‘The season’ is my favourite literary cliché because of the dimensionality imbued unto seasons by their ubiquitous and multifarious presence in our lives and the inability of their poignancy as metaphor to be diminished by overuse, due to their sheer immensity. So it was quite a pleasure to read Foster’s chapter, “…So Does Season,” especially in contrast to the dense, laborious writings scattered elsewhere throughout the ENGL3655 course reader. Sometimes it’s nice (excuse the vagueness of the adjective) to celebrate features of literature that are underdiscussed and unpretentiously profound, rather than expose their constructedness, deride their conventionality and subvert their supposed hegemonic allegiances. It seems Literary Criticism has a tendency to cannibalize Literary Appreciation.
Foster’s tribute to the poetic season is schmaltzy. But that does not stop even the most jaded from nodding along through each paragraph and occasionally letting a grin slip through while he elucidates the nexus of connotations between seasons and age, emotion, personal paradigms, agriculture and religion. Foster reminded me epiphanically of the ethereal, un-deconstructable potentialities of poetry through his commendation,
“[Shakespeare] brilliantly invests [the season metaphor] with a specificity and a continuity that forces us to really see not only the thing he describes…but the thing he’s really talking about.”
And I also willingly bought into his reduction of Daisy Miller to “gloss on these two telling names [of the main characters.]” Foster’s description of seasonal connotations being “hard-wired” into responders struck me as apt while his reassurance, “the variation produced keeps seasonal symbolism fresh and interesting” seemed convincing.
Perhaps my gleeful reaction to this particularly frothy snippet of Foster’s thesis is naïve or reflective of my overexposure to literary theory and underexposure to more rudimentary aspects of literary study. I do not hate the ‘heavier stuff.’ But I’m starting to agree more and more with Felski (whose 2009 article is appropriately the most contemporary in the Reader) that we should at least try to emotionally embrace literature before poststructurally ransacking it.
"It seems Literary Criticism has a tendency to cannibalize Literary Appreciation." - I've noticed this too and find it quite bizarre! It's almost as if the two are expected to be mutually exclusive though I think they're more symbiotic in relationship.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, I did also quite enjoy this article and the points raised - sometimes you do just need someone to point out the obvious!
I think there is a fine balance between appreciation and cannibalisation. My least favourite course at uni was watching Assoc Prof. _____ butcher Eliot like an anatomy instructor.But on the other hand, picking through Shakespeare's myriad metaphors and similes gave me such an appreciation for his skill, and his texts as well as reminding me of the possibilities of this thing called language.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that foster's piece is a bit cheesy, but yes i thought it was great. even if it did sound like it was written by a late middle aged male academic. It was fun to read and I agree with Carmen sometimes you can't truly appreciate something until somebody waves it in your face.