As long as whatever the idea is can be supported with evidence, it's good to go. That it's really just a load of BS isn't relevant.
Ah, no. There are better and worse interpretations of literary texts. Not, IMO, a load of BS to learn how to do this well.
Perhaps-- but my impression has always been that it's mostly about how well one can defend one's assertions using the source material, and not necessarily what seems to be consensus about meaning or interpretation.
LOL at "presumptuous." YES. This is exactly how my family feels about artistic analysis in general terms. I've often wondered if Shakespeare wouldn't just shake his head and laugh at the "scholarly activity" and serious arguments in academia re: his works. Many indications are that he simply didn't take his OWN work that seriously as capital-A-Art." Oh sure-- he took his craft seriously as
entertainment at the time, but the first folio wouldn't even exist if not for the fact that his FRIENDS thought he was something special.
I'm undecided personally about what that ultimately means for psychoanalysis of Iago or Ophelia, myself. In terms of basic legitimacy, I mean. I'm definitely not a revisionist-- and I think there is worth to consider what those characters reveal about basic, unchanging facets of human nature... but inherently, one might just as easily do the same with JK Rowling's characters, too, YK? Only difference is that we can
ask the author what she intended, in the latter instance. Even so, all art (and certainly music and literature) tends to assume a life of its own that the creator never really anticipated/intended once it becomes "noticed." Many authors, composers, and artists are openly bemused/amused by this fact.
The other thing which comes to mind is a quote that I used to smile at on a colleague's door.
In the words of E.O. Wilson;
“Scientists, being held responsible for what they say, have not found postmodernism useful.” A riff on this pithy one-liner.Okay, it's a little off-topic, but amusing-- at least to me-- in light of the current discussion.
There are some
terrifically funny links toward the bottom of this oldie-but-goodie, too:
http://www.pathguy.com/postmod.htm(Check out the Calvin and Hobbes comic toward the bottom. This is the strategy that DD has eventually taken as a high schooler. I call it the Dr. Strangelove school of rhetoric-- she learned to quit worrying about objective truth in literature, and write-write-write for word count and triple-word-scores.)
The postmodernism essay generator is a real hoot, too.
