New Books in Literary Studies

Wayne Deakin, "Modern Language, Philosophy and Criticism" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

Jul 14, 2023
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INSIGHT

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.
INSIGHT

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.
ADVICE

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.
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