PRIVATE EYES AND PUBLIC CRITICS
243
Some critics have begun to exhibit that inward or private eye
which marked the redeemed Oedipus, and, having seen into the life
and death of literature, have announced the archetypal critical mo–
tifs: the clash of plot tensions, the ambiguity of the word, the
im–
morality of inconsistency, the heresy of paraphrase, the threat of
inorganic unity, the sacramental imagination. The very titles of their
books announce the trend:
The Wheel of Fire, The Double Agent,
Maule's Curse, The Armed Vision.
Beyond
Oedipus
and
Hamlet
lies the domain of the critical detectives.
