litcritter bashing

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>kelley wrote:
>> English today exhibits the
>> contradictory attributes of a religion in its late phase—a certain
>> desperation to attract converts, combined with an evident lack of convinced
>> belief in its own scriptures and traditions."
>
>This is almost exactly how a grad school friend of mine described the
>study of English in 1957. He called English professors frustrated preachers,
>which is of course also a good description of the chief founder (and still
>secret guiding spirit) of english studies: Matthew Arnold.
>
>Carrol

*****
...This busy, puzzling stirrer-up of doubt
That frames deep mysteries, then finds 'em out,
Filling with frantic crowds of thinking fools
Those reverend bedlams, colleges and schools;
Borne on whose wings, each heavy sot can pierce
The limits of the boundless universe;
So charming ointments make an old witch fly
And bear a crippled carcass through the sky.
'Tis this exalted power, whose business lies
In nonsense and impossibilities,
This made a whimsical philosopher
Before the spacious world, his tub prefer,
And we have modern cloistered coxcombs who
Retire to think, 'cause they have nought to do....

Earl of Rochester, "A Satyr against Reason and Mankind"
*****

Sounds familiar....

Yoshie