Miker said:
>
> i read it. i liked it. i have always thought
that
> a literary work should stand by itself, and i've
always
> thought it insulting to the work and the author when
a
> critic psychoanalyzes the author to conveniently
cat-
> egorize the work.
>
> i wonder when he wrote this. it must have
created
> quite a stink. i've heard exactly the opposite
stated
> more than once: that an author's works separated
from
> from the author becomes meaningless because of the
loss
> of reference.
>
I don't know that it had such a big impact on the literary
world but Barthes & several French intellectuals who
followed in his footsteps seemed to have a major influence on
the way art was taught in Australian art schools at least.
IIRC, Australian art schools in the 1980's were completely
dominated by semiotics & the related schools of thought
that followed (becoming more & more impenetrable to the
point of where not only most people could not understand what
they were talking about but in at least a couple of instances
I can recall, the academics/students themselves had no idea
what they were yabbering about. If it wasn't so off-topic I
could relay an anecdote about the time I interviewed author
Angela Carter & the interview was hijacked by my editor,
who was the top student in his class at the Hobart art school
at the time. I'll just say that nobody, including Carter
& the editor himself, knew what the editor was talking
about. I wish I still had the tape - it was something
straight out of Monty Python.) I'm not dissing Barthes here
(I admit I'm not overly familiar with his stuff) - I'm having
a go at some of the schools of academic writing following
that became so impenetrable that a fellow who didn't even
have a good handle on English as she is spoke could write
essays, etc in this impenetrable gobbledygook and come out
top of his class, with a distinction yet.
Rene
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