The Death of Literature

Rating:
Summary: Scathing, but also enlightening
Review: As a graduate student in literature, I became rather angry at times while reading Kernan's book; ultimately, however, I came to agree with his primary thesis on the death of literature. Kernan takes a polemic view towards feminists, postcolonialists, etc. who have assigned new meanings to old texts, thus introducing subjectivity into literary scholarship and reducing the credibility of literature as an academic discipline. Kernan's negative stance towards these groups remains my only point of contention with the book. Otherwise, his claim that literature no longer extends its influence beyond the university, especially (although not entirely) due to technological advancements and cultural changes, seems to be common sense. In Kernan's view, the death of literature in the university, as evidenced by its nonconformance to scientific standards and by the shift of student demand from literature courses to writing courses, is tantamount to the death of literature everywhere.

Kernan's polemic targets numerous other theoretical perspectives on literature; the collective of literary scholars also finds itself under attack. These views were often painful to read but I ultimately decided that Kernan is right. Literary scholars should read this book with an open mind, and with several other open minds in reserve for use when the first no longer wants anything more to do with this text. However, struggling through this book is extremely worthwhile.

On the other hand, for anyone wishing to attack the literary establishment in the universities, this book provides plenty of ammunition.

Rating:
Summary: Traditionalism versus Iconoclasm
Review: Even though this book strikes out at every possible enemy that can provide an explanation for the decline in influence of traditional English literature, it does contain some useful information and makes some thought-provoking points.
For instance, Kernan points out that English literature departments did not exist until the early days of the twentieth century (p. 34). Twentieth century authors like Kafka, Joyce, Eliot, etc. were taught so as to challenge the complacent minds of middle-class students (p. 60). However, being taught in college conferred on these works a status that made them guides for behavior rather than stimulation for discussion. Students unquestioningly accepted the negative attitudes in these authors (p. 61) and the dark view of life they offered. When the view became even darker and completely irrational and self-destructive in the late twentieth century, the authority conferred by their being taught in college still swayed the students.

What to do about all this is something that eludes Kernan. He needs information which he, as a retired English professor from Princeton, does not have. He continues the traditional antipathy to all other fields, particularly the physical and social sciences. For instance, Kernan equates the relativity of Relativity Theory with the relativity of cultural anthropology (p. 80-81), even citing "uncertainty and probability" as marks of this relativity! One consequence of this is Kernan's grouping reader-response theories among the bad guys. "Reader-response or reception aesthetics drain the autonomous work of art of its meaning by relocating the meaning-making power to the eyes of the beholders." (p. 76) This statement presupposes that a work can have no meaning unless it has the same meaning for every reader, certainly a debatable, not to say dubious point.

So, his book continues to the end as a kind of lament. He has no solutions to offer. And indeed, turning back the clock to the mindless Traditionalism of the past is no more a solution than continuing the mindless iconoclasm and interest-group politicking of the present. For a book that is able to deal with these problems (because the author is not a traditionalist and has a knowledge of other fields), see A Book Worth Reading. Still, Kernan scores some points against the iconoclasts which could occasion useful debate, but it is unlikely that they will ever read his book.


Rating:
Summary: A Lament, Not a Polemic
Review: The previous reviewer regards Kernan's book as an "attack" on all of the special-interest interpretive circles (feminism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Derridean deconstruction) that have arisen along with the theory explosion that changed literary studies so profoundly sometime in the 1980s. But Kernan is merely noting--admittedly, with a bit of sadness--what these groups have ultimately done for the old idea of a "Literature"--that is, a canon of priviliged texts ("the best that has been thought and said") that serve as legitimate objects of study.

He does not share the conservative views of an Allan Bloom or an E.D. Hirsch, which he makes pretty clear. Rather than retreat into a reactionary defense of the old humanisms, he describes, without railing against them, the cultural forces at work in the post-WWII world that have been steadily undermining the privileged position of "literature." Electronic media has begun to displace print as the privileged medium which translates that which is worth knowing. For many first-year college students, for example, what they see on an electronic screen has more truth for them than what they see on a printed page (as a former teaching assistant, I can vouch for this).

Kernan is willing to admit that the deconstructionists and others have presented compelling and intellectually interesting positions, but that they have only worked to destroy literature's precarious place on the tree of knowledge. How are you going to deny the stability of the text or its ability to transmit meaning, on the one hand, and maintain, on the other, that we should have academic programs devoted to literary study--which becomes, in the deconstructionist view, merely a sterile game? In an American educational system increasingly pressured to respond to the demand for practical knowledge and vocational training (witness the serious competition that technical institutes present for the old idea of the university), how are we going to sell students and their paying parents on the feminist-deconstructionist conception of literary studies?

This is a book that should be read by anyone who plans to go on to a graduate program in English and pursue a career as a literary scholar.