PRIVATE EYES AND PUBLIC CRITICS
237
This used not to be the case. Criticism and mystery stories
were once identical and the pattern of this is clear in
Oedipus Rex,
in which, as Francis Fergusson has shown in his subtle and learned
essay, Oedipus is a detective seeking his own self, and, one may
perhaps be permitted to add, Tiresias performs the function of the
literary critic. "I see," he says to Oedipus, "that even your own
words
miss
the mark." But Oedipus, hostile to organic unity, does not
realize that blindness has made the critic more seeing, more perceptive.
It is only when Oedipus recognizes that the true critic must wound
himself, must carry the stigmata of the artist
manque,
that he comes
with full perception to his destiny. This interpretation is not, of course,
meant to deny that
Oedipus
is an oral play whose 'theme
is
the genital
attachment of the son to the female parent, but merely to suggest
that an emphasis on its
anal
qualities can illumine the mythic prob–
lem of literary criticism. It is when Oedipus blinds himself that he,
too, becomes possessed by the "private" or inward eye, thus establish–
ing the mythic pattern of detective and literary critic.
The dissociation of critic and detective (or critical detectibility)
took place in the eighteenth century as a result of the decline of re–
ligious feeling brought about by the Reformation and the
rise
of the
English middle class. This phenomenon can be seen at work in
MoU
Flanders
and
Jonathan Wild,
for example, in which
villains
are
attacked in the interludes and advanced in the narrative.
This
period, which exhibited a relaxation of literary forms and the develop–
ment of new prose styles, also exhibited a new laxity in literary critic–
ism. The analysis of particular works, for which Aristotle set the
model, ceased to be followed, and Longinus' sublime poet supplement–
ed Aristotle's maker. Thus criticism grew more personal, more "psy–
chological," and became uncritical of the weak conception of evil in
eighteenth-century literature. This is apparent in the literature of the
outlaw-in
The Beggar's OPera,
for example, in which justice
is
seen in terms of the informer's daughter rather than the informer, the
adherence to it a form of sex behavior.
The widest gap between literary criticism and murder mysteries
appeared in the nineteenth century with the breakdown of Christian–
ity. In Poe, in whom we can trace the literary movement of separation
of sound and sense in poetry, we can perhaps also see the separate
functions of literary critic and detective analyst. In
his
inductive com-
