--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Kerry J. Schooley"
<gsp.schoo@...> wrote:
> Well, maybe there are postmodernists who interpret
relativity to mean
> what you say it means. I haven't read them all, but
I interpreted
> what I have read on the subject to mean that the
value of standards
> relate to circumstances of the time, the individuals
involved etc.
That is correct, with the caveat that "postmodernism" is not
easily definable, and that several guys who are considered
gurus of it deny a any relation to it... Derrida, for
example, or Barthes. I say it is correct but it is also
trivial: of course the critical and reader reception of a
work depend on many circumstances... and all judgments of
artistic value are, as we know, quite fragile. For that
matter, we, as a species, are very fragile. On a realistic
time scale, for example against the time the earth has
existed, we have barely started to exist.
On the theory of relativity: it doesn't say that everything
is relative... I don't know who invented that silly and
totally false dictum. It wasn't Einstein or any of the other
people who developed the theory.
And regarding the genres that occupy us, there is no reason
why they should be treated by critics as something separate,
as a dark and dirty corner... a text is a text, a novel is a
novel, a story is a story, a film is a film.
By the way, I think Jim's comment on calling classics
literature is very pertinent here. Take something that was
considered trash and much later has come to be considered a
classic... what _is_ it? It's the same book, of course, read
and analyzed with a different eye, or, we might say
hesitatingly, with different "standards" and
"methodologies"...
Best,
mrt
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