Are english departments politicizing literature?

I’ve been reading Harold Bloom recently, partially because I’ve never read much of his work before and partially because I’m interested in his view of literature. He subscribes to an aesthetic theory of reading literature (if you can call it a theory), which means, I believe, that he reads literature looking for beauty and pleasure. He juxtaposes this to the other camps that exist within English departments in universities: the Marxists, the feminists, the New Historicists, the cultural materialists, etc.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have trouble grasping the differences between these groups. Richard Dutton, who I took a graduate course in Renaissance literature from at OSU, called my handle on these ill-formed, if I remember correctly. I asked him for some literature to help me correct this, which I dutifully read, but I don’t think it helped. Perhaps a reason for this is that I have always been flummoxed by why anyone would choose to read every piece of literature with a prescribed viewpoint.

I almost wrote “with a certain handicap.” Dare I compare reading say, Shakespeare, through a Freudian lens as playing tennis with one hand tied behind your back? Or maybe with a patch over one eye.

The next question, obviously, is whether Bloom’s aestheticism is another camp or, as he wants us to think, the natural position from which these other literary theories are aberrations. To use an image from Lewis: is Bloom’s theory the wood between the worlds, or is it just another pool within the wood?

My instinct is to agree with Bloom that reading aesthetically is the norm from which other readings wander. As a child, I didn’t choose books because I thought they advanced the cause of women, I read them because I liked them.

I had the curious feeling when I graduated from OSU that I was rediscovering how reading can be fun. For three years, I barely read anything because I wanted to; I was too inundated with class readings to have time for anything else. But once I graduated, that changed. I could enjoy reading again!

Bloom thinks that universities teach students not to enjoy reading. I’m somewhat inclined to agree. It’s no fun reading anything if you’re trying to politicize it, as Bloom charges that these camps of literary theory do. But then where would a person who wants to read for beauty and pleasure fit in? In a university? I don’t know.

This question, among others, has been troubling me recently as I try to decide whether I ought, in a couple years, to pursue a Ph.D. I doubt there is a simple answer.