Elizabeth Hardwicks Criticism of Washington Square :: Elizabeth Hardwick Washington Square

Elizabeth Hardwicks Criticism of Washington SquareAristotle said that art was one blackguard away from life, and criticism was one step away from that. So what does that agnize a criticism of a criticism? Carry the one, divide by a and move the decimal pointI dont know, I was neer that good at math, but it markms like we may need to sick bread crumbs like Hansel and Gretel to find our way back to the original text. I enjoy criticism, sometimes for the purpose of learning something new and (factual and) exciting that I originally wasnt aware of in the text. Sometimes it is moreover fun to see where the critics academic flight of fancy has taken them. Sometimes, and this is often true, a cigar is undecomposed a cigarElizabeth Hardwicks (wasnt that Raleighs wifes name?) article On Washington Square cant come out to decide whether it is fish or fowl the reader has a knockout time distinguishing between plot and character summary, New Historicist, Psychoanalytical, Formalist and all early(a) manner of criticism. Nothing, I think was anything shockingly original or eye-opening, release me feeling that it was actually more review than actual literary criticism. Hardwick dances from hold back to discipline throughout the course of the article, leaving the reader feeling spun each which way, swinging for a piata that isnt even there. Interdisciplinary criticism is non necessarily a bad thing but, in two and-a half full pages of writing, the reader is given a whirlwind tour of too many a(prenominal) subjects. She moves from an historical description of the time and setting of Washington Square to somatic and psychological character summaries to a suggestion that the character of Austin Sloper may be Jamess portrayal of his brother William to a relatively long race on the perfect balance and the source of the novel. Everything that was said was a write out thought, but there was no meat to the information it was like gnawing on a soup bone while all yo u really necessitate is a nice roast.Actually, Hardwicks article was not at all faulty, just dry and altogether too short for the knowledge that it was trying to impart. It could spend a penny been three or four times longer and given spacious attention to each point.