{"id":3995,"date":"2005-08-12T09:25:15","date_gmt":"2005-08-12T09:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-death-of-literary-theory.html"},"modified":"2005-08-12T09:25:15","modified_gmt":"2005-08-12T09:25:15","slug":"the-death-of-literary-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/the-death-of-literary-theory.html","title":{"rendered":"The death of literary theory?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dare we hope?<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

And the second bit of good news came a few weeks ago with the publication of an anthology of antagonists of Theory, Theory\u2019s Empire<\/em>. This is a door-stopper of a book with essays by eminent and often angry critics, philosophers and social scientists. The selection is a bit uneven, with some contributors dating back to the 1960s. But it is sure to give ammunition to Theory\u2019s opponents and to sap the confidence of its defenders. Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa calls it \u201ca magnificent collection of essays that returns sanity and rationality to literary criticism, rescuing it from the esotericism, jargon and delusions under which it had been buried."<\/p>\n

My guess is that the Empire of Theory is breaking up much as the Evil Empire of Communism did, to filch a phrase from Ronald Reagan: suddenly and noiselessly, like a sand castle melting into the beach. The question is what will follow it. Something will. Something must, for man is an interpretive animal and cannot abandon the habit of interrogating what he reads. Theory has not been completely useless. As Eagleton rightly observes, the door is now shut on the na\u00efve belief that language is transparent or that interpretation of texts can be completely impartial. And thanks to Theory, too, readers\u2019 minds have been scoured clean of the foolish Romantic belief that literature is a kind of mystical, redemptive experience which introduces us to Higher Truths. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what will follow. And at the moment, I don\u2019t care. It\u2019s time once again to gorge myself on novels and leave the critics for later. If I wait long enough, I might not have to read them at all. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ah, but then what will all the satirists have to write about?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dare we hope? And the second bit of good news came a few weeks ago with the publication of an anthology of antagonists of Theory, Theory\u2019s Empire. This is a door-stopper of a book with essays by eminent and often angry critics, philosophers and social scientists. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}