Cheerskep wrote: > I do agreee that the kind of analysis behind the Salinger "Study Questions & > Essay Topics" (I reprint them below) is misplaced, destructive, as it > often is in "Appreciation of Literature",
That sounds like a graduate seminar view of an Introductory course approach. I presume that any "appreciation" course it aimed at interested but unschooled students. One of the first tasks of the instructor is to lead the class by example in developing critical skills. The Franny and Zooey questions, like the typical art class lessons in using a palette of close harmonies or a basic piano exercise, are framed to direct the students' attention to salient aspects of the story. Caveat critor: Prospective analysis can indeed be vitiating, but retrospective analysis can hardly be so (you've already experienced the play or story), unless you let the criticism or analysis rob you of the feelings. > but I've also read countless essays > about writers and writing that were absorbing and illuminating. A blanket > dismissal of, say, musicology or all literary criticism or dramaturgy because > it's only "analysis" is absurd. In theater, a gifted director's analysis and > suggestions can be the difference between success and failure. Without Elia > Kazan's insights, we wouldn't DEATH OF A SALESMAN. Without Maxwell Perkins we > wouldn't have THE GREAT GATSBY. This sounds much different from either the "appreciation" class guidance or the seminar-level analysis, and a lot more like the developmental editor talking to the professional writer. I doubt Kazan or Perkins would ask O'Neill or Fitzgerald what the significance of the gas jet or green light is: those things would be taken for granted as devices or techniques and then thrashed about and discussed in more pragmatic terms. > Granted, some "analysis" is fatuous and vitiates joy, but, incomplete > though his analysis may be, would any of us prefer that Aristotle had not > written his POETICS? I think Barzun in *Decadence* (or maybe in Use and Abuse of Art) mentions that the great Berenson once analyzed at length on the pyramidal composition of a famous Renaissance painting, with its intersecting diagonals, etc., without once commenting the actual subject matter of the painting (a saint or a madonna, IIRC). | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
