[lbo-talk] FW: [Milton-L] Redundancy of Evaluative Terms was RE: Shakespeare vs. Milton in London, Sunday, 22 June.

[Arthur Maisel]

"Great" is often mustered in those idiotic lists that journalists are so
fond of (because they know the price of everything and the value of
nothing---some connection to the prevailing economic system there,
probably). But I think the person who responded to Carrol may have evoked a
lingering valid use of the term with the phrase "it becomes a world":
"great" as inclusive, as giving the lovely illusion of real experience.
Some of the pleasure that the Austen passage gives is in the beautiful ebb
and flow of the language, but another kind of pleasure comes from how it
conveys life.

On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 7:43 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


>
> On Jun 18, 2014, at 10:09 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> > Indeed. Not dry at all. And it would be inanely redundant to add to that
> > analysis such empty terms as "great," "wonderful," etc.  Critics use
> "great"
> > to fill in when their description of a text is inadequate.
>
> The concept just makes you uncomfortable. You quote Austen here - Pound
> and Milton elsewhere - and a rhetorical analysis of what makes the Austen
> passage tick. You won't find that in J.K. Rowling. I feel like telling you
> the same thing I tell John Halle about music - don't be afraid of your
> elitism. It's not believable.
>
> Doug
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