Archive for the ‘Literary Criticism’ Category

What is Literary Criticism? Why teach it?

Monday, September 14th, 2009

The heart of literary criticism is the notion of rhetoric. Quality rhetoric is important and necessary. It seems to me, and to the Greeks, that a democracy demands a responsible, well considered rhetoric. It is absolutely necessary that we participate in legitimate conversation about important issues.

Rhetoric demands that we reclaim the use of metaphor. Our mindless search for relevance and literalness has gotten us pretty lost in the cosmos. Metaphor or comparison between two ostensibly dissimilar phenomena is absolutely critical to creative problem solving. Metaphor, along with other mysteries, have been victims of 20th century pretension and pomposity.

Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking Into the Abyss, laments that great literary works are no longer read–and if they were, there are no rules for interpreting them. In philosophy, indeed in all communication, truth and reality are considered relative. With no rules the rhetorician is invited to come to any conclusion he wishes. He is invited to pretty shaky ground. Gordon Conwell Seminary professor David Wells in God in the Wastelands argues that evangelical�Christians who believe in a personal relationshipp with God– and non-Christians have both drunk from the trough of modernity. We have both embraced a sort of existential faith instead of a confessional faith. If it feels good do it and believe it. Unless evangelicals participate in serious apologetics, God will be “weightless.”

The rise of relativism has had disastrous results. The British historian Philip Johnson laments “the great vacuum” that has been filled with totalitarian regimes and fascile thinking. Rhetoric ferrets out truth. If there is no truth, can there be any sense of authority? And can a society survive if there is no authority? Without a legitimate, honest, well considered rhetoric, will history be reduced to the “pleasure principle?

In some ways the American Evangelical Christianity’s loss of rhetorical skills–and I think rhetoric is akin to apologetics–has presaged disaster in many arenas. Without rhetoric Christians have no tools to engage modern culture. In some ways we have lost the mainline denominations to neo-orthodoxy and we have lost the university to liberals. Today the vast majority of American, indeed, world leaders come from 12 universities and not one is a Christian university (Wall Street Journal). Where are the Jonathan Edwards? C. S. Lewis? Good thinking, good talking, may redeem the Church from both the Overzealous and the Skeptic. Rhetorical skills may help us regain the intellectual and spiritual high ground we so grievously surrendered without a fight (Alister McGrath, Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity). George Marsden in The Soul of the American University and Leslie Newbigen in Foolishness to the Greeks both conclude that we Christians have conceded much of American culture to modernism by our inability to merge thought and communication in a cogency and inspiration that persuades the modernist culture. Without the main tool to do battle–rhetoric–Evangelicals allow orthodoxy to be sacrificed on the altar of relativism. It all begins, I believe, with our inability critically to analyze the classics.

The Contemporary American Church

Friday, October 10th, 2008

Walter Bruggemann argues that the contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act. This consumer culture is organized against history. There is a depreciation of memory and a ridicule of hope, which means everything must be held in the now. There is no past or future. A community, then, like a church, that is rooted in energizing memories and summoned by radical hope will be a curiosity and a threat.

In American public schools we can see that our children are exposed to a different narrative than the one Bruggemann calls us to. A popular high school book is Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. It is the story of a high school student named Holden Caulfied who runs away to New York from his boarding school in Pennsylvania. Unlike Muir’s Indian story, the traditions that shape their boy are given no importance. In fact, Caulfield begins his story by noting that perhaps the reader would like to know something about his parents, “and all that David Coppperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it.” All the reader knows is that he has had some kind of problem in his school and wants to escape to New York to “take it easy.”

In New York Holden manages to maintain his innocence despite many challenges, and in fact takes pity on all the kids who live in this urban jungle. Modern man, you see, if he lacks imagination, still has morality (according to Garp!). Holden, in fact, is so struck by the poor city kids, that he imagines himself to be a kind of “catcher in the rye.” “I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field . . . And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff–I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.” Indeed, Holden Caulfield. It seems to me that the only thing you will catch will be a social disease!

Of course, Holden fails in his laudatory quest. One is struck, as one reads Salinger and most modern American writers, that the hero has no solution to his problem, no escape from his existential hell. In Albert Camus’ The Stranger the protagonist is unjustly executed because no one knows who he is and where he is from. He has no past or future. Only the present. No one can imagine a solution to his problem. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby the protagonist mysteriously appears on Long Island, New York. He has no past and is murdered before he has a future. The reader feels captured, along with GAtsby, in a gigantic, mischievous naturalistic web of deceit, romanticism, and pessimism.

The good news is that God has another “narrative” for you and for me. It is a story of redemption, and hope, and truth. We do not have to languish in an existential wilderness!

What do you think? Write me @ jim@forsuchatimeasthis.com.

Great Books: THE SOUND AND THE FURY Part 10

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

April 8, 1928

It is Easter Sunday, 1928, the day after Benjy’s narration and two days after Jason’s. Dilsey walks up to the Compson house and manages to prepare breakfast. Quentin has run away. As Dilsey tries to comfort Mrs. Compson, Jason rushes to his strongbox and finds that it has been forced open. His papers are there, but all his money is gone.
(more…)

Great Books: THE SOUND AND THE FURY Part 9

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

April 6, 1928

Discussion Questions
(more…)

Great Books: THE SOUND AND THE FURY Part 8

Monday, July 7th, 2008

April 6, 1928

It is the morning of Good Friday, 1928, Jason Compson is in the Compson house, fighting with his mother and with his niece, Quentin. This one day before the first section (where Benjy is remembered things). Jason’s sister Caddy’s marriage to Herbert Head crumbled in 1911, when it became apparent to Herbert that Caddy’s unborn child was not his. Mrs. Compson refused to let Caddy stay at home, but Mr. Compson and Dilsey saw to it that the family took in Caddy’s child, Quentin. Jason was forced to assume control of the household when Mr. Compson died of alcoholism. Jason, who in another time, might have been a wealthy southern aristocrat, now works in a hardware store. He deeply resents his situation and blames Caddy and her daughter, his niece, Quentin.
(more…)

Great Books: THE SOUND AND THE FURY Part 7

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

June 2, 1910

Discussion Questions
(more…)

Great Books: THE SOUND AND THE FURY Part 6

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

June 2, 1910

This section begins with Quentin Compson waking up in his dorm room at Harvard. He realizes that it is between seven and eight o’clock in the morning. He hears a clock ticking. Quentin remembers his father giving him the watch and he thinks about the inevitability of time and remembers that St. Francis called death his “Little Sister.” Quentin gets up briefly, then goes back to bed. He remembers that Caddy, his sister, was married in April, just two months ago.
(more…)

Great Books: THE SOUND AND THE FURY Part 5

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

April 7, 1928

Discussion Questions
(more…)

Great Books: THE SOUND AND THE FURY Part 4

Monday, June 30th, 2008

April 7, 1928

On the day before Easter, 1928, a teenaged “Negro” boy named Luster is watching after Benjy, the mentally challenged youngest son of the declining aristocratic Compson family of mythical Jefferson, Mississippi. It is Benjy’s 33rd birthday, and Dilsey, the Compsons’ cook and Luster’s grandmother, has baked him a cake. Luster and Benjy are looking for Luster’s quarter that Benjy has lost.
(more…)

Great Books: THE SOUND AND THE FURY Part 3

Friday, June 27th, 2008

Quentin (the deceased male) is attending Harvard University. The day of his death (he committed suicide by drowning himself in the Charles River) he walks around Cambridge, struggling with his thoughts. Quentin is a character filled with anxiety. Caddy’s promiscuity and the accompanying shame and disgrace trouble him deeply. He wanted to protect his sister from the harshness and judgment of the world. Likewise his overbearing, manipulative mother is too much to take. As a result, he kills himself.
(more…)