The Old New Criticism

Kao and Mei 1971

I made a few revisions to my AAS paper, based on some last-minute edits onto the reading copy from last week. As I typed them in I thought back to my panel, and what I could understand of the other panelists' papers. They all had some kind of point, even the little mainland girls' that directed the listener's attention more toward her own career than towards any interesting history or literature. But my paper was one of few that contained such terms as "allegory," "irony," or "style," which is what I continue to believe are more basic to literary study than problems of nation, class, or other forms of identity. To prove this point to myself, I've decided to return to literary theory for a jaunt.

My advisor first recommended I read this essay back when I was an undergraduate. All I remember of it from those times was that it was exceedingly technical. I found it exciting to read, but I concentrated so hard on each individual sentence that I failed to make any basic judgement of the whole piece. Now the whole article seems a simple, if cunning, dissection of some Tang poems into their component parts. The relation of the part to the whole is actually the main theme of the entire piece. This is a theme, accompanied, also, with a very distinct tone, that reminds me of my favorite book, How to Read a Book, which was released the following year, 1972, and similarly from a pair of Ivy-league writers. Another title for Gao and Mei's piece could be How to Read a Tang Poem. Ah! What I wouldn't do to bring back the days when literature class was about advancing our ability to read!