Word: gardners
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Much of today's criticism tends to "darken understanding and blight enjoyment" of literature, Dame Helen Gardner, Norton Professor of Poetry and professor of English literature emerita at Oxford, said yesterday in the first of the 1979-80 Norton Lectures, titled "Wanted: A New Humanism...
...Gardner denounced the orientation of current literary criticism toward empty scholarship and said it neglects the actual experience of reading...
Condemning the "frivolity and triviality" of the "sporting around dachshunds," Gardner said she is unhappy with the current trend towards technical jargon and over-interpretation...
...called for the explication of works of poetry and prose to foster understanding and enjoyment, rather than the overly intellectual analysis prevalent today. "Critics, with their abtruse theories and perverse and barren cerebrations, often make the study of literature a highly sophisticated war game," Gardner said...
Problem: What to do about it? His craftsmanship is clear in his depiction of supermarket and bridge-club life. But those in the John Gardner camp of moral fiction would charge that Updike's skillfulness does not become a vision until he guides his characters, and thus his readers, to the higher ground of moral purpose...