/lit/ - Literature

>>17209549

>>16015405
I subscribe to a similar ontology in which everything is made up of elementary feels

>>14589249
This is a subject that leaves me very torn - on the one hand there will always be a deeply felt need for people who can take us by the hand and guide us through great works, and help us come to our own conclusions about whether they're good or bad

On the other hand, the number of journals publishing lit crit has more than tripled since 1960. University departments have reallocated massive funds away from teaching toward "research", which means more essays, books and journals which attract meager attention even from other scholars. Most have miserable citation rates.

In a subdiscipline which 1) will never have the kinds of decisive confrontations that you see in the scientific arena where theories are permanently BTFO'd every single day, and 2) is the literal genesis of some of the worst rot in the universities (Feminist Perspectives on Disney Princesses, Gender Performativity and The Simpsons etc), is it not wrong to ask, as Mark Bauerlein did, "Who can read all of the 80 items of scholarship that are published on George Eliot each year? After 5,000 studies of Melville since 1960, what can the 5,001st say that will have anything but a microscopic audience of interested readers?"

>>13535898
Iktfb

>>13369330
>i am simultaneously angry about everything around me and understand why it is that way, which has resulted in profound and all encompassing apathy. i have almost no opinions now and i identify with no values.
I know that exact feel, bro

It's okay anon. One day it will all be over anyway.

>>10510003

>>10411130

>>9998105
I'm so glad other people on this board appreciate The Monk.

These ones are about a girl named Stefanie. Hitler and his friend (the author) would turn up at the river in Linz at 5pm each day to watch her and her mother walk past on their daily stroll.

>"I found out that Stefanie's mother was a widow and did, indeed, live in Urharr, and that the young man who occasionally accompanied them, to Adolf's great irritation, was her brother. But from time to time the two ladies were to be seen in the company of young officers. Poor, pallid youngsters like Hitler naturally could not hope to compete with these young lieutenants in their smart uniforms. Adolf felt this intensely and gave vent to his feelings with eloquence. His anger, in the end, led him into uncompromising enmity towards the officer class as a whole, and everything military in general"
p.67

>"To be sure, Stefanie had no idea how deeply Adolf was in love with her; she regarded him as a somewhat shy but, nevertheless, remarkably tenacious and faithful admirer. When she responded with a smile to his enquiring glance, he was happy and his mood became unlike anything I had ever observed in him [...] But when Stefanie, as happened just as often, coldly ignored his gaze, he was crushed and ready to destroy himself and the whole world"
p.67

>"I thought, for a long time, that Adolf was simply too shy to approach Stefanie. And yet, it was not shyness that held him back. His conception of the relationship between the sexes was already then so high that the usual way of making the acquaintance of a girl seemed to him undignified. As he was opposed to flirting in any form, he was convinced that Stefanie had no other desire but to wait until he should come to ask her to marry him. I did not share this conviction at all, but Adolf, as was his habit with all problems that agitated him, had already made an elaborate plan"
p.69

>"And this girl, who was a stranger to him and had never exchanged a word with him, succeeded where his father, the school and even his mother had failed: he drew up and exact programme for his future which would enable him, after four years, to ask for Stefanie's hand. We discussed this difficult problem for hours, with the result that Adolf commissioned me to collect further information about Stefanie"
p.69

>"'Stefanie is fond of dancing. If you want to conquer her, you will have to dance around just as aimlessly and idiotically as the others.' That was all that was needed to set him off raving. 'No, no, never!' he screamed at me, 'I shall never dance! Do you understand! Stefanie only dances because she is forced to by society on which she unfortunately depends. Once she is my wife, she won't have the slightest desire to dance!'"
p.71

>>9414676

>>8531369

>his heart's been so hardened by modern omnipresent irony that he can't even enjoy the simple pleasures of a crying thread

I know that feel, anon.

>>7332340
I know how you feel man. It's the only book to ever leave me feeling fucking devastated.

>>6431532
>>6431562
>>6431555

>>5239821

>>4943011