“…in the days when, to get a Ph.D., you had to study Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, Old French, and linguistics, on the notion that they served as a kind of hard-core scientific basis for literary study.”
and of the New Criticism he says:
“I’ve been skeptical from the beginning of attempts to show that for hundreds of years people have missed the real point,”
Ah, back when literature professors had something more substantive to teach…
In a broader context, hasn’t the Western mind has shifted to “science,” instead of God as a deepest idea, and so too isn’t literature a part of this shift?
As Richard Rorty sees it, no standard objective for truth exists but for the interpretation of a few philosophers interpreting whatever of philosophy they’ve read. It’s all just an author’s “stuff.” Here’s an excerpt discussing the debate between him and Hilary Putnam:
What would be a good way to teach literature, anyways?
See Also: Should You Bother To Get A Liberal Arts Education?
