As an undergraduate English major who is considering postgraduate work in the humanities, I am always a little worried when I hear some of my peers bemoaning their literature courses. Most of their complaints are aimed at literary criticism in its various forms. I know I am biased but I am genuinely upset by their ignorance. I very well might end up devoting my life to literary criticism. When one of my friends questions the literary academia, I feel like they are saying that they view my chosen future as useless.
My parents equate entering a PhD program in English to living as a professional student. And of course that's exactly what it is...but it's also teaching and researching and devoting your life to critical discourse. Literary studies encompasses all subjects under the sun and views them through the lense of a writer. In my work this semester I've been studying the representation of selfhood, self-agency, and self-authority. This topic involves historical, philosophical, and theological discourse as well as scientific knowledge. My semester hasn't just been spent reading. I've been asking questions and researching and asking more questions. Isn't that what a scientist does? Except instead of trying to explain how the physical world works, I'm trying to explain how the mind works (which then influences our lives in the physical world).
And still people ask, "So what?"
"Why can't you just enjoy literature without analyzing it?"
"What difference does it make?"
Yes, I'm not curing cancer or making laws. But there's still worth in the work of scholars. We analyze* for the same reason scientists and policy experts analyze - to find meaning. There wouldn't be any meaning if we didn't ask the questions. What is this saying? Why is this being said? How is it being said? For whom and by whom and about whom is it being said? If we just thought To Kill a Mockingbird was a nice story about a girl named Scout...why the hell would we read it? To enjoy it? But you can't just enjoy a work of literature without understanding it and interacting with it. Literary criticism just formalizes that process. A good book makes you think. A book that you can read one day and forget about the next day is not a good book. The study of literature just takes the thoughts we all have when reading independently and creates diverse discourse.
And it's an important discourse. Maybe discussing selfhood in Hamlet seems useless compared to discussing reform of the health care system, but it has worth. The literary discourse embodies the philosophies that underlie the political and scientific and every day topics of life. The power of an individual's selfhood is vitally important to health care reform - what is the value of an individual's self? does poor health devalue the sense of self?
Purely scientific study of the human mind has show that we think through metaphors, stories**. Any piece of writing is a manifestation of a cognitive process. The reason Hamlet is important is not because it's a good story about a prince and a ghost, but because it is the representation of one of the questions we all grapple with in our lives and which ultimately dictates our lives. Studying Hamlet isn't important to become cultured or educated. It's important because it allows us to interact with the important questions of life. Literature can present these questions, which are impossible to comprehend when limited just to our own real life, in a way that allows us to comprehend them more fully.
When I study Shakespeare, I'm actually trying to study the world through a more manageable lense.
P.S. Interesting, no? http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/dorothy-and-the-tree-a-lesson-in-epistemology/?ref=opinion?hp
*I don't like this term for literary studies. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
**We understand human anatomy and physiology through complex metaphors from our outer-lives - the brain is like a computer as it "processes," the heart "beats" like a drum, sperm "swim" like fish, etc.
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