PARTISAN REVIEW
531
of knowledge." The two factions might be most easily contrasted by
considering the ways in which they determine how new writings qual–
ify for inclusion into their hierarchies. The radical faction receives
new writings into what is called literature by virtue of the test of
political relevance, a relevance sometimes complexly conceived in the
terminologies of the Freudian Left; the traditionalists do so by virtue
of evidence that the new writings were made possible by those tradi–
tions which criticism has succeeded, by resourceful readings and mis–
readings, in delineating from within the thickets of literary forms and
languages.
These rival claims are pressed with a zeal meant to suggest that
they pretty much exhaust the possibilities of choice. Not everyone will
agree, however, and there is a point at which the articulation of differ–
ences has become more self-serving than real. The claim of each side
to centrality is enhanced rather than threatened by their common
consent that all other differences within the profession can be divided
between them. Each faction leans on assumptions about the nature of
the material it proposes to manage-namely literature-and is com–
mitted to methodologies which severely limit the range of inquiries
that can be made. Except at the level of grammar, certain kinds of
close analysis (which at its best is represented by what Reuben Brower
calls "slow reading"), and the procedures advanced by Northrop Frye,
literary study has little semblance of critical discipline and it is proba–
bly resistant to any, at least to anyone form of discipline. That is why
literary study has always proved itself ultimately gregarious about
what is to be included under the heading of literature. Perhaps it's the
very vagueness about the nature of the discipline and the subject itself
which invites dogmatizing. It is possible sometimes to feel, as one tries
to do something moderately helpful in a class with a poem and a
group of students, rather harassed, on the one hand, by systems and
theories that do not adequately account for the human need answered
by a particular poem or a particular play, much less the mystery of
human responses to either, and, on the other, by demands that the
poem or play or novel measure up to certain political requirements.
The choice at times is between a treasure hunt with no fun allowed
on the way or the critical equivalent of strip mining.
In assessing the pretentions and rationales of English Studies it is
necessary to remember that the subject being professed has become
