Rembrandt, who brought lovers to life in his paintings.
Putting aside passivity and cynicism would amount to a revolution in literary studies. Bové seeks nothing less, and he has a program for achieving it.
"At once a lament for the decline of the humanities and a manifesto on how to save them…Bové‘s summons to his fellow academics and aspiring cultural critics [is] to step out of the long shadow of Benjamin’s melancholy and to come into the light reflected by poetry, comedy, and the essay—a more expansive form of expression." - Boston Globe
"Bové’s close readings make for a critical tour de force. This passionate call offers a refreshing contribution to the philosophy of criticism." - Publishers Weekly
"Providing a sweeping look at the history of literary criticism, Bové argues that the proper (Aristotelian) goal of the critic is to choose the framing of the poet and essayist, and to learn new humanistic insights from them, instead of simply seeking a reaffirmation of one’s own melancholic mindsets." - Choice
Формат: Скан PDf
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