I have a piece of art from a French post WWII artist who did ink pressings of French rural farming scenes. A casual look or a passing glance at the piece shows you it's stark simplicity. Nothing too interesting. But what captivated me was that the longer I looked at it, the more I saw something much much deeper emotionally. I felt something melancholic and yearning (I learnt later the artist was a French WWII survivor). The point is it was only when I studied and allowed the piece to effect me is when I recognised it as art. I think literature is something similar. I've listened to you and Roger Scruton and others talk about beauty and the sublime, and I don't think I know or understand what sublime means but I think I'm closer to grasping the concept now than I was 4 or 5 years ago.
Am I the only one who is getting tired by Christianity preaching? We are here for literary theory (es), not faith, and good literary theory should be by necessity universal, i.e. work for non-christian literature / culteres / traditions too. In that regard even (just for example) feminist optics with all it's flaws seems more universal and productive than this euro- and christian- centrism.
I teach at a Christian university and make no apologies for teaching as such. And I will maintain that the implicit pantheism of the academy undermines the universality of its theories.
I have a piece of art from a French post WWII artist who did ink pressings of French rural farming scenes.
A casual look or a passing glance at the piece shows you it's stark simplicity. Nothing too interesting.
But what captivated me was that the longer I looked at it, the more I saw something much much deeper emotionally. I felt something melancholic and yearning (I learnt later the artist was a French WWII survivor).
The point is it was only when I studied and allowed the piece to effect me is when I recognised it as art.
I think literature is something similar.
I've listened to you and Roger Scruton and others talk about beauty and the sublime, and I don't think I know or understand what sublime means but I think I'm closer to grasping the concept now than I was 4 or 5 years ago.
Look at that landscape view....so nice!
So at the same time we’re obsessed with safety, we are destroying what Humanity means. What are they keeping safe?
Double down on the godless literary theorists. Culture war without end.
Am I the only one who is getting tired by Christianity preaching? We are here for literary theory (es), not faith, and good literary theory should be by necessity universal, i.e. work for non-christian literature / culteres / traditions too. In that regard even (just for example) feminist optics with all it's flaws seems more universal and productive than this euro- and christian- centrism.
I teach at a Christian university and make no apologies for teaching as such.
And I will maintain that the implicit pantheism of the academy undermines the universality of its theories.
I'm so grateful I don't live in the Anglosphere...