hey look, it's an entry. Liberal humanism, literary theory, all that jazz.

I want to start this off by saying that I fully intend to take advantage of the fact that this doesn't have to be a summary. If this is too specific, I'll broaden it, but for now I'm going to talk about the aspects of the reading that interested me or confused me or made me think and I'm going to avoid topics that don't. Why? Because this is the internet, the throne of arrogance, and because I don't like to write things because they're expected. It makes me feel slimy. Anyway--on to more academic things.

When I read the first chapter of Beginning Theory, the thing that really popped out to me was Matthew Arnold's confused sort of classism. Maybe I was fixating on the thing that really offended my lower-middle-class sensibilities; maybe the caffeine just kicked in at around page 26. Regardless, I have been having trouble wrapping my head around Arnold's views on the role of the critic in society and his views on the relative capability of amateurs.

On page 26 of BT, Peter Barry explains to us that Arnold essentially believes in a central truth that is acquired through the ages. It is passed on or revealed, not discovered. We see too that the critic is the priest of his literary church. The intermediary revealer of knowledge, the critic draws back the curtain and enables individuals to "give individual assent to the canon of great works". So here, the common person needs an expert in order to understand great works (which also implies that the work cannot speak for itself and it requires context in order to be understood. Oops).

Later on, however (page 29 if you're following along in your books) Barry says that Arnold "seems essentially to license and encourage the amateur". He says here that the simple act of reading great works allows someone to reach a "true judgement on it". So...is the average person capable of understanding on their own, or do they still need an intermediary? Maybe he's just using illogical logic to justify the existence of his own profession--heaven forbid he disprove his usefulness and get fired. Maybe I'm doing exactly what he wants by questioning his motives and leading to more things for him to write later on. It's self-perpetuating job security.

I do feel, at least a little bit, that the eruption of English as a literary study genera is kind of like what the creation of internet blogs did for the poetry world. Go check out my emo poetry blog for further intel.

Despite that, I found the sterylization of literary studies pretty peculiar here. I was floored by Edward Freeman's statement that English could not revert to pure literary studies because "examiners must have technical and positive information to examine" (that was on page 14 for those of you who are keeping score). Technicalizing literature? Count me out. I think I fall somewhere in between the liberal humanists and the critical theorists. Context is important, and looking at literature from a specific analytic angle can be fascinating, but when reading I tend to ignore contexts (other than the ones I superimpose--it's human nature to warp our vision of things until we can relate) . While I read the text, I don't look for certain things. For me, critical theorist-type analysis often comes later.

Okay. That's it. That was a lot of literary theory in a short amount of time and my poor brain needs rest.