Posted on 01/11/2017 7:07:45 AM PST by Academiadotorg
One of the speakers at this year’s Modern Language Association (MLA) meeting brought up a fascinating quote by William Wordsworth that may well be an indictment of the annual conclave of English professors: "To dissect is to murder."
If that is so, much of the professoriat at the MLA meeting could be up on assault charges. If he hadn't already passed away, Herman Melville might want to file such a complaint.
Melville, of course, is the author of Moby Dick. Many will probably recognize this as the one about a one-legged sea captain pursuing a great big whale. Yet and still, just about every year, MLA members want to read so much more into the saga.
At this year’s gathering, Paul B. Downes of the University of Toronto analogized "Ahab's revulsion towards his ivory leg to capitalism's revulsion at the source of its wealth."
In this "dialectical or deconstructionist approach," Downes avers, one can conclude that "Capitalism bites its own leg off." Michael Jonik of the University of Sussex also made note of the "multifarious political ontology in Melville's work."
For her part, Branka Arsic` of Columbia made note of "current ecological and epistemological preoccupations" in introducing the panel discussion.
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia. If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
A greater collection of jewels of colossal ignorance existeth not.
Without liberal welfare centers (otherwise known as universities), Starbucks would be the only place these “academics” could find jobs.
https://lincolnblogs.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/symbolism-in-moby-dick-brilliance-between-the-lines/
...and a masterpiece movie to boot.
“I would prefer not to.”
Was Milne trying to analogize Pooh’s obsession with honey with bourgeoisie chase for material wealth?
This was a time when authors were often paid by the number of words in their book
Publishing literary criticism is how they advance in their profession, but really what are the odds that a professor in 2017 is going to think of something about Moby Dick that is both NEW and CORRECT? It can be new OR correct, but not both, and you only get published if it’s new.
Teachers of English language Literature and Letters are very valuable and it’s good that they exist, but SCHOLARSHIP that pretends to be groundbreaking on topics that have been over 10000 times already is a waste of effort and intelligence. Colleges should hire and pay professors based on their teaching and knowledge, and not on their bold, fresh and innovative scholarship.
Excellent.
From the article as posted:
“To dissect is to murder.”
If that’s meant to be a direct quote, it’s wrong.
The actual passage is:
“Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: —
We murder to dissect.”
Nowhere does the passage claim that to dissect is to murder - it rather implies that some are so eager to dissect (that is, unveil the mysteries of nature) that they are willing to go so far as to murder.
No one mentions that Ahab was a monomaniacal muslim bent on the death of The White Whale.
...nor the fact that he smuggled a viper’s nest of muslims into the very bowels of the Pequod.
Agreed, Bartleby. Very few critics are worth the read; and doctoral dissections aren’t even worth the ink.
I always thought Melville was warning us that some future president would be obsessed with sexual matters to the detriment of the responsibilities of his job, and the cry “Thar she blows!” was a psycho-sexual reaction to finding the perfect intern.
That is exactly what I expressed to my English professor in class after having read Moby Dick and Billy Budd. My classmates (all 4-5 years younger than me) were aghast that I would say such a thing and were certain I simply did not grasp the multiple layers of meaning contained in Melville’s writing. Perhaps they were correct, but my opinion has not changed.
By the way, the professor just smiled and never contradicted me. Maybe he was just being kind to an obviously deranged ex-GI.
University education used to build leaders, now it lops off their feet and hands, and gouges out their eyes. Only a stint of "real life" could possibly undo the damage, but it won't work on the ones who believe they are entitled to ignore it.
(Btw, same condition applies to Charles Dickens. Only, he serialized his output and got paid for each chapter. Nice work if you can get it, as the old song goes.)
When referring to the death of someone who died 150 years ago it is not necessary to soften the blow. I.e., saying that Melville, or Lincoln, or Grant “passed away” is just plain stupid.
“To dissect is to murder.”
I like that!
I do get really tired of deconstructionists.
Dead authors can't fight back.
Authors do write more into their works than even they sometimes recognize. But this is definitely excessive deconstructionism with a political agenda. It’s torturing a work of literature to get a narrow little ideological point out of it.
We are producing more “Liberal Arts” PhD’s than are needed, and the ones we are producing, mostly do not deserve the title.
Undergrads can be taught just fine by people with Bachelors and Masters degrees. Perhaps its time we did away with the requirement that professors need a PhD?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.