NP Readership (was ...

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> Not sure either about a literature professor of any stripe asserting that
> beowulf was a marxist and feminist text. Offering a Marxist or feminist
> reading or critique, perhaps, but ...?! A joke, surely?

Owen doesn't think it was a joke. This may be because he is not all that
familiar with Marxist and Feminist readings or critiques. Or, as he
said, the teacher was not well versed in these. A combination of
these...all sorts of things....anyway, I would not be surprised to hear
this in a University here in the States. And I have heard it here, not
Beowulf, but Shakespeare. 
Why not? I've not problem with a Marxist reading of King Lear, a
Feminist reading of The Taming of the Shrew. None at all. Sure, one
could start with the text as literary production and work to Faucault's
author/authority and before you know it, wam OH! 

No joke. Think about Hamlet and what T.S. Eliot says in his essay. Good
thing Walter Pater never got his mind into that play! ha! Ha! but what
if he had? Seems to me that the Freudians have dominated the play for
the last 50 years. Hamlet wants to have sex with his mother. Gee wiz,
where did Hollywood get that idea. Remember how Olivier opens his
Hamlet? He adds his own prologue, I'll paraphrase, 

this is a play about a man who can not make up his mind.

That was a popular reading of the play for quite some time. Olivier cuts
the play up, adds to it, makes it his own play about a man who can't
make up his mind and wants to have sex with his mother. 


Owen, this list has a good sense of the stupid, the ironic, the almost
humorous. 

Doug hates what he thinks is deconstruction and postmodernism, but he is
by far the most adept practitioner of what he thinks are the worse
things about these; (mostly because he likes to accuse Robert of
postmodern/deconstructive abuse), the language games, the re-writing of
texts, the confusion or blending of traditional literary terms like
writer and reader. Robert likes postmodern theory.  it seems to have
helped him understand how certain texts work, but in practice he is a
good old fashioned "close reader of the text." His real strengths are
reading the text itself,  not the application of theory. In the slave
driver debate, once all the pawns were out of the way, Robert castled
and brought out his Queen--grammar. 

Good game. I don't want to be arbiter. Don't need one. It's just a
friendly match in the park. I lay my king on his side and shake hands.
Or I just keep my pragmatic sense of humor and remember that education
is both enlightening and humbling at the same time. 

If you want philosophy round here, forget about it. Or be a pragmatist.
Recognize that theory and practice can be united, but that the two are
not logically connected here. 

The actions of men are rarely logical and there are no idle virtues.