Dear Shirley,
I think it would be a great service, both to this list and to your
arguments, if you wish not to encourage members simply to delete your
postings unread, if you were to refrain from pointlessly insulting
your colleagues and making vague threats to have them somehow
defrocked. Many of them have contributed long and valuable labors to
Renaissance studies and English studies at large, even if you find
yourself now in disagreement with their emphases. Wanton
denunciations merely undo your own case and risk making you look like
one of Spenser's own allegorical figures. "Anti-intellectualism" is
surely the very last charge that the academic study of Spenser
deserves, it having consistently attracted many of the most learned
and intellectually lively figures in the study of English poetry over
the years. I will not brandish names on the point, but surely your
own training in the field must confirm its truth. Your contribution
will advance its own claims on the strength of your arguments, not
your invective, surely. Otherwise why expend all this energy?
Sincerely,
Tom
>Condescention having been mentioned, I would like to say that my outrage
>against intellectual shallowness and lack of precise thinking displayed in
>this list and much pseudo-historicist Renaissance scholarship of the past
>two decades was increased when Professor Prescott's promise to include a
>reference to Stephen Whitworth's article on Barnfield, if she could, in the
>forthcoming volume edited by Klawitter and Borris made me realize the
>editors had not mentioned the article, of which they were well aware, to
>their contributors, even though it is the most recent, and still one of the
>only pieces devoted to Barnfield.
>
>This is not only condescension, not only yet another symptom of
>anti-intellectualism in Renaissance studies, but a violation of
>professional ethics worthy of being reported to the MLA and other
>professional organizations. I would expect intellectually responsible
>members of this list, certainly those contributing to the Klawitter/Borris
>volume who had not been informed of the article, to denounce this behaviour.
>
>Shirley Sharon-Zisser
>
>
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