Certainly, a book titled The Death of the Critic is meant to turn heads, as is the book's already controversial thesis: that in order for the critic to complete his responsibilities to society, he must evaluate a work on a universal scale of good or bad. Both the title and the argument have produced their fair share of responses already, both in the blogosphere, the traditional mainstream media, and sources that reside somewhere in between. Indeed, the book can now be seen as the most comprehensive summary of the arguments for the decline of the critic that have been circulating in disparate sources this decade. But as soon as the book hit the market, it's been largely misinterpreted as either a screed against the Internet, a rigid defense of classicist reasoning, or a stinging rebuttal of postmodernism. All of those are there, but the core of the book is something different: an intellectual history of how the role of the critic has wavered over time, why it peaked in the 1950s and 1960s, and why the critic is no longer around.
The Death of the Critic could just as easily be read as a primer text on the history of literary criticism, going from Plato and Aristotle through Horace, medieval and renaissance scholars, all the way to modernity and beyond. The only reason that using the book would pose pedaggical challenges is McDonald's inherent bias towards the materials he's studying. His tastes obviously lie with the more rigid, scientific critics such as I.A. Richards and F.R. Leavis and the great advocates of the Western tradition such as Matthew Arnold and T.S. Elliot. The critic is at his most useful, in McDonald's line, as a public figure and grand arbiter of taste, blurring the lines between journalistic and academic enterprises (it should be noted that as a University lecturer writing a book to a more general audience, this book also blurs those lines). This was the role served by Kenneth Tynan, Pauline Kael, Harold Hobson and Clement Greenberg, and a role that has been unfilled in the last 30 years.
Article comments
1 - Kevin Eagan
"The tides are increasingly turning away from postmodern detachment and towards a world where students rediscover the arts from the bottom up. The increased focus on literary forms and the discovery of leading young authors, the rise of creative writing programs, and a return to mixing academic and journalistic sources of criticism are all signs that society is trying to redefine culture."
I have read that many of the principles that defined high modernism are coming back into academic circles. While I do not believe in a "rubric" approach to criticism, I do believe you have to judge things based on something cultural from the past, not just a 100% descriptive argument toward criticism.
As someone who is about to start an MA in English and American Literature, I welcome a return to a more prescriptive approach toward literary criticism. However, we cannot ignore or dismiss the importance of postmodern/poststructuralist theory, because it has shaped modern literature so deeply that to ignore it would be to destroy all of the progress and acceptance we have gained of other cultural views.
Hopefully, in a couple years we will have an approach to criticism that is accepting of cultural changes while cautiously defining what is good and bad in art. That will help cut through the ambiguity of postmodernism and reinforce the critic's role.
Excellent review!
2 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Boston.com. Nice work!
3 - Nigel Beale
"The Tradition is more flexible than McDonald gives it credit for, as works jump back into prominence and fall out of favor at a relatively rapid pace, considering the length of time a work has been around."
The reason works 'fall in and out of favour' is precisely because of evaluative criticism. McDonald criticizes academia for failing to provide this. However, without some agreed upon criteria, conversation is useless, which is what, as opposed to your extreme example, McDonald is calling for. In short, what is required is this:
"It is ... the task of criticism to establish principles; to improve opinion into knowledge; and to distinguish those means of pleasing which depend upon known causes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegances which appeal wholly to the fancy, from which we feel delight, but know not how they produce it, and which may well be termed the enchantress of the soul. Criticism reduces those regions of literature under the dominion of science, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prescription." Samuel Johnson: Rambler #92 (February 2, 1751)