Heh heh Kent, who's feigning they know where and why (and who) they are?
It occurred to me last night that I suspect strongly that terms like
"new criticism", "postmodernism" and "modernism" have very little to
do with poetry, although they may reflect social and theoretical
contexts within which poetry is written. I also have often
entertained the thought that postmodernism was a series of
speculations which emerged from feminist thinking in order to
cauterise and domesticate it. On the other hand, if you think of
postmodernity as a social/historical condition, that seems to me to
have had a number of profound effects on poetry and other literature,
most of them contradictory (which is why I think you can argue that
Motion is a post modernist par examplar, in his curious
valuelessness).
While throwing around these terms, it seems to me we're in a phase of
post-post colonialism. I see everywhere proclamations of the total
collapse of the Left and at the same time beneath the glib surfaces
of mediaspeak a new radicalising. It will take a while to work out
what all that means...
Best
Alison
>Alison and cris, I meant the prompt in the spirit of provocation. It
>succeeded in provoking good questions, I see!
>
>But this might be a better way of putting it:
>
>"Now that postmodernism is over, and we find ourselves standing,
>ceremoniously, in its wake, dissimulating our diffidence as we
>breezily patter away about literature and the world with others,
>who, like ourselves, feign to know where they are and why, would
>we perhaps do well to return to the New Criticism to see if we may
>still find something of value there?"
>
>Kent
--
"The only real revolt is the revolt against war."
Albert Camus
Alison Croggon
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