Take-home midterm exam (due Friday, March 19). Respond to one of the following questions. As with any good essay, you must support your arguments with quotations from the texts themselves (you only need to cite page numbers). Refer only to essays we have read in class, and do not use any secondary sources (i.e., other essays on the critics). (You may refer to specific works of literature to bolster your argument; literary texts do not constitute a secondary source.) Your response ought to be about five pages long (double space, typed). Use font size 12.
1. In an article published in Harper’s, Peter Shaw complains about what criticism has done to the study of literature. He writes:
Revisionist criticism [proposes that] all criticism amounts to misreading, and thus one reading is as legitimate as another. Certainty and piety of all kinds are systematically undermined in favor of a universal relativism of values and judgment. Just as the revisionists are led to reduce the act of criticism to a given critic’s subjective preference, so do professors relegate judgment of all sorts to the students’ subjective preferences.
Explain clearly what Shaw’s complaint is. Why does he think “revisionist criticism” is destroying the study of literature? Think of “revisionist criticism” as the type of criticism practiced by Stanley Fish where the issue of “objectivity” in interpretation is put into question. Discuss how Fish might respond to this passage. Are Shaw’s objections justified in your view?
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