In ""Estranging the Familiar"", G. Douglas Atkins addresses the
often lamented state of scholarly and critical writing as he argues
for a criticism that is at once theoretically informed and
personal. The revitalised critical writing he advocated may entail
- but is not limited to - a return to the essay, the form critical
writing once took and the form that is now enjoying a resurgence of
popularity and excellence. Atkins contends that to reach a general
audience, criticism must move away from the impersonalism of modern
criticism and contemporary theory without embracing the
old-fashioned essay. ""The venerable familiar essay may remain the
basis"", Atkins writes, ""but its conventional openness,
receptivity, and capaciousness must extend to theory, philosophy,
and the candor that seems to mark the tail-end of the 20th
century"". In noting the timeliness, if not the necessity, of a
return to the essay, Atkins also considers our culture's parallel,
""return to the personal"". When the essay combines good writing
with the concerns of the personal, Atkins says, it becomes a form
of criticism that is readable, vital, and potentially attractive to
a large readership. Atkins hopes critics will tap into the
revitalised interest the essay now enjoys without ignoring the
considerable insights and advances of contemporary theory. He
argues that, despite claims to the contrary, there is no inherent
incompatibility between the essay and modern theory. As Atkins
considers various experiments in critical writing from Plato to the
present, notably feminist interest in the personal and
autobiographical, he contends that these attempts, although
undeniably important, fall short of the desired goal when they
emphasise the merely expressive and neglect the artful quality good
writing can bring to personal criticism. The final third of the
book consists of a series of experiments in critical writing that
represent the author's own attempts to bridge the gap between
theory and popular criticism, between an academic and a general
audience. In essays that illustrate the rhetorical power of the
form, Atkins describes the reciprocal relationship between his life
experience and a reading of ""The Odyssey"", explains the role that
theory has played in his personal development, and chronicles his
attempts to find a voice as a writer.
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