for the last, oh, year [note: written in 2016] or so I have felt more and more that literary criticism per se — pace Said — is, to put it bluntly, useless. of the literary scholarship I encounter, I would estimate that approximately 85% of it is utterly pointless, another 10% makes interesting contributions to the study of literature in itself (but with no particular utility or impact beyond that), and perhaps 5% has any actual political value, efficacy, or force.
Voices of Fire is absolutely in that last 5%. ho‘omanawanui’s readings of the texts in question — a collection of mo‘olelo (“hi/stories”) about the goddesses Pele and Hi‘iaka(ikapoliopele) published in Hawaiian language newspapers between 1860 and 1928 — are compelling both in their emphasis on historical and cultural situation and just as close readings of complex texts, and in contrast to the vast majority of literary criticism she consistently succeeds in justifying her choice of texts and of topics in real-world terms. the climax of the book in chapter (or mokuna) 7 looks at the ways the texts in question resonate in the present and might give us a stepping stone towards building (or perhaps recovering) a future.
my only real complaint is that chapter/mokuna 6 I felt didn’t quite live up to the promise of its introduction as an examination of the ways the transition from orature to literature affected Pele and Hi‘iaka stories — while generally I think her efforts to historicize and culturally contextualize the mo‘olelo were important and useful, I think I wish that she’d spent more time discussing generic features here less time on historicizing.
in the grand scheme of things, though, that is a minor complaint. I’ve been waiting to read this book essentially since it came out, and it was worth every second of waiting.
(back: prìomh-dhuilleag · main page · aistidhean · essays)