Edward Said – Criticism Isn’t Enough in Our Modern Time of Need
Criticism and It’s High-falutin’ Benefits
Edward Said (pronounced Sigh-eed for those of you unfamiliar) stated in his essay “Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community” that he believed that the original aim of literary critics was to bridge the gap between the layman and the professional. Said did not think that New Criticism was the answer, though its creators had aimed for it to be. Though “the New Critics aimed at nothing less than the removal of all of what they considered the specialized rubbish–put there, they presumed, by professors of literature–standing between the reader of a poem and the poem.”
New Critics failed at this goal because those who began using New Criticism in University focused too heavily on Formalism. Formalism emphasized the parts of the poem that made it inaccessible to the masses. The minutiae of language and literary devices that are not necessary to basic understanding should not be the focus of criticism. Formalism killed the New Critics’ dream of “creat[ing] new readers of the classics.”
While it is great for a brand of criticism to have a lofty goal–such as raising the literary consciousness of modern readers–Edward Said thought that was not enough. The critic himself (or herself) must not stop at criticism. Said believed that “Jean-Paul Sartre ideas about an engaged literature and a committed writer” was the ideal mode of criticism Said and Sartre claimed that a reader or a critic is no good unless that readers also goes out into the world and does work beyond the pen. Writing literary criticism may raise awareness, but nobody will follow someone who does not lead by action. So instead of just posting some more memes on Facebook about how you wish change would happen, “Be the change you wish to see in the world”–Gandhi.
