>Arwin,
>
>I think that literary criticism should be pursued as a serious
>vocation, capable of offering a great deal of enlightenment, but
>why do you insist on its becoming a "serious *science*"?  The
>implication would be that a text should have only one universally
>agreed-upon meaning.
 
No it isn't. Anyone serious would admit that the text negotiates meaning
between writer and reader; Barthes said as much when he introduced the
terms "readerly" and "writerly" texts, implying that the ratio between the
role of the writer and reader differs for each text.
 
What I believe to be "serious science" would be work which discusses a text
precisely with the discovery of the different roles of writer and reader.
It would be a conscious study of what the writer consciously put into his
text and how, what unconsciously, how much depends on or is left to the
reader's imagination, the reader's interpretation of the details. We could
study the motivation for writing, the motivation for reading. Although I
said this was relatively straightforward in theory, of course this can
become very complicated in practice, as often we know very little about a
text. Under the ideal circumstances, when we have a lot of information
about the text, the persona, the historical context, we should be able to
come up with a lot of valid, fundamental work on which others can build.
 
> Such a view of literature flies in the face
>of ALL serious literary criticism.  Of course, there are too many
>literary critics who think they have *The Answer*, but they'd never
>justify their certainty on "scientific" grounds.  Even the most
>cocksure of us critics would consider such a claim absurd.  To
>become scientific, in the sense you suggest, sounds too much
>like an invitation to being dogmatic--and would turn literature
>into theological exegesis.  I don't think any of us wants
>literature to have a Pope.
 
 
I'm sorry, but that is only the way you want it to sound. A Pope? I think
that *we* might value our freedom to read and write anything whatsoever
about a literary text just that teensy weensy bit too much. What is it, for
instance, that prevents us from working in a team of, say, 6 specialists on
different aspects of a poem, so common a practice in other fields?
 
>As to too many books being published: there are never too many
>books.  The more choices I have, the better.  The system that
>allows garbage to be published also permits of good stuff
>getting out there.  What's the alternative?  A committee of
>immortelles allowing only those newbies to get published who
>agree with them?
 
 
No, but the general standard could be raised a little. At the very least,
better methodology would allow you and me to pick out the good stuff just a
little quicker, allowing us to read just that little bit more, to be just a
little bit more effective with our time. Do you remember Pound's suggestion
of a twelve volume 'history of innovations' in literature, listing all
works and what new aspects they brought to the literary mindscape? Such an
approach works for both literature itself and literary criticism - works
which would keep tag of these developments would provide an incredible
research tool for us scholars, but where are they? Such works would offer
those newbies a tool with which to tackle their difficult enough task much
more effectively. What is more, they do exist. Southam for instance created
an indispensible book for anyone approaching Eliot's poetry - yet even this
book has a horrible limitation: in his "Student's Guide", Southam does not
give a detailed account of his sources, preventing effective 'further
reading' strategies'. Such slip ups are virtually indefensible, but are
covered up by the fact that the rest of the works aren't as well read as
his, are too wordy, inefficient, and so forth. Still, these works are
useful, but their usefulness would be greatly expanded if some work would
identify clearly with which area and with which methodology they concerned
themselves.
 
One of the projects I am working on is an internet site about Eliot's
poetry which is still very much under development; the concept of those
pages is to provide notes to the texts with explanation of the historical
details, a possibility to read the texts that Eliot refers to, and a list
of books that deal with the subject, detailing also their method and
general content. Imagine for a moment that this was finished. You had read
Pound's name in The Waste Land and wished to know more, perhaps even write,
something about Pound's part in the construction of Eliot's poem. You would
then click on "Ezra Pound" in the text - on the left of the text you are
provided with a brief explanation of the reference, plus a list of links to
related topics discussed on this and other sites and lists of further
reading which provide you with an overview of the development of the topic
in literary criticism in books and articles.
 
A better example which you can look at now is my annotated version of
"Burbank with a Baedeker", a work full of allusions and also strongly
influenced by Pound, where I provide most of the referred works and discuss
the impact of these works on the interpretation of Eliot's poem. In effect,
the allusionary technique is a good example of how the poet can control
something of the reader's interpretation, namely by allowing him or her to
share Eliot's frame of reference, through reading the texts Eliot has also
read. At the end of each discusssion I give an overview of literary
criticism on this subject.
 
All of this is still in a pretty rough stage as far as I am concerned -
particularly the further reading and in particular access to the titles
that deal with the topics needs to be worked out; but the idea should come
through well enough. The concept is also modular, so that similar sites
about different writers can cross-reference to each other. On my harddrive,
the skeletons of sites about Pound, Joyce and Theophile Gautier are slowly
emerging. In fact, if you have any suggestions ...
 
http://hem1.passagen.se/arwin/EliotProject/index.html
 
For the moment, the only real limitation to my ambition is lack of online
space. <g> I have three megs and they're running out fast...
 
Kind regards,
Arwin