>when I was younger >"Lol the curtains were just red, who cares, why am I being told to find subjective conclusions and being judged as if they're objective?!"
>When I was older and smarter >"The curtains were red for a very intelligent reason by the genius author, a reason which gives maximum insight in to human nature and the objectivity of aesthetics, not that I will dare ask why I should care about those or why everything is so obscurantist!"
>when I reached my final form
Literary Theory, as it is practised and as a whole is a set of intentionally vague, contradictory, and ever changing rules that create a logical system used by the academia-media-publishing industrial complex in order to monopolise the judgement of art, secure government funding, compete in the form of social posturing (by far the strongest reason), promote a large government, and guilt trip insecure members of the public in to paying for and proclaiming enjoyment of art.
>inb4 you say "I don't know art but I know what I like" in a non RP accent
I'm not even passing judgement on the "value" of this dominant version of "literary theory". I'm simply awaiting the butthurt that will inevitably commence just from pointing out that other forms can exist and not genuflecting towards the dominant form.
the curtains were red cuz the author is a fucking commie
Nathaniel Lopez
You are 100% correct.
Literary Theory is academia making up 'social' or 'cultural' value to their bullshit degrees because their discipline has no practical or monetary value.
By doing this they suck the fun out of reading.
Joshua Miller
Is your criticism of literary theory not itself a product of of 'the academia-media-publishing industrial complex'? Are you not posturing?
Nathaniel Nguyen
this desu
and anyway the curtains are red most likely because the author either consciously or unconsciously associated red with the mood of the scene. does that make it 'symbolism'? does it matter? literary theory only serves to assign logic to a medium in which emotion and instinct are what matter. it's largely pseudo-intellectual posturing.
Hey, autists have discovered dialectics, good on them!
Samuel Peterson
>if you disagree with a five year old you're faking your opinion
Grayson Brooks
>does that make it 'symbolism'?
Yes, the whole point of actual symbolism is to create associations between things in order to produce feelings, ideas and connections between them. The idea that these choices should "say something about life" in a specific way that your English teacher just happens to have the right answer to, even though there are also supposed to be multiple interpretations (hint: the real point is to allow a range of possible feelings/concepts to arise, possibly at once, that can contrast against each other and are delightful to the reader, stupid people assume they have to pick some concrete 'fact' that the symbolism supposedly represents).
Asher Campbell
>writers are unaware of criticism, allegory, or symbolism TIL
Grayson Scott
I enjoyed this post. I have had a very similar evolution, except across the board of the humanities, from music and philosophy to psychology and politics.
It's all just a big fucking lie run by alphas in order to transfer material wealth and social prestige upwards towards the ruling class.
every one in this thread is under attack by spooky spooks
Aiden Sanders
>lesswrong.com
Nathan Miller
literally no literary theory is concerned with inconsequential details such as the colouring of the curtains to reflect some other aspect of the story. none.
Anthony Brown
found the pseuds
Jaxon Ramirez
How did it become a popular 'English teacher meme' then?
Jace Butler
>thirld world countries aren't part of industrial capitalism
Aaron Thompson
bully
Gabriel Butler
Man, this is the kind of stuff I absolutely obsessed about when I was discovering Veeky Forums as a teenager. What's sort of archaic about this post though is the fact he doesn't include a thought about the working knowledge of social dialectics that's instilled into every level of person, assuming only the most aware have it; I guess because of how complicated and fragmented the origins of opinions get when you factor that in. The commenting section is especially interesting though because you start to see people trying to rise above the inherent sociality of perception and accidentally churn out only fractionally objective perspectives. Makes you realize why aspies are so innately logical seeing as they're oblivious to the minds of others and thus protected from the insanity that generates. /talkingtoself
Adam Sanchez
Also I think this concept is why David Foster Wallace killed himself basically. He couldn't comfortably find his own voice while navigating all the perspectives his own would be disloyal or unaware to. You can see it in Gold Old Neon especially, but also in everything he's done. In an interview he comments on how he got tired of avant-garde literature, even, because of this half-developed reconciliation with American culture at large, or something like that, he just kind of mumbles off. Vicariously uncomfortable dude. I wonder what he was thinking when he thought he had to do what he did when writing IJ lol
Aiden Perez
To be fair, they do have some good articles there. The stuff arguing against the over use of logic is great, but here they show their obvious autism.
Luis James
>promote a large government >genuflecting
don't know the appropriate way to laugh at this post
