“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Friday, December 23, 2011

Harman on Literary Criticism

I've just had the pleasure of reading Graham's essay for New Literary History. I'm not going to put any spoilers here but let's just say that

1) Graham could easily have been in an English department if he'd wanted to.

2) He outlines a stunningly simple form of OOO literary analysis that is remarkably similar to how I've been teaching my “how to read a poem” classes since 1995.

This method could easily be taught in grade school, which is more than can be said for most contemporary approaches to literature. It is both simple and profound.

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