Showing papers on "Criticism published in 1979"

Tropics of discourse : essays in cultural criticism

Abstract: "Tropics of Discourse" develops White's ideas on interpretation in history, on the relationship between history and the novel, and on history and historicism. Vico, Croce, Derrida, and Foucault are among the figures he assesses in this work, which also offers original interpretations of a number of literary themes, including the Wild Man and the Noble Savage. White's commentary ranges from a reappraisal of Enlightenment history to a reflective summary of the current state of literary criticism.

The Foundations of a Positive Theory of Choice Involving Risk and a Criticism of the Postulates and Axioms of the American School (1952)

Abstract: This is the direct English translation, which appears for the first time, of ‘Fondements d’une Theorie Positive des Choix Comportant un Risque et Critique des Postulats et Axiomes de L’Ecole Americaine’ which was published in French as Memoir III annexed to Econometrie, Colloques Internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Vol. XL, Paris, 1953, pp.257–332 (see p.447 below).

Deconstruction and Criticism

Abstract: Five essential and challenging essays by leading post-modern theorists on the art and nature of interpretation: Jacques Derrida, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, Paul de Man, and J. Hillis Miller.

Policymaking for social security

Abstract: Americans are becoming more aware of their social security program and less contented with it. They see their taxes rising and are not sure that they will get their money's worth in future benefits. In the mid-1970s costs unexpectedly outran revenues, and in 1977 Congress reluctantly took action; but it had no sooner enacted new taxes than members began submitting bills to revise them. A social security taxpayers' revolt seemed to be brewing.No longer a "sacred cow," as Milton Friedman once remarked of it, the program has come increasingly under fire. Martha Derthick, in this comprehensive analysis of policy-making for social security, concludes that such criticism is healthy and that reexamination of long-established doctrines and policies is very much to be desired. In the past, she writes, "the nature of policymaking did little to correct, but instead reinforced, a complacent, poorly informed acceptance of the programparticipation was so narrowly confined; expert proprietary dominance was so complete; debate was so limited; the technicality was so appealing; and the forward steps each seemed so small."With detailed documentation from primary sources, Derthick shows how policymaking has been dominated until recently by a small group of specialists. But now, with difficult times ahead, the pattern is changing, and more people inside and outside the government seek to influence decisions. Derthick argues that this trend should be encouraged. In her view, social security ought to be treated like any other government program and be subject to the same competitive pressures. Reduction of benefits, hitherto considered a forbidden topic, ought to be open to political debate.Derthick has divided the book into four parts, dealing first with the small group of men and women who molded the program; next with the basic policies that have governed it; and third with the politics of expansion in three areasdisability coverage, medicare, and cash benefits. In the final part she examines the current deficit and looks to the future of social security."

Feminist Criticism of the Social Sciences.

Abstract: The tensions and contradictions that permeate women's lives simultaneously create the potential for both alienation and liberation. These antithetical conditions form the outline of the debate within the social sciences concerning the interpretation of women's experiences. Marcia Westkott discusses the feminist criticism of the content, method, and purpose of knowledge about women as defined by the social sciences, and offers a dialectical alternative to conventional analyses.

Type-Set Politics: Impact of Newspapers on Public Confidence*

Abstract: This study combines survey data from the 1974 American National Election Study with the front-page content of 94 newspapers in an investigation of the relationship between the degree of negative political criticism found in newspapers and their readers' feelings of trust in government and a sense of their own political effectiveness. Although newspaper reporting was primarily neutral or positive, readers of highly critical papers were more distrustful of government; but the impact of criticism on the more stable attitude of political efficacy was modest. Level of exposure to national news interacted with critical news content primarily to affect feelings of trust, and not efficacy.This article posits a structural explanation of inefficacy as a result of accumulating distrust, where policy dissatisfaction, rather than dislike of incumbent leaders, acts as the main determinant of cynicism. In this model, media criticism serves as a “mediator” of political realities which eventually, although indirectly, affects political malaise.

Formalism and Marxism

Abstract: Part 1: Formalism Revisited 1. Criticism and literature 2. Formalism and Marxism 3. Russian Formalism: clearing the ground 4. Formalism and beyond Part 2: Marxist criticism: from aesthetics to politics 5. Marxist versus aesthetics to politics 6. Science, literature and ideology 7. The legacy of aesthetics 8. Work in progress 9. Conclusion

“Case studies” in accounting research

Abstract: Using case studies in accounting research can be meaningful from the perspective of several different “schools of thought” in social science Even if the role and relevance of case methods differ between schools, some general questions nevertheless can be raised In the paper, two types of criticism of case studies are discussed First, the criticism that case studies cannot provide any basis for generalization is argued to originate from an over-emphasis on data and observations and a neglect of theory building in the generation of knowledge Second, it is argued that the statement that case studies are appropriate for generating hypotheses but not for testing them has some truth It is shown, however, that case studies also can play important roles in the “testing” of hypotheses Finally, some advice for case researchers is presented

Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism

Abstract: Critics will always disagree, but, maintains Wayne Booth, their disagreement need not result in critical chaos. In Critical Understanding, Booth argues for a reasoned pluralism-a criticism more various and resourceful than can be caught in any one critic's net. He relates three noted pluralists-Ronald Crane, Kenneth Burke, and M. H. Abrams-to various currently popular critical approaches. Throughout, Booth tests the abstractions of metacriticism against particular literary works, devoting a substantial portion of his discussion to works by W. H. Auden, Henry James, Oliver Goldsmith, and Anatole France.

Consciousness-Raising or Redemptive Criticism: The Contemporaneity of Walter Benjamin

Abstract: Even in a trivial sense Benjamin has contemporary relevance: opinions come into conflict today whenever his name comes up. Yet the eruptive impact Benjamin's writings have had in the Federal Republic of Germany during the short time since their publication' has resulted in battle lines being drawn which were already prefigured in Benjamin's biography. In the course of Benjamin's life the constellation made up by Gershom Scholem, Theodor W. Adorno and Bertolt Brecht was decisive so too was his

Towards a more social social psychology

Abstract: Social psychology has been criticized by several American and European writers for being too individualistic in its treatment of social behaviour. The various positions appear to focus on two major issues. First, that at the empirical level, the individual rather than the group has been the focus of research. Second, that individually oriented theories must give way to a new level of theorizing emphasizing group processes. Our own position is that the first type of criticism is entirely justified but that the second is somewhat misleading. The position is illustrated by reference to recent group-oriented theories of Tajfel and Moscovici.

Transcendental Arguments, Self-Reference, and Pragmatism

Abstract: Most transcendental arguments are anti-sceptical and anti-reductionist, claiming that the reduced world the skeptic holds out as the only legitimate option is not a genuine alternative They have as their paradigm Kant’s arguments against Hume Such arguments fortify those philosophers who want to insist, with Kant, that there is such a thing as philosophical criticism of the rest of culture — that the philosopher can say something which science cannot about the claims to objectivity and rationality to which various parts of culture are entitled Thought of in this way, transcendental arguments seem the only hope for philosophy as an autonomous critical discipline, the only way to say something about human knowledge which is clearly distinguishable from psychophysics on the one hand and from history and sociology of knowledge on the other

Keats and the Historical Method in Literary Criticism

Abstract: Conflicts between formal or stylistic analysis and historical scholarship are a traditional problem in literary studies. In the field of hermeneutics, where the lines of disagreement tend to sharpen, the best commentators-Lionel Trilling, for example-have generally aimed for, and achieved, various pragmatic agreements. Few critics would take seriously any suggestion that Byron's poetry could be adequately interpreted without bringing a fair amount of historical and biographical information to bear.' On the other hand, a textonly approach has been so vigorously promoted during the last thirty-five years that most historical critics have been driven from the field, and have raised the flag of their surrender by yielding the title "critic" to the victor, and accepting the title "scholar" for themselves. This division of labor has produced a fundamentally unstable situation because it is based upon unresolved and, what is worse, unexamined tensions and conflicts. The problems appear, at first, in a purely practical form: for the student needs to know how he is to decide whether (or in what way) historical and biographical information is needed for interpretation. Confronted with a particular text, we cannot always tell at what points (if any) we ought to press for some particular "extrinsic" material or approach.2 Textual problems of these sorts are widespread, nor are they a function of a certain sort of poem (like a topical satire) or a certain type of writer (like, say, Byron). They exist because of general critical assumptions about "the mode of existence of a literary work of art."3 The introductory remarks in Paul deMan's well-known essay on

Ancient rhetoric and modern genre criticism

Abstract: Despite the excitement genre criticism has generated among rhetorical critics, its achievements and prospects are questionable. A good many new ideas introduced in recent criticism are, as it happens, very old; while many old ideas about genre remain largely misunderstood. At the same time, the critical distance required by genre theory and the tendency of generic classifications to proliferate into tiresome and useless taxonomies seem to draw critics farther and farther away from the objects of their critical attention. It is time critics came to grips with the problems stemming from the lack of historical perspective and the critical deficiencies of genre theories themselves evident in much recent critical research.

The Language of Art History

Abstract: A WEIRD THING about the last ten years has been quite how many art historians have been beating their breasts about the "theoretical inadequacies" of the activity, and New Literary History has admirably registered that thudding, with a more representative spread of opinion than any of the art historians' own journals I see. To take three types: Kurt W. Forster,1 who represents a line found in a rather fuller and sharper form in the journal Kritische Berichte, deplores our formalism, our assimilation of art history to the history of ideas, our breathless affirmativeness about the works we study, our concentration on high art at the expense of genres like the film and the poster, our lack of self-awareness about our own preconceptions and their social roots, our failure to develop a genuine social-historical approach: "The only means of gaining an adequate grasp of old artifacts lies in the dual critique of the ideology which sustained their production and use, and of the current cultural interests that have turned works of art into a highly privileged class of consumer and didactic goods." James S. Ackerman,2 by contrast, sees the root of our trouble in a hybrid philosophical base: "Without knowing it, my colleagues have grounded their method in the tradition of nineteenth-century positivism conceived to justify scientific empiricism." But then we have absurdly taken into this an unconscious value system inherited from the Neoplatonic idealism of the Renaissance. No wonder, then, if we are torn between form and content, the social and the aesthetic, history and criticism. What we need to do is to "replace the present irrational collage of traditions that constitute our basic value premises with consciously articulated principles that correspond to what we actually believe." We should evaluate art, and in the light of something called "the concept of humane values," preliminarily described. David Rosand3 offers moderate recommendations in a line running immediately from an influential article by Leo Steinberg called "Objectivity and the Shrinking Self,"4 which worries about us compromising our individual selves in the attempt to see other men's or periods' works from

Shakespeare and the Kinds of Drama

Abstract: When Johnson, citing the authority of Thomas Rymer, asserted that Shakespeare's natural disposition was for comedy, not tragedy, he was assuming that there were only two genres of drama-comedy and tragedy. The assumption was made apparently without strain and without any sense that its categories imposed undue limitations on the practice of either drama or criticism. Shakespeare was allowed to violate the rules, exculpated by his ignorance of them, and was praised for his fidelity to nature. "Shakespeare's plays are not, in the rigorous or critical sense, either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow... in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend."' If we look closely at Johnson's "distinct kind," we shall see that it is not a new genre but a mixture of the two old ones: the kinds remain comedy and tragedy. For Diderot, however, writing at the same time (though for a culture that admittedly had always taken its categories more seriously than the British), there was more to life, even to dramatic and critical life, than comedy and tragedy. Diderot therefore proposed a third genre, a serious bourgeois drama of a sort that could not be described within the limits of either of the traditional kinds.2 In doing this, Diderot assumed that he was doing something new and that the old forms could not

Essays in the numerical criticism of medieval literature

Abstract: Peck, R.A. Number as cosmic language.--Hieatt, A.K. Numerical structures in verse.--Singleton, C.S. The poet's number at the center.--Scarry, E. The well-rounded sphere.--Metcalf, A. Gawain's number.--Eckhardt, C.D. The numbe of Chaucer's pilgrims.--Hart, T.E. Tectonic Methodology and an application.--Fichtner, E.G.--Patterns of arithmetical proportion.

Instruction and Delight in Medieval and Renaissance Criticism

Abstract: Impact des theories relatives a l'activite psychologique et a la perception (Platon, S. Augustin, Thomas d'Aquin) sur la conception de l'oeuvre litteraire comme capable d'eduquer et de donner du plaisir. Etude du concept de "delectation" chez G. B. Gelli, P. Bembo, L. Castelvetro. Importance donnee au pouvoir des sens et a l'imagination. Ce qui distingue ces deux notions medievales et renaissantes, c'est que le Moyen Age met l'accent sur la contemplation et la Renaissance sur l'action.

On the Analysis and Criticism of Arguments: Some Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

Abstract: Distinctions and assumptions underlying methods of argument analysis and criticism are examined. Contrary to the view recently presented by Willard, descriptive diagrams such as the Toulmin model a...

Methodological criticism and critical methodology

Abstract: Methodological criticism may be defined as the critique of scientific practice in the light of methodological principles, and critical methodology as the study of proper methods of criticism; the problem is that of the interaction between the scientific methods which give methodological criticism its methodological character and the critical methods which give it its character of criticism. These ideas and this problem are illustrated by an examination of Karl Popper's critique of Marxian social science. It is argued that though Popper's favorable articulations of Marx are valuable, his unfavorable criticism is invalid, the grounds of my argument being certain ideas in critical methodology relating to the distinctions between theory and practice, between inaccurate and invalid criticism, and between the justification of favorable criticism and the justification of unfavorable criticism.

The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work

Abstract: Louise M. Rosenblatt s award-winning work continues increasingly to be read in a wide range of academic fieldsliterary criticism, reading theory, aesthetics, composition, rhetoric, speech communication, and education. Her view of the reading transaction as a unique event involving reader and text at a particular time under particular circumstances rules out the dualistic emphasis of other theories on either the reader or the text as separate and static entities. The transactional concept accounts for the importance of factors such as gender, ethnicity, culture, and socioeconomic context. Essential reading for the specialist, this book is also well suited for courses in criticism, critical theory, rhetoric, and aesthetics.Starting from the same nonfoundationalist premises, Rosenblatt avoids the extreme relativism of postmodern theories derived mainly from Continental sources. A deep understanding of the pragmatism of Dewey, James, and Peirce and of key issues in the social sciences is the basis for a view of language and the reading process that recognizes the potentialities for alternative interpretations and at the same time provides a rationale for the responsible reading of texts.The book has been praised for its lucid explanation of the multidimensional character of the reading processevoking, interpreting, and evaluating the work. The nonliterary (efferent) and the literary (aesthetic) are shown not to be opposites but to represent a continuum of reading behaviors. The author amply illustrates her theoretical points with interpretations of varied texts. The epilogue carries further her critique of rival contemporary theories.\

The Insistent I

Abstract: Critical attention to the eighteenth-century English novel almost always centers on one of five writers, and the result has been historically crippling. It may well be that Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne wrote, among them, all of the best English novels in the eighteenth century, but in looking only at the best we serve the narrowest interests of literary criticism at the expense of the broadest and most useful interests of literary history. Students of eighteenth-century fiction today seldom can provide a cogent account of how work developed from work or author from author, and a proper criticism demands a greater contextual sense than that readily available to us for individual texts, not to mention the richer interpretations that would be possible if we had a fuller sense of the novel's origins and its relationship to competing genres and modes. And because recent criticism has concentrated so totally on landmarks, broader attention to the nature of the eighteenth-century novel has become virtually nonexistent, so that questions about the distinguishing characteristics of the novel are very indifferently addressed when addressed at all. In this essay I want to suggest some of the facets of that character by discussing a writer who is neither a novelist nor a very talented writer of any kind, but whose work may tell us something about the books that follow in his wide wake. My subject is John Dunton, the bookseller and publisher of the 1680s and 90s, and journalist, anthologist, and occasional writer through the 1720s, and my thesis is that he deserves, for some rather complex reasons, an extensive chapter in any history of narrative. I want to suggest that traditional literary history makes a serious mistake in considering only the geniuses and accomplished craftsmen who create masterpieces in new genres while ignoring the cultural conditions, events, and minor or failed personages who set the stage. I am not going to claim that John Dunton is a neglected genius or a great writer, or that his works should now all be issued in Norton Critical Editions, but I do want to suggest what his pervasive presence on the landscape of print means for the way narrative began to go in the early eighteenth century. My hope is to illuminate the nature of the new form of fiction that became prominent in England and on the Continent during the eighteenth century, suggesting a few of the many features that define what was then new about the "novel," for one of our most insistent needs is to transcend the old simplistic distinctions that divide novel from romance and that find the identity of novels in one single, allimportant feature such as "realism," "organic unity," or "individualism."

The Inductive Method of Teaching Visual Art Criticism

Abstract: It seems that the scientific method has been applied to all manner of nonscientific, affective concerns such as social intercourse, religion, and value acquisition. Thus it is not surprising, though it may seem repugnant to many, that an attempt should be made to apply the scientific method to art criticism, an area many hoped would remain a sanctuary, safe from systematizing classification laws. Applying the scientific method to art is an old idea and has been discussed at length by Munro, Valentine, and others.' In this paper, however, scientific method is related not to inquiry into the nature of the beautiful or into the nature of appreciation, but rather to teaching the process of art criticism. Although art criticism seems so unlike science, the methods of both have much in common. But before adjusting the procedures of the one field to the other, caution demands pointing out the obvious dangers to which some "scientific" systems of art criticism have succumbed. Hecksher describes how a misunderstanding of true scientific method is often at fault: "The curriculum of the liberal arts has often been in danger of being taken over by the technological society; too often it has been infected by the very spirit which it should have combatted. Thinking they were imitating science, the high priests of supposedly classical learning created rigid categories and became subject to a narrowing spirit of analysis. Two forces have tended to rescue the liberal arts from this deformation. The first, paradoxically, is science itself. For while the liberal arts thought that in counting every comma they were imitating science, the true geniuses were making us aware that science does not operate this way at all."2

Locke on Persons and Personal Identity

Abstract: Criticism of Locke's account of personal identity has proceeded cumulatively. Three years after the publication of the chapter "Of Identity and Diversity",2 John Sergeant raised an objection which, in Bishop Butler's hands, was to become famous as the dictum that "one should really think it self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity: any more than knowledge, in any other case, can constitute

A Further Criticism of the Type-Variety System: The Data can't Be Used

Abstract: The type-variety system of ceramic classification has been criticized on a number of theoretical points concerning typology in general; yet it remains very popular among archaeologists. This paper adds a methodological criticism to the debate: ceramic data presented according to the highest standards of type-variety analysis simply cannot be used for independent reanalysis. An attempt to reanalyze some data presented according to the type-variety system (Formative period ceramics from the site of Barton Ramie, Belize) is described, and shortcomings of type-variety data presentation are pointed out. These findings are in direct opposition to claims made by type-variety practitioners as to the adequacy of their format of ceramic description and illustration.

The Current Situation of Literary Theory: Key Concepts and the Imaginary

Abstract: I N THE LAST TEN YEARS, literary theory has made a powerful impact on criticism, giving new direction to a discussion that was losing itself down a very blind alley. But despite this impact, it is still dogged by an unmistakable element of ingenuousness as evinced not least by its opalescent character. What exactly is literary theory? Does it mean theorizing about literature, or about possible means of access to literature? If the distinction between the two has not yet been adequately brought out, this is mainly because literary theory sprang not from any intensified study of literature so much as from the parlous state of literary criticism at the universities-a state which it was meant to remedy. Literature has, to a large extent, lost its social validity in contemporary society, and it was the attempt to counteract this erosion that led to the breakthrough of theory; but this, in turn, brought out into the open problems inherent in literary theory. As a reaction to the crisis in the humanities, literary theory became increasingly dependent on the relationship between literature and society-a relationship which stood in urgent need of clarification. In this sense, literary theory was certainly linked to literature, but only under conditions that were relevant to the current preoccupations of that society. Consequently the study of literature had to be channeled into this conditionality, with the result that the needs of the moment somehow became norms governing the assessment of literature. Thus literary theory swiftly fell under the influence of prevailing social objectives, which as commonplaces of the time scarcely needed literature as a medium through which to articulate themselves. The result was that in these early stages, literary theory was more or less in the nature of an apology, for it was attempting to explain the uses of literature to a society whose appreciation of learning was at best confined to applauding the winners of TV quiz shows. The endeavor to salvage the traditional status of literature in the face of new social requirements has formed a basic impulse for a rapidly developing diversification of literary theory over the last ten years. Its vindication of literature, however, has tended to gloss over the question of what exactly is this "old status" which is to be pre