Literary Criticism as told through summiting Everest.

That's misleading. This is lit. crit. as told through DESCENDING Everest.

To begin with, we have Plato at the top. Let's agree he started it all. This is followed by Aristotle, who has just summited the neighboring peak. They wave hello and yodel across the Tibetan mountains to one another. Below them on ropes, we see Augustine dangling off of Plato's ideas, and Aquinas holding on to dear life to Aristotle. However, from this point on, things get a little sticky.

Let's take Mount Aristotle. Below him first lies De Pizan. She is there for her unwavering dedication to Aristotelian logic and observations of the two sexes. To her right, Hume has lost his way and cannot find base camp, but he is stuck on a great view. Barthes is below them both, for he is structurally sound.

Now seizing on the great South Col of Everest. A warning first. This is the most dangerous slope of the mountain. Many great sherpas and climbers have been lost to its slippery slopes. If your ropes are ready, let's descend.

Below Augustine is Maimonides. This is the beginning of the rope that leads to the Structuralist and the baby Deconstructionalist. People like Allthusser and De Saussure. The other rope has all the hikers who believe in the "buddy" system: Engels/Marx (the boug. and proles), Nietzsche (herd and ubermensch), Freud and Lacan, (Oedipex and .... a cigar?), Horkheimer/Adorno, Wordsworth and Coleridge.

And then way over yonder, are Sidney and Wollstonecraft, who are on the same rope for rockin' the establishment.

Kant and Emerson are on the far away ridge in order to see the noumenal world better with their transparent eyeballs.