Keene problems

[branchandroot]

So, I've started reading Seeds of the Heart.

Is it just me, or is Donald Keene a dreadful snob? I mean, good grief. All this disparagement of "earthiness" and valorization of "good taste" and "refinement". Okay, so he's obviously been steeped in the Heian period, but he also seems to be quite familiar with Tokugawa, and, really, if we're speaking of earthy...

I suppose I could understand if it's a defensive reaction to the way Heian so often gets characterized as effete or over-mannered or corruptly luxurious, but still.

In addition to which, he's making a great many unsupported assertions and assumptions about the way in which history produces literature, and I take leave to doubt that he actually has the background in history to do so. If he did, he should have given the support. As is, the whole thing is just dreadfully methodologically unsound. Which is a real shame, considering it seems to be one of maybe two or three surveys of Japanese Literature in English.

Comments

[the-tower.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the snobbiness isn't a reflection of his background (i.e. where he took his PhD), as well as his times. There's something about the Ivy League schools and tradition...

although these days I hear they're getting a bit better. Still, I despair that most of the first tier PhD programs in East Asian Languages and Cultures are on the east coast.

[branchandroot]

That would not surprise me, alas. It may also explain some of his methodological failings, actually. This is... kind of antique, in feel. From the era when your credentials counted for more than your actual content.

Or it could just be ground-breaker syndrome, the shallowness the initial studies in any area tend to have unless someone /really/ concientious is doing them. *sighs*

Still. It's not like the upper class tendency to skive off with popular creations and then elaborate them until they're static is peculiar to Japan or anything. You'd think the guy never did any cultural/anthopological/historical studies at all, sheesh.

[the-tower.livejournal.com]

Well, he IS rather antique, AND ground-breaking, ahaha. I tend to forgive older scholars their failings if they're explainable by their social, political, historical circumstances, since they can't help but be shaped by them.

I believe Susan Matisoff was a student of his, and she taught first at Stanford and then at Berkeley. I took her class once, and remember thinking that although she wasn't unlikable, she was very different from other Berkeley professors in that her style of teaching was, well, conservative, and her class was way to easy, even for an introductory survey course. The former, I associated with private schooling; the latter, I associate with the whole Ivy League syndrome of distance between the professors and the students, and a lack of effort on the part of the professors to teach anything of substance. I'm probably just biased, but I do think that I could have learned a lot more in that class than I was taught, if the professor had been someone younger or more liberal in style

[branchandroot]

Well, certain kinds of private schools, yeah. I am proud to say, K avoided most of that. Did she come straight from her PhD? I've noticed that a lot of TAs, especially at large schools, start teaching to the lowest common denominator and may not ever shake the habit. Which is really too bad.

[the-tower.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure. She was on her way out just as I was getting to know the department. It could also have been that she was getting ready to retire :)