Customer Reviews

The Senses of the Text: Intensional Semantics and Literary Theory

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I picked up this book expecting to skim it. Our professors in graduate school taught us that "the literary study of literature" was a formalist slogan from the 1950s used to justify escaping from politics into "aestheticism." I bought the book because an ad said it gives an introduction to Chomsky's linguistic theory, which I always wanted to know about. I thought I could skip the other parts and just pick up some linguistic theory.

Now I've read the book -- so have two friends of mine: we stayed up all night talking about it -- and my sense is that there is some kind of big change going on in English departments that we didn't know about. The book turns out not just to give you Chomsky's theory -- I actually understand generative grammar now -- it gives you almost a whole course in modern philosophy of language, incredibly clearly explained. You feel like you actually understand all the issues and the philosophers (Frege, Wittgenstein, Quine, Kripke, Grice, et al.) in non-oversimplified terms, but also without pain. The effect is like a bucket of ice water. My friends and I have agreed -- two of us have, anyway -- that the "theory" we learned in grad school was a giant fraud. The last chapter of this book talks about how what English departments count as "theory" is an intellectual embarrassment. When I ran across that sentence while leafing through right after I bought it, it made me really mad. By the time I'd read through the whole thing and got to the same sentence, it just seemed like plain truth. It is an eye-opener.

The demolition job on "political" criticism and "poststructuralist" criticism (Carey and Dougherty) in chapter one is sort of bloody to watch: when you're reading it, it seems like Sherman's march to the sea -- scorched earth, nothing left standing. But the "positive" parts of the same chapter -- where the book takes you inside a classroom where "close reading" is being taught and shows you how it works, lets you see it from the students' point of view -- are exhilarating. So you come out feeling pretty good. Then the rest of the book, that takes you through a whole stretch of modern philosophy of language and lets you understand it, is amazing. Five stars.