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Ruth Evans wrote: >I absolutely agree with Elza Tiner that it is vital for medieval scholars to >recognise the importance of the teaching of composition (or 'style') to our >students. Everyone on this list should, of course, be concerned about 'bad >writing'. ... I was primarily concerned with the form of the >critique. Debunking is a great thing, but this type of debunking tends to invite >readers not merely to hold bad writing up to ridicule but to mock the intellectual >arguments and endeavours of critical theory. If this is what is at stake, then the >debunking doesn't constitute a proper intellectual argument: it simply confirms >prejudices. Spot on. But I have to say that in my experience the relationship between scholarship and this particular kind of bad writing is closer in the field of critical theory than elsewhere: so it is largely the bad writing that colours my view of critical theory. To be blunt, if you find the literature unreadable you tend to be wary of the subject. I don't know if this is fair or unfair of me: a bit of both, probably. Critical scholars may well say that they have developed a style of communication that suits the ideas to be communicated. I can only say that I have not yet read anything in this style -- anything that I could understand, anyway -- that could not have been communicated more efficiently, more effectively and more elegantly in the kind of plain well-structured English that I expect any scholar to write. Critical theory does seem to me often to require its readers to read passages more often than should be necessary to make sense of them, and that is a waste of time that I don't need. Richard *************** Dr G.R. Rastall Department of Music, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT UK [log in to unmask] Tel: +44 (0)113 233 2581 Fax: +44 (0)113 233 2581 or 2586 http://www.leeds.ac.uk/music/DeptInfo/Staff/GRR/grr.html