William Marx, _The Hatred of Literature_, trans. Nicholas Elliott

MARX IS FRENCH, apparently, although I would not have guessed that from his name. He teaches at the University of Paris Nanterre, and I imagine his lectures are student favorites, because his style is witty and accessible, low on much professional jargon and studded with contemporary touches (Homer had profound cultural authority for ancient Greeks, but was "never a Mother Goose for good little Greek kids").

I picked this up thinking its might be addressing the same phenomenon that Joseph North's Literary Criticism: A Brief Political History was looking at: the skepticism (even suspicion and hostility) that the category of the aesthetic has been regarded in literary studies for the last 20-30 years. Turns out, though, that Marx is looking at a much wider expanse of history, going back to the ancients, finding examples of writers who had objections to literature and/or literature's claims to serious attention. The recurring objections are that literature's producers are that its lack of authority (its sources are suspect), its immorality, its falseness, and its potential to injure the social fabric.

Most of what Marx looks at is already familiar: Plato's exclusion of poets from the ideal community in The Republic, Rousseau, the Madame Bovary trial, C. P. Snow and the "Two Cultures" debate. He does towards the end of the book mention more contemporary figures like Raymond Williams (not that Williams hates literature, Marx is clear) and Pierre Bourdieu, but not in much detail. New to me, though, was the family Le Fèvre: Tanneguy Le Fèvre père, a 17th century humanist and convert to Calvinism, who wrote an eloquent defense of humane letters, Tanneguy Le Fèvre fils, who wrote a detailed condemnation of human letters, and daughter Anne, better known as Madame Dacier, who published landmark translations of Homer.

A fascinating idea that Marx mentions often without going into much detail about, but which deserves more attention, is that skepticism about the value of literature often goes hand-in-hand with homophobia.

I'm still wondering, though, how it came to pass that so many of the people professionally entrusted with literary studies became so suspicious of literature. This book, while interesting, is not going to haul literary aesthetics out of that particular ditch.