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Literature's Self-implosionPosted at 1:10PM Sunday 16 Mar 2008 Many will remember when the jewellery tycoon Gerald Ratner destroyed his company by publicly deriding its products (and therefore those who bought them). Over the past three decades, many English Literature academics have acted just like this, believes Rónán McDonald, and to similarly self-subverting effect. In the English departments of British universities, the professors have been strenuously denying the value of literature; these candidates for critical authority have waived their rights. It is no wonder, McDonald observes, that academic literary critics are no longer public critics, for if you abandon literary value then, in the eyes of those outside the campus boundaries, the value of the literary critic goes too.
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