“Dreadful thoughts”: The tenth anniversary of the Levin petition

Abstract

I n 1988, Richard Levin, Professor of English at State University of New York at Stony Brook, wrote an essay for Publications of Modem Language Association (PMI-4) explaining his objections to feminist literary criticism. The react ion f rom feminist literary critics that ensued revealed how politicized literary scholarship had become dur ing 1970s and 1980s and how literary theory was transforming into political activism. It has been ten years since feminist literary critics launched their assault on Professor Levin, and it would be enl ightening to revisit tactics in tended to int imidate literary scholars who failed to acknowledge political goals of radical academics. It is hard to measure what success, if any, feminist literary critics were able to realize f rom their attack on Professor Levin, but it surely must have been more than apparent ten years ago to n o n t e n u r e d literature teachers, graduate students, and depar tment cha i rmen that scholars risked oppor tuni ty to publish if they dared, like Professor Levin, to find fault with feminist literary criticism. In his essay, titled Feminist Thematics and Shakespearian Tragedy, Levin argued that feminist literary criticism, since it emerged dur ing mid-1970s, suffered from an overreliance on thematics, reduct ion of complex works of literature to a handful of simple and persistent themes.1 (Such an objection was consistent with Professor Levin's similar complaints in his 1979 New Readings vs. Old Plays that thematic studies deprive Shakespeare's plays of their complexity and originality. For thematic critic, Professor Levin argued, significance of Shakespeare's plays always resides e lsewhere-in contemporary documents , religious controversies, or topical events -but no t in words that Shakespeare wrote.) In his PMIA essay, Professor Levin similarly observed that the themes employed in [feminist] interpretat ions are basically same. Although terminology may vary, these criticisms all f ind that [Shakespeare's] plays are about role of gender in individual and society (125). Insisting that Shakespeare's plays are really about gender themes not only obscures o ther and richer interpretations, Professor Levin argued, but feminist literary critics too often ignore facts of plays. For example, Professor Levin cited one feminist literary critic who wrote that King Lear's rejection of his daughter in first act of King Lear is a social n o r m for patriarchal father-daughter relationship. Yet, observed Levin, the witnesses to this relat ionship--Kent, Gloucester, Burgundy, France, even Goneril and