New Criticism and Authors

[Max Sawicky]

> The huge advantage of the new criticism, of chicago aristotelianism,
> of structuralism, of deconstruction, of reader response theory, and
> of almost every other form of criticism invented in the 20th century
> is that they all avoid the problem of actually selecting and defending
> a canon that *every* intelligent person must read. Such a canon
> existed in every major (and I suppose minor) culture from early (pre-
> literate) times up through the 17th century and has not existed since.

This is plausible and a canon might be nice, but what race of perfect beings
is going to construct this canon for us?  Doesn't it smack of utopianism?
It also sounds like absorbing the Canon becomes some kind of onerous social
responsibility, like a lifetime of homework.  It's bad enough that under
socialism we'd have endless meetings.  Suppose that instead of absorbing the
Canon I'd prefer to collect stories about drag racing, build model trains,
or knit?  What happened to fishing all afternoon?


> . . . alking about information or even knowledge, I am
> talking about an intolerable overload of wisdom, insight, and
> beauty.

If it's really intolerable, why must we tolerate it?  You can only take so
much wisdom, insight, and beauty.  If it became ubiquitous, we'd take it all
for granted.

mbs