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How to Write a Critical Essay
2010.04.10
Illustration from the Scretape Letters
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Quotations and references
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Best of Style Sheet (University of Szeged, Institute of English and American Studies)
Don't ask me why it is printed red. No idea. |
I've just come across this extract from a book entitled 'How to Write a Critical Essay: A Guide for Students of Literature':
'The key to writing critical essays is to appear erudite without actually knowing anything. You don't even need to read a book in order to produce a substantive critique. All you need are a number of words which are meaningless in themselves and which are even more incomprehensible when you string them together. Take, for example, these coma-inducing gems: abaxial, chatoyant, ferity, kerygmatic, prelapsarian, redintegrate, fimbrial and synteresis. Now arrange them in such a way as to render the reader admiringly agog, like this (applied, for example, to an essay on James Joyce)...
Joyce's abaxial, albeit chatoyant, development of character in 'Ulysses' redintegrates, rather than sustains, the prelapsarian notion of ego as the central motivation towards synteresis. This kerygmatic involution is fimbrial in both its form and ferity.
I guarantee that no university professor or magazine editor would reject this as balderdash for fear of appearing ignorant. Let's face it... it's worked for Robert Hughes all these years.'
I love this quotation (actually, that's what I'm exactly doing most of the time =P ), although my original intent to find a Russian equivalent for the word 'prelapsarian' completely failed.
Any suggestions? All ideas are welcome. ;)
'The key to writing critical essays is to appear erudite without actually knowing anything. You don't even need to read a book in order to produce a substantive critique. All you need are a number of words which are meaningless in themselves and which are even more incomprehensible when you string them together. Take, for example, these coma-inducing gems: abaxial, chatoyant, ferity, kerygmatic, prelapsarian, redintegrate, fimbrial and synteresis. Now arrange them in such a way as to render the reader admiringly agog, like this (applied, for example, to an essay on James Joyce)...
Joyce's abaxial, albeit chatoyant, development of character in 'Ulysses' redintegrates, rather than sustains, the prelapsarian notion of ego as the central motivation towards synteresis. This kerygmatic involution is fimbrial in both its form and ferity.
I guarantee that no university professor or magazine editor would reject this as balderdash for fear of appearing ignorant. Let's face it... it's worked for Robert Hughes all these years.'
I love this quotation (actually, that's what I'm exactly doing most of the time =P ), although my original intent to find a Russian equivalent for the word 'prelapsarian' completely failed.
Any suggestions? All ideas are welcome. ;)
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interesting work !
finbarr · 2010-04-10: 03:45
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:-) ez tényleg jó kérdés, hogy miért piros... Talán nem is tintával nyomtatták?
unige · 2010-04-10: 07:29
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:D
atszabo · 2010-04-10: 19:01
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I wish I'd known that when I was writing essays at school!! ;-)
girafferacing · 2010-04-11: 10:09
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