Monday, July 26, 2021

 

Philology

Edward W. Said (1935-2003), Humanism and Democratic Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 57:
Philology is just about the least with-it, least sexy, and most unmodern of any of the branches of learning associated with humanism...
Id., p. 61:
For a reader of texts to move immediately, however, from a quick, superficial reading into general or even concrete statements about vast structures of power or into vaguely therapeutic structures of salutary redemption (for those who believe that literature makes you a better person) is to abandon the abiding basis for all humanistic practice. That basis is at bottom what I have been calling philological, that is, a detailed, patient scrutiny of and a lifelong attentiveness to the words and rhetorics by which language is used by human beings who exist in history...



<< Home
Newer›  ‹Older

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?