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The Unclean Lips |
| Section: MODERN THOUGHT / THE RECOVERY OF VIRTUE |
| Author: Andrew Lytle |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 12/1/1987 |
| Size: 5,377 Words, 28,665 Characters |
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One way to begin the discussion of the ethics of literary criticism is a negative one. To judge a poem or novel from the critic's political or religious convictions is unethical. A critic who does so is not addressing himself to the subject: a work of art. He is using the rules of one discipline to determine the value of another, or in some cases, sad to say, an author's reputation. This is the fallacy of the Consequent or Non Sequitur. For many years (and possibly now as well) literature suffered in another but comparable way. The author's affairs, his public and private lives, were substituted for examination and estimation of his work (Byron's swimming the Hellespont, his incest with his half sister; the man from Porlock and Coleridge). This type of criticism is an easy way out, a...
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... God the Creator. They determine the languages of the sciences and philosophies, but as literary symbols they dramatize the absolutes of human entanglements, of fear and desire all men know.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
When fear of death ceases to mystify and desire never fails, then man in his bewilderment may with some authority speak of progress and the stasis of perfectibility.
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