No video :(

Is Literary Criticism Dead? Literature, Morality and Cultural Loss

Подписаться 463

50% 1

Hello and welcome back to Lady Disdain Reads. My name is Beatrice, and today I have a quick video in which I introduce C. S. Lewis and Alasdair Macintyre's fears about the future of literature and literary studies. Enjoy!
My video on ethics, Macintyre and Austen:
• What Would Jane Do? Ja...
References:
Basil Mitchell: Oxford Professor of Philosophy of the Christian Religion
Alasdair Macintyre: After Virtue (1981)
- emotivism as ‘the doctrine that all evaluative judgements and more specifically all moral judgements are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling’
- ‘what once was morality has to some large degree disappeared - and this marks a degeneration, a grave cultural loss.’
C. S. Lewis: The Abolition of Man (1943)
- students will ‘be deprived of the means for [achieving discriminating judgements], all judgements of value having in advance been rendered trivial’.
C. S. Lewis: De Descriptione Temporum (1954)
- ‘I have come to regard as the greatest of all divisions in the history of the West that which divides the present day from, say, the age of Jane Austen…somewhere between us and Persuasion, the chasm runs.’
Post-Austen novelists I love:
- Evelyn Waugh
- Kazuo Ishiguro

Опубликовано:

4 сен 2024

Ссылка:

Скачать:

Готовим ссылку...

Добавить в:

Мой плейлист

Посмотреть позже

Комментарии : 22

@zoobee 8 месяцев назад

as someone who is not an academic, but loves literature, and studied English at A level, and who loves reading about books, plays and poetry, it seems sometimes that literary criticism can be quite ideological and has been for a while. Identity politics, various templates for 'understanding' that can seem to obscure as much as illuminate, and can seem preachy

@bebly9797 2 года назад

Hi! I am watching your videos and I am really enjoing them because you address Austen's novels bringing new perspectives that I usually don't pay attention to, as ethics, morality, virtue. As a non british person I have always wondered about the label "Austen Studies": in what does it really consist? who are the main works and writers? which are the current subjects of discussion? can you suggest some bibliography to understand this field of knowledge? thank you

@beatrixscudeler 2 года назад

So glad you're enjoying my videos! Some of the ideas and thinkers I engage with are now considered old fashioned in Austen studies. A lot of more recent Austen scholarship focuses on feminism, gender, and generally on more radical aspects of her work. An example of this would be Claudia Johnson's 'Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel'. I tend to focus more on ethics, morality, and religion in Austen, as those are my main interests. Some of my favourite scholarship includes: Laura Mooneyham White, 'Jane Austen's Anglicanism' Michael Giffin, 'Jane Austen and Religion' Marilyn Butler, 'Jane Austen and the War of Ideas' Alasdair MacIntyre's chapter on Austen in his book 'After Virtue' C.S. Lewis's essay on Austen, simply called 'A Note on Jane Austen' Gilbert Ryle, 'Jane Austen and the Moralists' An essay by A. C. Bradley on Austen - I think it's called 'Jane Austen: A Lecture' and can be found in various essay collections. These are just off the top of my head, I'll add more as I think of them!

@bebly9797 2 года назад

@@beatrixscudeler wow, thank you! I admit I tend to delve into Austen's more radical aspects, since I've read the essay by Beatrice Battaglia, "La zitella illetterata" (illitterate spinster); but that was written almost 40 years ago, so I would like to update with more recent works. scusa se continuo in italiano ma in inglese faccio fatica: quindi, questi "Austen Studies" in cosa consistono? Ovvero, nel mondo accademico inglese (ma anche internazionale) c'è uno sforzo comune fra gli studiosi per tenere unita la discussione e dialogare attraverso un botta e risposta in modo da approfondire certi nodi tematici? e in tal caso quali sono i mezzi attraverso i quali avviene questa continua operazione di confronto e aggiornamento: riviste, periodici, raccolte di saggi, seminari, banche dati, siti web... Oppure, al contrario, ogni studioso lavora e pubblica in proprio, approfondendo ciò che crede, senza doversi preoccupare di partecipare a un dibattito comune? In conclusione, gli Austen Studies sono un area di studio e di ricerca a maglie fitte (la discussione è serrata) o a maglie più larghe (ognuno approfondisce ciò che vuole, quando vuole) ? Esiste una mappa (o un'opera teorica, manualistica) aggiornata che rifletta sullo stato dell'arte degli Austen Studies e che sia in grado di mostrare quali sono stati i temi più dibattuti, da chi, e in quale momento storico? Grazie!

@avlisdreams3427 2 года назад

About modern writers centred on faith, hope, virtue, humanity, morality and christianity (sort of) I would mention C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Suzanne Colins and J.K. Rowling. True, these are fantasy/sci-fi authors and not classical novelists in that sense, but they do focus on virtues and morality in a strong way.

@beatrixscudeler 2 года назад

Absolutely!

@michaelwalsh1035 2 года назад

Nicely done Beatrice. I'm more than pleased that you bring Lewis and MacIntyre to your reflections. This is such an important area that I first became interested in from a different angle, the so called "fact-value distinction" that has impoverished much of social science. On the literary front, besides Lewis, T.S. Eliot is the great 20th exponent of a renewal in literary criticism. That effort suffered greatly with the academy embracing post modernism and critical theory. Anyway, I wanted to recommend a resource that deals with these literary, philosophical, moral and religious concerns, in a charming, hilarious and sometimes caustic manner: Flannery O'Connor's collection of letters, The Habit of Being. O'Connor described herself as a "hillbilly Thomist" and her letters illustrate that very well! Best to you...

@beatrixscudeler 2 года назад

Thank you so much for your comment! I've been meaning to read a lot more Eliot for a long time. Thank you for the Flannery O'Connor recommendation, another writer I really need to better acquaint myself with! Very amusing that she described herself as a hillbilly Thomist!

@michaelwalsh1035 2 года назад

@@beatrixscudeler As you mentioned Waugh, he was sent some early O'Connor stories, without mention that she was a "young woman". Waugh was floored, firstly, that someone so young showed such technical mastery, secondly, that a young woman could deal with experience in her manner. Eliot, sent examples of her work as an editor at Faber & Faber, acknowledged her skill but admitted he was too shocked to finish reading them....lol

@michaelwalsh1035 2 года назад

@@beatrixscudeler "In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery..." Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

@beatrixscudeler 2 года назад

@@michaelwalsh1035 wow I didn't know that, that's brilliant!

@beatrixscudeler 2 года назад

@@michaelwalsh1035 and thank you for quoting this, how very interesting! Much food for thought!

@honeychurchgipsy6 Год назад

I'd love to find a secular ethical critic - know any? Nearest I've found is Thomas Hardy, but he did not write much criticism - just a couple of essays. I wrote an essay on the novel Millenium Hall from a secular morality viewpoint - using the idea of human flourishing as the goal. I argued that Scott's women's strict adherence to Evangelical Christian values caused harm.

@beatrixscudeler Год назад

Gilbert Ryle wrote a pretty good essay on Austen and ethics from a secular point of view! If I can think of more, I'll let you know. Thank you for commenting!!!

@honeychurchgipsy6 Год назад

@@beatrixscudeler - thanks, I'll see if I can find it.

@Abel-ec6ch 5 месяцев назад

Beatrice, I was recently studying theology for a master's in Toronto. Are you still living there or are you back in England now? Are you familiar with the Oratory of St Philip Neri there in Toronto?

@beatrixscudeler 4 месяца назад

I am very familiar with the Oratory in Toronto, yes! As you can tell from my videos from around 2 years ago, I had my first baby in Toronto! Sadly we've now moved back to England, but I would love to visit Canada again as it's very special to me!

@marichristian1072 2 года назад

I hope post modern literary criticism is dead. I have never seen teaching notes as detailed as Vladimir Nabokov's when he taught English and Russian literature at Harvard. He encouraged very close reading of the texts without superimposed jargon..