On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 2:55 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 12/12/2008 1:12:17 PM Pacific Standard Time, george.herbert@gmail.com writes:
Which of the literary criticism academics, publications, etc. can be so assumed to be accurate is more opaque to the outsider and harder to demonstrate / validate, I think.>>
"Accurate" is the wrong word for in-project discussions. As editors we can only say that a position has been presented, evidence has been marshalled, the standard approach or theory is, and so on.
"Accurate" here seems to me to be just another name for "Truth". Even within Physics there are competing theories all supposedly evidence-based. We merely have to present the competing views and move on :)
Will Johnson
Right, but there is no end to the volume of "literary criticism" (taken with a broad scope, one could include grade school book reports...).
Even a superlative college paper is only rarely notable or significant criticism. Grad students' product might be, professors or professional critics moreso. But there are plenty of out-in-left-field reviewers and critics who lie outside the body of normal academic criticism et al.
Our criteria for sources have to include enough guidance for filtering that we can filter out random not-notable commentary. What line are we trying to draw - and why. We have to draw the line, otherwise we do become Cruftpedia. We're not here to collect 101 million grade school essays on "Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret" in the article on the book.