Criticism and Truth: On Method in Literary Studies

In this spirited if esoteric outing, Yale University English professor Kramnick (Paper Minds) mounts a granular defense of literary criticism as a method for making sense of the world. “Close reading isn’t reading. It’s writing,” he argues, suggesting that the critic’s process of quoting and interpreting a text generates new knowledge and a “way of understanding that cannot be achieved by other means.” Comparing literary criticism to the hard sciences, Kramnick contends that “literary critical skill is empirical” and quotations act like scientific observations, in that both serve as types of evidence that guide and limit how analysts make sense of them. The author also considers the kinds of knowledge literary criticism produces and posits that truths furnished by the discipline derive “from hands-on engagement with texts rather than facts or assertions about them.” The author’s meticulous analysis offers an eye-opening take on literary criticism as a creative process, but academic prose bogs this down (“Every one of my examples, in other words, grapples with the thisness of particular artifacts in order to derive from them some more capacious argument”). Still, English scholars will want to take a look. (Dec.)