People keep saying (to me, people have said it to me many times) that literary criticism is not a valuable discipline because it can’t predict anything. I fail to see the huge value of predictions – what am I, a pythia? – but it’s not true, either. Just now at the session I attended somebody told me that the trends in the female Bildungsroman that I said in my first book were going to appear did, in fact, begin to appear recently. And another person confirmed. Not that it’s that big of a deal (it’s a much bigger deal that people are reading my books) but still.
2 responses to “Pythia”
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That’s great about your book and its predictions coming true. But I think that the people who make this negative comment about literary criticism mean that it doesn’t predict anything “important”–like something in the realm of politics or an historical event.
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Hey, have I been right or have I been very right with everything I said about the nation-state and fluidity? And let’s see how well it will all be replicated in 10 years.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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