Here are the Literary Critics worth reading: the Top 16 Who Have Prevailed So Far and Have Made It To the SWEET SIXTEEN!
Every year, Scarriet holds their version of March Madness, with 64 authors competing for the championship.
In 2010, the first year of the tournament, we used every Best American Poetry volume, David Lehman, editor, to determine the field. Winner: Billy Collins
In 2011, Stephen Berg, David Bonnano, and Arthur Vogelsang’s Body Electric, America’s Best Poetry from the American Poetry Review. Winner: Philip Larkin
In 2012, Rita Dove’s The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry. Winner: Ben Mazer
In 2013, casting about for players, we amassed 64 Romantic poets, including modern and contemporary poets fitting the Romantic mold. Winner: Shelley
This year, Scarriet used the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John McGowan, and Jeffrey J. Williams, which has produced a true clash of giants:
Plato, Aristotle, Dante, Sidney, Coleridge, Baudelaire, Marx, Freud, Pater, De Beauvoir, Saussure, T.S. Eliot, etc.
The earth actually shook as the combatants went toe to toe in this year’s March Madness.
The critc-philosophers who made it to the Sweet 16 are:
CLASSICAL
1. PLATO d. Sidney
2. DANTE d. Aristotle
3. POPE d. Aquinas
4. ADDISON d. Maimonides
ROMANTIC
5. WORDSWORTH d. Marx
6. COLERIDGE d. Burke
7. POE d. Peacock
8. SHELLEY d. Emerson
MODERN
9. BAUDELAIRE d. Saussure
10. FREUD d. Benjamin
11. WILDE d. Pater
12. (John Crowe) RANSOM d. T.S. Eliot
POST-MODERN
13. (Edmund) WILSON d. Northrup Frye
14. (J.L.) AUSTIN d. Cixous
15. (Edward) SAID d. De Beauvoir
16. (Harold) BLOOM d. Sartre
Scarriet would ask you not to try this at home: The winners are all white men.
We are really sorry, VIDA. But when women—or the women presented in the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism—only write on women, this narrowness itself contributes to a certain amount of self-marginalizing.
This is a universal problem: if the oppressed are thrown in an intellectual hole, how do they dig themselves out—in a truly broad intellectual fashion?
Perhaps this is why there’s a certain dislike for this kind of competition: the best rises to the top, producing an historical unfairness, given what human history has been.
We see the problem. We make no apologies, however, for our experiment.
