Help?

[Intern Kate]

So I have to write a paper about the semiology of stereotypes surrounding 'literary scholars'. I have a few ideas, but eh. If you could say what comes to mind, any stereotypes you associate with the term 'literary scholar', holla atchya girl. I have to magically unveil a mythology.

Specifically, we're reading A.S. Byatt's Possession for said stereotypes. We're also reading Barthes' Mythologies. If that means anything.

Thanks BYYYE.

[Squirrel]

Beards?

Err... people who have 'lesser' scholars follow them around to be a 'Boswell'? I really don't know.

[Kinbote]

Charles Kinbote!

[Intern Kate]

both of you, thanks!

i'm going to smack myself in the head, or hit it with a frying pan. like, duh. now what i've got to do is relate it to this durned Possession. and i have to explain how the persona is a mythology.

before i was going off on this crazy tangent about rural landscapes and Howard's End and Swann's Way and it wasn't making any sense.

anyway, an aside: historical v. new criticism? opinions?

[Kinbote]

Historicism is almost as sickening - maybe more, now that I think about it - as deconstructionism. There are things I dislike about the New Critics, but I go along with their general thrust. The text really is all that matters.

It gave me a good little chuckle, by the way, to think of AS Byatt being discussed in a university setting.

[Intern Kate]

i figured as much. and agree, i think. hasn't a writer kind of failed if the text can't function adequately alone? oh i'm probably now just thinking about Ada and Van debating, something i think of Proust.

yes, Possession is really awesome and i'm bursting at the seems to see the inspired movie adaptation. better not spoil the literary experience first, though.

i just giggled when The Ninth Gate happened to pop into my head.

[Ghostdog]

I don't quite agree.
New Criticism has very strong merits,
but one can never truly understand older texts if one doesn't take into consideration obscured historic context.
Your chances of misinterpreting the author are pretty big.
That being said, I don't really like the process of having to read 8000 biographies and 900 pages of boring factual crap to come to a conclusion concerning a text.

And how can you interpret texts from different cultures, with different values etc. if you don't investigate their values, norms, backgrounds etc.

It just seems wrong to exclude, to balance would be better.

[Intern Kate]

true!

some poking around can certainly be helpful to gain some topical context. . .but having to be familiar with a writer's biography, ehhh. and i really don't know. i'm probably ambivalent about everything under the sun. sometimes i take more than an hour to decide what i want to eat if hungry. (!)

[Henriette]

Yeah, the Ninth Gate came to mind. So did visions of incompetent balding fat men and butchy women with buzz cuts, dangling earrings, etc.