In a message dated 00-05-15 18:09:36 EDT, you write:
<< A friend of mine from grad school, Donna Landry (co-editor of The
Spivak Reader), has been studying peasant and working class women
poets of the 17th & 18th centuries. I asked her if she likes reading
the stuff, which from what I've seen, looks pretty awful. She said
no, but that she doesn't like poetry much anyway; she'd rather read
detective novels.
Sigh. You know, this confirms my worst suspicions about those philosophers
manque who do Theory. They don't like literature, and they lack the
discipline or training to do real philosophy, so they generate
esxciting-sounding but essentially meaningless social theory ungrounded in
either rigorous argument or empirical fact. Spivak, pah.
Here we have a literature prof who doesn't like poetry, who would rather read
detective novels, but who studies bad "subaltern subject perspective" women
poets because that is a PC thing to do.
The stuff is (I wil take her word) of no literary value, and should be
studied by someone with training as a historian or historical sociologist,
who might be able to teach us something about it. EP Thompson did this some
in Customs in Common; but he loved poetry, and knew it. high and low, as an
able literary critic--not a Theorist, but as someone who knew the period(s)
and loved the language. Oh, well, I am a boring old reactionary who loves
poetry, so what do I know.
However, my gripe with Theory aside, there was in the literary canon that _I_
was taught a lot of really good folk song and poetry by Anonymous; and you
can find a lot of it in the ballads. My wife, same vintage as me, five tears
later than you,a nd like me an amateur historian of medieval and Rennaisance
England,a hs the asme recollection. Course we listen to a lot of thsi music
in song all the time, too.
> Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture's gotta go,
>>
Right, teach 'em Spivak instead of Milton, it's great as an emetic.
--jks
