Well, Veeky Forums?

Well, Veeky Forums?

I look at the book itself. I find Moby Dick so tangential and frustrating to read, even with its historical context and relevance, I can barely stomach when he spends a full paragraph describing a ladder for no reason.

Is Goldeneye 64 still a good game? Not anymore, but I'm able to appreciate that it once was amazing at its time. The same I can say objectively for Moby Dick, maybe.

questions for someone who has fallen out of love

context matters little when considering the objective value of a book, that is, what it contributed to humanity.

we know value when we see it, because it is self-evident. the people who can't discern value often do not have any business reading in the first place, nor have a say in the matter.

historical context is for sophists trying to make a point.

Why not use the term emphasise instead of privilege.

Jesus this guys test levels are through the floor

is he reading from the introduction of the norton anthology of literary criticism?

>historical context is for sophists trying to make a point.
this is utterly retarded. Have you ever studied literature, or are just you speaking out of your arse? do you not understand that the majority of contemporary literary criticism is undertaken from a standpoint of new historicism?

literature is always context-specific, to varying degrees depending on the book naturally, but fiction never exists in a vacuum. The values and myths we find in literature might be universal, but one has to orientate their perspective entirely differently when reading WWI poetry compared to reformation tragedy.

>studied literature
There's your problem mate. You don't study literature, you read it and appreciate it. Most of the literary criticism is useless bullshit and its only use is teaching people how to read and appreciate books.

>you read and appreciate literature
>studying literary criticism teaches you how to read and appreciate literature
>literary criticism is therefore bullshit

solid reasoning dude. It's genuinely hilarious when people like you pretend to be an arbiter for literary quality, when really all you're doing is proving yourself to be wilfully ignorant.

Learn a little humility. Stop acting like you know better than centuries of literary scholarship written by people who have dedicated their lives to the field

Moby Dick is still an excellent novel.

You're probably familiar with the idiots you once attended school with who couldn't comprehend Shakespeare's Elizabethan verse and gave up, this is what you sound like. A philistine and an illiterate.

Answer to renowned faggot John Green's question is to just read the fucking book and hopefully you're not an insufferable pleb and can see the beauty in language even if isn't in your vernacular.

Why is presenteeism more brutal and pervasive now than it has ever been? Fuck.

lazyness

To be honest, it really depends on the genre of the book.

If you're reading non-fiction it's clearly impossible to read it in a historical context, especially if it's about politics.

However, I get buttflustered by people who read the ebonics pages in Infinite Jest and axiomatically think DFW was a racist for example.

oh my

>I find Moby Dick so tangential and frustrating to read

C'mon, you should know that literary criticism extends far beyond just teaching people how to read and appreciate literature. Ever heard of literary theory? Ever had a teacher or professor trying to dissect the shit out of a poem or novel, forcing a meaning unto all the details?
You read the book, you read all you can about the context and the references and then you read it again if you want to understand it. Any more than that is just boring old professors who want to say they know about literature but don't have the actual skills to write something themselves.

>Stop acting like you know better than centuries of literary scholarship written by people who have dedicated their lives to the field

I don't give a shit about them and I don't have any desire of knowing better than them. There are others who dedicated their lives to the field and actually had an impact upon the world. They are called writers.

I can't hate anyone more

Jesus go back to /v/, you aren't smart enough for this board

Because privilege is actually the more appropriate verb there

Haha holy shit ok Tarantino

>Ever heard of literary theory? Ever had a teacher or professor trying to dissect the shit out of a poem or novel, forcing a meaning unto all the details?
I have, I'm a lit student myself. But clearly you don't understand what 'theory' actually entails. Simply put, its a very wide set of critical applications through which you can explore different ways of interpreting the textual content. No one forces meaning into a text, meaning is simply the result of a synchronicity between text and reader. If you've ever sat in a literature seminar you'd know what you get out of the text is never going to be the same as what someone else does, and people respect these differences. Your theory will never be identical to mine, we each have our own independent critical methodologies. You bring just as much to the text as is already presupposed by its contextual reference point, but that in no way should suggest you must reject the context. If you do, you lose sight of the historical forces which gave rise to the text in the first place, and therefore anything you can say about it is completely baseless and has no bearing on reality whatsoever.

>There are others who dedicated their lives to the field and actually had an impact upon the world. They are called writers
You know plenty of writers have been theorists themselves, right? Many of them have been brilliant writers, too.

It's funy because at the time Moby Dick was made, Melville was known for making adventure novels that were story driven. Mobtly Dick was him going against the "adventure yarn" that was expected of him. It was also highly experimental at the time and didn't get good reviews. It is however a masterpiece of prose, and those tangents are the philosophical heart of the novel

Nice post, pal.

>bourgeois formalism

you know, the other user already tore you to shreds, but i'm just going to jump in and add that you're a moron if you think a. writing theory/criticism is easy, and not rather an immensely difficult genre of writing in and of itself and b. that the "writers" you've idealized are/were not themselves intensely influenced by developments in theory/criticism during their tie, i.e., by the historical context.

>a very wide set

It's an extremely narrow set that arises out of a tiny sliver of political ideology.

the word privilege applies to people, you can't "privilege" literary aspects.

John Green is a faggot who writes shitty novels for teenaged girls.

Argue the point, not the man.
Philosophy 101 stuff, seriously.

Not true. That only appears to be the case because academia has a bias towards left-wing/progressive ideologies. Theory is a critical practise wholly dependent on the methodologies the theorist applies to the text - you could use the most extreme of right-wing thinking to inform your reading just as easily as marxist critics use left-wing thought to inform theirs.

that's the literal opposite of formalism

i meant in re: folks in this thread denying history

>like, should we read a novel in its historical context, or consider the life of its author?

Idiotic, valley-girl tier phrasing. Obviously the author's life is part of his book's historical context. This question is nonsensical.

>In considering a book's meaning should we privilege character, or plot, or symbols, or language?

Why even ask such a misleading, stupid question. None should be emphasized over the other, the only approach that makes sense is a holistic one which considers all facets of the text.

>And also how do our own experiences and biases shape our readings?

This is a fair point to examine, but again the question is awkwardly placed, and I doubt most people's ability to examine their own biases.

>Or only look at the book itself?

A discussion of literature should focus on the book, not social issues or the author's perceived immorality; however to remove an object from its context is unrealistic and hampers free discussion.

John Green cannot think, his mind can only run through the troughs eroded into his mind by rivers of SJW bullshit

Yes you can, it means treat with more deference and importance. Certainly not strictly an interpersonal term.

Ah cool I'll just get shat on endlessly for my entire life waiting my turn with the critical theory cudgel

Perhaps in some alternative universe where everything is completely different this is a relevant point.

In reality theory consists of speaking well of everything that is agitprop and speaking ill of everything that is not.

>he doesn't understand Moby Dick
It isn't purposeless digression, everything has a point. The descriptions of "random" objects are always framed in significant meaning or context.

What a fucking idiot.

>not social issues or the author's perceived immorality

that's not what he's talking about

It is.

it really isn't. have you never encountered literary theory before?

don't be too bummed - zizek kicks SJW butt all the time. If you can master Hegel and Lacan like he can, I'm sure you can do anything you put your mind to

>agitprop
great word. I don't disagree with your point anyhow - there are philosophers like Land who use theory as an antithesis to the progressive agendas of academia, but he's confined to the blogosphere from halfway across the world and doesn't have much impact outside of a community of tightly-knit weirdos

I have.

>"historical context"
>"life of the author"
this is sjw shorthand for "racism/misogyny" and "this author used to say "nigger" a lot, i'm feeling pretty triggered." and it is exactly what I meant by "social issues" and "author's perceived immorality" in contrast to looking at "the book itself," or its purely formal qualities of prose construction and use of rhetorical devices.

Stupid.

You have the best intentions, but at the core of it this has everything to do with John Green just being a blazing faggot.

Moby Dick is still the best novel in existence.

git gud

You have absolutely no background in literary theory or criticism.

I can tell because you're saying retarded bullshit regarding the aforementioned.

Nah, TBK is.

wrong, you're a dumb pseud and I'm right

no, he's got you pegged. try a different board.

yea you're retarded and he BTFO you.

literature is obviously not for you. try

cute samefag.

...

no just passing by and saw how retarded you were.

you're still wrong tho, everything I said was true and correct.

t. pseud

emptily asserting that everything you say is true and correct instead of defending how you are correct is the hallmark of a true pseud.

What makes Moby Dick good?

the prose, the themes, the characters, the depiction of an interesting part of American culture.

>watching the "i don't care if there's 60 dickloads of cum from other men in my milk and cheerios"

its postmodernisme avant la lettre. conrad does this too.

>Anna Karenina

>should
>should
>should
"no"

I'm going to plunder everything I can for its use to me. As a massive Veeky Forumsfag, historical context will definitely be a massive part of this.

Amen

>implying historical context doesn't matter
His bull probably got triggered by huck Finn

prescriptivist trash

one word: hermeneutics

Charachters, themes, style, the fact that H. Melville was totally avant-garde when he wrote Moby Dick, the depth (3 levels: literal/moral/allegorical), the whole book is what it makes the book one of the best books (if not the best book) ever written.

he wasn't implying that at all.