Citizen Critics: Literary Public Spheres (History of Communication (Paperback)) - Softcover

Eberly, Rosa A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 025206867X ISBN 13: 9780252068676

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2000

Synopsis

The condition of our public discussions about literary and cultural works has much to say about the state of our democracy. Classrooms, newspapers, magazines, Internet forums, and many other places grant citizens a place to hold public discourses—and claim a voice on national artistic matters. 

Rosa A. Eberly looks at four censorship controversies where professionals asserted their authority to deny citizen critics a voice—and effectively removed discussion of literature from the public sphere. Eberly compares the outrage sparked by the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer with the relative quiescence that greeted the much more violent and sexually explicit content of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho and Andrea Dworkin's Mercy. Through a close reading of letters to the editor, reviews, media coverage, and court cases, Eberly shows how literary critics and legal experts defused censorship debates—and undercut the authority of citizen critics—by shifting the focus from content to aesthetics and from social values to publicity.

About this title

About the Author

Rosa A. Eberly is an associate professor of rhetoric at Penn State University. She is coeditor of A Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy and The Sage Handbook of Rhetoric.

From the Back Cover

In this revealing study of the links among literature, rhetoric, and democracy, Rosa A. Eberly explores the public debate generated by amateur and professional readers about four controversial literary works: two that were censored in the United States and two that created conflict because they were not censored.

Eberly compares the outrage sparked by the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer with the relative quiescence that greeted the much more violent and sexually explicit content of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho and Andrea Dwor-kin's Mercy. Through a close reading of letters to the editor, reviews, media coverage, and court cases, Eberly shows how literary critics and legal experts defused censorship debates by shifting the focus from content to aesthetics and from social values to publicity. By asserting their authority to pass judgments -- thus denying the authority of citizen critics -- these professionals effectively removed the discussion from literary public spheres.

A passionate advocate for treating reading as a public and a rhetorical enterprise rather than solely as a private one, Eberly suggests the potential impact a work of literature may have on the social polity if it is brought into public forums for debate rather than removed to the exclusive rooms of literary criticism. Eberly urges educators to use their classrooms as protopublic spaces in which students can learn to make the transition from private reader to public citizen.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 025206867X
• ISBN 13: 9780252068676
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224