I S LITERARY CRITICISM POSSIBLE?
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that the third, rhetorical analysis, has not been taught effectively in
this country since the rise of the historical method in literary studies.
When I first taught a college class, about eighteen years ago, I
thought that anything was possible; but with every year since it has
seemed a little more absurd to try to teach students to "evaluate"
works of literature, and perhaps not less absurd to try to evaluate
them oneself. The assumption that we are capable of just evaluation
(a word that seems to have got into criticism by way of Adam
Smith) is one of the subtler, if crude, abuses of democratic doctrine,
as follows: all men ought to exercise independent judgment, and
all men being equal, all are equally capable of it, even in literature
and the arts. I have observed that when my own opinions seem
most original and independent they turn out to be almost wholly
conventional.
An
absolutely independent judgment (if such a thing
were possible) would be an absolutely ignorant judgment.
Shall the instructor, then, set before the class his own "evalua–
tions"? He will do so at the risk of disseminating a hierarchy that he
may not have intended to create, and thus may be aborted, or at
least stultified, the student's own reading.
It
is inevitable that the in–
structor shall say to the class that one poem is "better" than an–
other. The student, in the degree of his intelligence, will form clear
preferences or rejections that will do little harm if he understands
what they are. But the teaching of literature through the assertion
of preference will end up either as mere impressionism, or as the
more sinister variety of impressionism that Irving Babbitt detected in
the absorption of the literary work into its historical setting.
As
to the communication of "insights," it would perhaps be an
inquiry without benefit to anybody to ask how this elusive maid–
of-all-work got into modern criticism. She is here, and perhaps we
ought to be grateful, because she is obviously willing to do all the
work. Insight could mean two things, separately or taken together:
the perception of meanings ordinarily or hitherto undetected, and/or
the synthetic awareness that brings to the text similar or contrasting
qualities from other works. These awarenesses are the critical or
receiving end of the Longinian "flash" proceeding from varying
degrees of information and knowledge, unpredictable and largely un–
viable. They are doubtless a good thing for a teacher to have, but
they cannot be taught to others; they can be only exhibited.
If
in-
