Weirdly hostile description: Lit Crit

Literary criticism pretty much means evaluation and analysis of literature; TV Tropes is a site mostly about analysis of storytelling.

So, why is the description for Literary Criticism so narrow, and so hostile?

Would it be fair to omit some of this "TV Tropes is skeptical of literary criticism" stuff? I'm sure some of us are, but it's a wiki, "tropes" is a term from literary theory, and we have an "analysis" namespace fercryinoutloud.

That is...odd.

And the <snark> tags are not as charming as the original writer thinks.

Wow, that needs a full rewrite. The point of the page is show overlap between what we do and what literary critics do, yes?

There is a grain of truth in all that.

One, thanks in large part to Death of the Author, a lot of lit crit is dedicated to putting interpretations into works that the author probably didn't believe had any business being there - often involving lots of "isms" like femininism, socialisim, patriarchisim, etc.

Two, there is a popular perception that Lit Crit thrives on just making shit up, and or giving high praise to things that are meaningless. That a couple prominent pranks have been pulled on academics catching them in the act of doing so hasn't helped.

This isn't a full-out endorsement of the existing article, but in a non-academic article about Lit Crit, they bear mentioning.

Like people criticizing other medias don't do that either?

If there's something to the insular and self-perpetuating issues of criticism in general, perhaps that should be a trope rather than just sticking it onto Literary Criticism.

Perhaps, but being a much older medium, it's much more entrenched; being a medium that's lost ground over the years to film, tv and games, it's seen a less relevant; being that it's rarely seen outside college literature curriculum (and generally not counting book reviews that are in popular media), it's perceived as being the purview of the ivory tower. People who talk derisively about lit crit, AFAIK, generally aren't talking about the NYT Book Review, they're talking about the academics who put out theses on the stuff.

edited 9th Mar '11 12:36:02 PM by Elle

they're talking about the academics who put out theses on the stuff.

So what?

So nothing. I'm just trying to explain the perception, not make an argument for it.

If anything, I think that it may be based on the "popular perception" that Literary Criticism is a bunch of intellectuals (and intellectual poseurs) who spend their time picking literary works to pieces, with a whole jargon that they use as buzzwords, to make themselves sound smarter.

Even if it was, there's no particular reason to limit it to Literary critics. Film critics often get this too. The Critic played with this. The Cinema Snob's character was practically built around it. Heck, there's this French Canadian Band who wrote a song and applies it to critics in general (called "Gros Zero" (Big Zero), it's really good too)

edited 9th Mar '11 4:12:32 PM by Ghilz

Question is, is "pompous pseudo-intellectual critic" a trope? And don't we have it already?

Lumped under Straw Critic, yes.

Hmm. That bothers me a little, given that there is some Truth in Television to this, and I've always had a problem with that overlapping with strawmen (which should be inherently unrealistically weak).

I'm not certain what this page is even supposed to be, so I don't have any recommendations. Ideas?

The description says this page is for tropes that are also terms used in literary criticism, but beneath it, the list just says terms related to literary criticism. And includes things like Epileptic Trees, which is noticeably not an academic term.

I'm actually not sure how many terms we have on this wiki that are directly borrowed from literary criticism, but the list we have currently is closer to "tropes related to arts and media criticism" (Male Gaze is a film criticism term) ...and a few Take That! items as well.

So I guess questions on the table include: 1) Is this only about tropes named after terminology from literary criticism or should it include tropes which present concepts from literary criticism? 2) How broadly should we be defining the "literary" part of "literary criticism"?

edited 9th Mar '11 10:27:15 PM by Bailey

Which page are you even talking about? Lit Crit clearly says "Tropes related to" not "Terms related to". Im confused at to what your point is...

Anyway, I am in favor of outright cutting Lit Crit. First of all, it's nothing but a Take That! at some vague critique genre. It reads like something a kid would write to rage at his English teacher for trying to teach him about theme or such. It's not limited to literary critcism, and heck, there's no reason to abridge the name to Lit Crit anyway.

What's worth keeping on this page? Should we Cut List?

edited 9th Mar '11 11:08:22 PM by Ghilz

I'm not against expanding something like this to cover other media but I'm very against hastily cutting, unless and until a reasonable plan to handle the concepts involved has been formulated.

Edit: anyone else notice that Straw Critic also seems to be used for Critic In Effigy - that's to say, making expies of critics suffer?

edited 9th Mar '11 11:15:42 PM by Elle

What concept ARE there to cover? The artsy, snooty, "sees too much into everything" critic is already covered by Straw Critic, which doesn't limit it to Literary Critics. Heck, at least that articles isn't written in a tone of "Literary Critics are all like this and thats why we hate em" which is pretty much what Lit Crit says.

"Straw" implies "unrealistic". This...isn't so much.

But what I mean to suggest is that we can have a mature, not-so-snarky article talking about the perceptions and failings of lit crit and/or media critics in general. Failing that, we still need a definition page to link lit crit terms like Death of the Author to.

Death of the Author isn't even indexed there. (Heck, Lit Crit aint even an index) And again, there's no reason this has to be limited to LITERARY works. As for the Straw thing, that's an issue for another thread, if Straw Critic needs a rename or not.

While such a Useful Notes page would be handy, what we have right now is not even it. And if we were to make it, theres no reason to NOT make it on Literary Criticism, not on Lit Crit.

Im all for a general "Criticism" useful notes page to explain the basics and stuff like Death of the Author however.

edited 9th Mar '11 11:27:21 PM by Ghilz

Those aren't unreasonable, but until we have consensus on any of it, let's leave off cutting, which tends to get treated as a "case closed, nothing more to see" action,

There's a fundamental difference between a Straw and Hollywood. A Straw is something set up to be knocked down, the Hollywood is just a half paid attention to stereotype born mostly of ignorance or apathy toward the subject.

The thing is that modern lit crit is extremely politicized, with a nearly dogmatic affinity towards Marxism (with an unhealthy dose of academic feminism and Everything Is Racist - 'xenophobic' and 'reactionary' messages in Tolkien anyone?). I think the best idea is to simply cut this article - it will either be praising or criticizing the subject, partially because there is no way to objectively describe it (maybe because the academia seems to mistake its own opinion for objective science)

Really? I don't know with Literary Criticism circles you hang around. A marxist affinity? o_O

I dislike that the article hijacked the wiki's voice. I see the "not everyone has this opinion" tags, but those shouldn't even be there—something like that is what you see in an opinion editorial or some such, not an index.