"Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead"
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A whole profession, skewered in five words: "Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead". Cooley frames criticism not as illumination but as a guilty pleasure, a little theater of dominance staged over authors who can no longer talk back. The phrase "delight" is the tell - this isn’t duty or discernment, it’s sport. And "scolding" is perfectly chosen: it implies moral superiority, a finger wag, the satisfaction of correction. Not arguing with the past, not learning from it. Policing it.
"The Mighty Dead" carries a double charge. It grants the canon its aura - those towering names that still intimidate classrooms and book pages - while reminding us they’re safely inert. Dead writers can’t tweet, can’t sue, can’t change their minds. That makes them ideal targets for critics eager to demonstrate their own modernity, their own sharper ethics, their own "we know better now". Cooley is not defending the canon so much as mocking the impulse to treat it as a punching bag precisely because it is powerful and defenseless at once.
Contextually, Cooley wrote in an era when academia and literary journalism were retooling the canon, elevating theory, and rewarding the takedown as a mode of intelligence. His line anticipates today’s culture-war rereads and hot-take cycles: reputations are currency, and the fastest way to sound alive is to declare someone else - especially someone revered - obsolete.
"The Mighty Dead" carries a double charge. It grants the canon its aura - those towering names that still intimidate classrooms and book pages - while reminding us they’re safely inert. Dead writers can’t tweet, can’t sue, can’t change their minds. That makes them ideal targets for critics eager to demonstrate their own modernity, their own sharper ethics, their own "we know better now". Cooley is not defending the canon so much as mocking the impulse to treat it as a punching bag precisely because it is powerful and defenseless at once.
Contextually, Cooley wrote in an era when academia and literary journalism were retooling the canon, elevating theory, and rewarding the takedown as a mode of intelligence. His line anticipates today’s culture-war rereads and hot-take cycles: reputations are currency, and the fastest way to sound alive is to declare someone else - especially someone revered - obsolete.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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