[lbo-talk] why Prince is right

[Gail Brock]

Classifications have a purpose, and make sense only in the context of that 
purpose.  "Which writers should schools teach?" is tied up with the purpose of 
formal education.  It seems a silly question if you're talking about Guest, but 
it's a legitimate question for curriculum studies if you believe as I do that 
some of the best writing over the past hundred years has been in the genres, but 
literary fiction is still privileged as serious.  Milton meets the purposes of 
formal study better than Guest, i.e., "Milton is a better poet than Guest".

The question of "Who should be classified as a musician?" again depends on the 
purpose of the classification.  This thread has appeared at times to be focusing 
on professionalization and status -- "Who deserves to make a living producing 
music?"  But if the question really means, "Who's a participant and who's a 
spectator?" then it's legitimate to classify anyone who makes music as a 
musician.  This is heard as a lack of respect by those making  or trying to make 
a living in music.  It doesn't mean that I can't tell, appreciate, or 
differentiate between a good professional symphony orchestra and the local high 
school band.  I don't think the essential part of musicianship excludes the 
majority of average-talented people whose experience with music includes making 
it as well as just listening.
____________________________________

Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>(Mon, July 12, 2010 10:48:33 PM):

Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> On Jul 12, 2010, at 8:46 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
> >  misunderstood this when I wrote my post alluding to Plato. But still
> > ... "real" is always a bit suspect.
> 
> I've asked this question before, when you wax democratic about art (an impulse 
>I have some sympathy with). Why did you devote your academic life to studying 
>Milton, Pope, and Pound, and not Edgar Guest?

Actually, I've wrestled with that myuself at times, even before I became
involved in politics. It's tied up with the question of why be concerned
with art at all, Pound or Guest. Northrop Frye noted that "defenses of
poetery" were seldom persuasive to anyone who wasn't already well inside
the walls. A beginning, I think, can be made in terms of multiple
decorums: judgment only makes sense in terms of a given decorum
(roughly,'fitting'  relations among implied speaker, implied reader,
subject, & style). I've never tried to develop the idea, however, and it
may break down under pressure. . . .

. . .But literary judgments (or musical or architextural or ...) only become
vicious if they implicitly or explicitly are translated into moral
judgments (judgments of human worth) of those who respond to a tiven
work. It's one thing to flinch at "It takes a heap o' living to make a
house a home" or at the velvet paintings they still sell ar sidewalk
tables and antoheer thing to be contemptuous of the person who enjoys
either of these.

Carrol