Literary Criticism An Autopsy Mark Bauerlein "It's later than you
think Literary critics, practicing and prospective, had better take
a close look at Mark Bauerlein's mordant and humorous
'autopsy.'"--Frederick Crews, editor, "Unauthorized Freud: Doubters
Confront a Legend" "There isn't another book like this: a primer
and a polemic on the jargon of literary study, impressive in its
range of examples and uncompromising in its critique. Bauerlein
describes the motives of several prospering forms of contemporary
obscurantism, analyzes the conditions in which they arose, and maps
the terrain in which they continue to flourish. His account is
written with nerve, wit, and a tough-minded intelligence."--David
Bromwich, Yale University "A thesis I both understand and endorse.
. . . I agree with him when he writes that the critical terms
currently fashionable have very little to do with
literature."--Philip Thody, "Journal of European Studies" "This
slim volume with its seemingly innocuous title takes the buzz words
of contemporary critical theory to task for their pseudostatus as
methodological tools...The items under the knife--cultural studies,
discourse, gender theory, to pluck out a few--highlight how little
real cutting edge there is in current literary criticism."--"Forum
for Modern Language Studies" "A shrewd demonstration, amusing and
saddening at once, of what has gone wrong with so much academic
writing in the field that used to be literature. It is in its way a
pointed and revealing piece of cultural criticism, but of the sort
which that fashionable pursuit cannot--and for reasons Bauerlein's
excellent little book implies--perform."--John Hollander, Yale
University As the study of literature has extended to cultural
contexts, critics have developed a language all their own. Yet,
argues Mark Bauerlein, scholars of literature today are so
unskilled in pertinent sociohistorical methods that they compensate
by adopting cliches and catchphrases that serve as substitutes for
information and logic. Thus by labeling a set of ideas an
"ideology" they avoid specifying those ideas, or by saying that
someone "essentializes" a concept they convey the air of decisive
refutation. As long as a paper is generously sprinkled with the
right words, clarification is deemed superfluous. Bauerlein
contends that such usages only serve to signal political
commitments, prove membership in subgroups, or appeal to editors
and tenure committees, and that current textual practices are
inadequate to the study of culture and politics they presume to
undertake. His book discusses 23 commonly encountered terms--from
"deconstruction" and "gender" to "problematize" and "rethink"--and
offers a diagnosis of contemporary criticism through their
analysis. He examines the motives behind their usage and the
circumstances under which they arose and tells why they continue to
flourish. A self-styled "handbook of counterdisciplinary usage,"
"Literary Criticism: An Autopsy" shows how the use of illogical,
unsound, or inconsistent terms has brought about a breakdown in
disciplinary focus. It is an insightful and entertaining work that
challenges scholars to reconsider their choice of words--and to
eliminate many from critical inquiry altogether. Mark Bauerlein is
Professor of English at Emory University. He is editor of "The
Turning World: American Literary Modernism and Continental Theory,"
by Joseph Riddel, also available from the University of
Pennsylvania Press, and author of "Whitman and the American Idiom."
Critical Authors & Issues 1997 176 pages 5.5 x 8.5 ISBN
978-0-8122-1625-7 Paper $22.50s 15.00 World Rights Literature
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