Alexandra Borg: Certainly tears are a Christian sign
Leif Zern is right: Today’s literary criticism is permeated by sentiment (DN 28/4). However, the problem is not the emotions per se, but that they are dropped so judgmental.
The wording « The book touched me to tears » only becomes understandable, or rather logically, if the critic is able to convey why, translate the experience into something universal. To take the critical assignment seriously is to be patient and to show the work care.
After all we should be on guard against emotions, especially in today’s society where the attention economy revolves around reflex reactions. Emotions are situational. They can uncover hidden truths, but they can also manipulate and cloud. To read carefully, says Italo Calvino in « About a winter night a traveler » is to be both susceptible to the effect of the invisible mum that the work gives away and be able to note its hidden intention. « Reading is therefore about being unconscious and conscious at the same time. »
When Zern touches on the sentimental turn in literary criticism, he expects a crisis. He very really identifies the symptoms, but says a little about its history of illness.
The development is worrying, because with an increased pace and decreasing resources there is no place for reflection. Under Press, the patience and care of literary critic shrinks
Over the past twenty years, there have been major cuts in the education system, especially in the humanities, while the cultural and media sector is under severe financial pressure. The development is worrying, because with an increased pace and decreasing resources there is no place for reflection. Under Press, the patience and care of the literary critic shrinks.
When the literature sociologist John Guillory discusses the disease picture in « Professing Criticism » (2022) he describes it in terms of « deterretorization ». The preliminary value of literary value, he believes, is now taking place at other knowledge arenas other than on cultural sites and literary science institutions: TV sofas, festivals, fairs, comment fields, blogs, pods, author scenes, price committees.
Today’s literary critics have less time and worse skills to seriously engage in the work
Guillory talks about « de -professionalization ». It sounds awkward and prejudiced, but what he thinks is that the critic role is in resolution. Today’s literary critics have less time and worse skills to seriously get involved in the work. They are in Guillory’s word « amateurs ». They do not often follow a market logic and write for their brand. They use a private and emotionally charged speech to get clicks, to reach the broad mass, the usual reader who, rather than seeking education or aesthetic satisfaction, reads books to relax, laugh and, yes, cry.
The word crisis is equal problematic as worn out. If we look at etymology, it is hardly applicable to what is happening. In antique Greek medicine the concept was used Krísis To describe the decisive point in a disease course, the moment when it is decided whether the patient recovers or dies. But literary criticism is not dying, it is just a change in change.
For the literary critic, however, it is different. Here the situation is serious. The careful, serious conversation about literature is inhabiting away, institutionally as material. It is not necessarily a crisis in a dramatic sense, but a shift where we should ask ourselves what it is we lose.
