http://thereaderonline.co.uk/2008/05/the-death-of-criticism/ Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:22:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://thereaderonline.co.uk/2008/05/the-death-of-criticism/comment-page-1/#comment-1762 admin Tue, 27 May 2008 20:17:30 +0000 http://thereaderonline.co.uk/?p=395#comment-1762 Your optimism is infectious, but I've built up a resistance I think. It's not that there isn't interesting and lively work going on, but demographics are a huge drag on development and have been for going on a couple of decades now. In the UK the number of jobs advertised in English each month in the trade papers is down to one or two at best, nationally--not enough to revitalise it. I agree many of these people are now blogging, so criticism is probably healthy enough in itself. I hope you're right anyway. Your optimism is infectious, but I’ve built up a resistance I think. It’s not that there isn’t interesting and lively work going on, but demographics are a huge drag on development and have been for going on a couple of decades now. In the UK the number of jobs advertised in English each month in the trade papers is down to one or two at best, nationally–not enough to revitalise it. I agree many of these people are now blogging, so criticism is probably healthy enough in itself. I hope you’re right anyway.

]]> http://thereaderonline.co.uk/2008/05/the-death-of-criticism/comment-page-1/#comment-1755 Rohan Maitzen Mon, 26 May 2008 19:34:02 +0000 http://thereaderonline.co.uk/?p=395#comment-1755 There has been some interesting related discussion at the academic blog The Valve (http://thevalve.org), which in itself is, I think, evidence of some energetic activity among younger literary scholars (and even some, like me, who might not qualify as 'younger' anymore!). Blogging itself, in fact, is one way some academics are expanding the range and form of their criticism. Despite recent books like Ronan McDonald's "The Death of the Critic," then, there are signs of life. (Also, of course, some would dispute the initial premise that what currently goes on within the universities and in academic publishing is not, in its own right, lively.) There has been some interesting related discussion at the academic blog The Valve (http://thevalve.org), which in itself is, I think, evidence of some energetic activity among younger literary scholars (and even some, like me, who might not qualify as ‘younger’ anymore!). Blogging itself, in fact, is one way some academics are expanding the range and form of their criticism. Despite recent books like Ronan McDonald’s “The Death of the Critic,” then, there are signs of life. (Also, of course, some would dispute the initial premise that what currently goes on within the universities and in academic publishing is not, in its own right, lively.)

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