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Title: Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities by John M. Ellis ISBN: 0-300-07579-0 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.19 (21 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Damage of Political Correctness
Comment: "Literature Lost" is timely and important book that explains the influence of political correctness on campus and its degrading effect on academia for student, professor and administrator alike. Yet this is less a discussion on the environment of today's campuses, and more on how things got to be this way. Ellis specifically focuses on literary criticism, and modern Marxist attempts to reduce everything to a political/power argument whether the author intended such an interpretation or not. Meanwhile, examination of "art for art's sake" and of the questions that such literature was written to reveal takes a back seat. Whole careers seem to be built on this very skewed view of literature, and Ellis is even more worried that the prevailing PC dogmas of oppression, sexism, racism, etc. will fade only to be replaced by yet another intellectual fad. Sometimes Ellis's writing is a bit dense, but if the reader sticks with Ellis's arguments, he or she will find "Literature Lost" to be an interesting and illuminating work.
Rating: 5
Summary: Devastating Critique of Pseudo-Literary Theories
Comment: ...After reading 'Literature Lost', I have found fresh ammunition for logically debating and disseminating the host of anti-intellectual literary "theories" and critiques concerning contemporary studies of the Humanities. Ellis book lays in conjunction a host of well-balanced perspectives and rebuttals into a systematic outline for understanding what exactly the problem pertains to.
The Amazon review already discusses the example of Tacitus, setting the tone for the mentality of the Race-Gender-Class critics and how their viewpoints are nothing new or original. As a complementary point to this, Ellis explains that questioning the Enlightenment and Western Culture by it's critics is a unique trait of the Enlightenment itself, since previous cultures never questioned the validity of the social, cultural, religious or class status in their own cultures. So the irony behind what the Race-Gender-Class critics think they are doing as unique is in fact a part of Western Civilization and the Enlightenment.
The same goes for the next point concerning the supposed "racism" that Race critics cry as isolated to Western Culture. This is true in the respect that "racism" was never questioned until the Enlightenment came along to challenge the notion of racial tribalism that historically pitted members of one racial community against another. When the Enlightenment came along it stressed the virtue of getting along with others for their ideas and achievements, and the result created the ideas that "racism" is itself immoral. The "Race" chapter also throws a little venom at the Post-colonial extremist Edward Said, targeting his hypocrisy of pretending to be a champion for values against racism but spits at the originators of the notion for supposed infractions of "Orientalism" and hegemony; a bogus notion undoubtedly.
Ellis reserves the bulk of the personal critique on Frederic Jameson-a lover of Marxism (this will come as no surprise as we will see later) who blindly and continuously espouses Marxist theory as a viable perception of literature and economics. Jameson deserves particular wrath by espousing these views in the face of the mounting evidence of against Marxism and the evils resulted, which Ellis expounds upon in detail.
'Literature Lost' doesn't preserve itself solely to de-bunking illegitimate literary theories but also to more effective methods of assessing literary studies; his utilization of quasi-scientific reasoning and logic for uncovering the meanings behind a literary work seem particularly intriguing, as well as the endorsement of Leo Spitzer's work "Linguistics and Literary History".
The second to last chapter "Is theory to Blame?" discusses yet another problem reaching both in and out of literary studies: revisionist history. Ellis provides the factors behind the recent trends of revisionist history, trends pertaining to either careless documentation (or lack thereof) of the facts, or the malicious manipulation and changing of the facts by the critics with both overt and covert political agendas. The perspectives offered here are causes for concern considering people like Said and Jameson have thousands of followers in academic departments spewing these theories of race and class oppression...
Rating: 5
Summary: readable and crucial book
Comment: Continuing the work begun by Roger Kimball's "Tenured Radicals," Ellis's book explains how deconstruction and polticically-motivated theorists have ruined the study of literature. Ellis's work is highly intelligent and surprisingly readable. Aside from Kimball's work, it may be the best book on what's happened to the Humanities. One thing is clear: if you love literature, don't pursue it at university!
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Title: The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering Our Past by Keith Windschuttle ISBN: 1893554120 Publisher: Encounter Books Pub. Date: 07 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Against Deconstruction by John Martin Ellis ISBN: 0691014841 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 February, 1990 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education by Roger Kimball ISBN: 1566631955 Publisher: Ivan R Dee, Inc. Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Shadow University: The Betrayal Of Liberty On America's Campuses by Alan Charles Kors, Harvey A. Silverglate ISBN: 0060977728 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr ISBN: 1893554724 Publisher: Encounter Books Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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