Is Critical Analysis Just Fault-Finding?

[DaveC426913]

Everybody shut up and give me an equation dammit.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Personally, I still think there case for original thinking is still pretty weak. I mean 1), a novelist or playwright implies original thinking? It's more often effective use of style and themes, there are not a lot of original works. Or 3) a thinker who looks beyond his own field? Just reading the newspaper regularly doesn't make you an original thinker.

3.) definitely implies original thinking: thinking outside the paradigm of the subject at hand. "His subject" doesn't mean his field, it means the subject he is writing about. It says a good critic can connect whatever specific thing he's discussing to larger social, historical, and philosophical considerations, for example.

 

[Pythagorean]

Personally, I still think there case for original thinking is still pretty weak. I mean 1), a novelist or playwright implies original thinking? It's more often effective use of style and themes, there are not a lot of original works.

That's technically true, but you can still follow the formula and fail. You have to put things together in an original way sooner or later.

A large part of this is not being a textualist, though. Rather, it's guessing what the writer meant.