
New Books in Literary Studies Wayne Deakin, "Modern Language, Philosophy and Criticism" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
Jul 14, 2023
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Formal Skills Democratize Criticism
- Formalist checklists can democratize criticism by giving readers objective tools to analyze devices like irony and ambiguity.
- Deakin suggests balancing such skills with political readings to judge textual quality without reducing works to sociological evidence.
Politics Mustn't Crowd Out Pleasure
- Deakin argues politics belongs in criticism but should not obliterate attention to textual form and readerly pleasure.
- He fears over-politicization may excise texts from curricula and silence candid classroom debate.
Make Deconstruction Concrete
- Explain deconstruction as language's tendency to destabilize meaning and to expose hierarchies without replacing them.
- Use accessible examples from popular culture to show how texts open multiple subject positions.
