M.H. Abrams
HOW TO DO THINGS WITH TEXTS
The Age of Criticism, which reached its zenith in the mid–
decades of thi s century, has given way to the Age of Reading, and
whereas the Ameri can n ew criti cs and Europ ean formalists of the Age
of Criticism discovered the work-as-such , current literary theori sts have
discovered the reader-as-such . This reader, as everyone knows wh o has
kept even cursoril y in touch with the la test Pari s fashi ons, is not the
man he used to be. He is a wraith of his old self, stripped of everything
human , as part of a systema tic dehumanizing of all aspects of the
traditi onal vi ew about how a work of litera ture comes into being, wha t
it is, how it is read, and wha t it means.
For purpose of compari son, let me sketch the sa li ent and persistent
features of the tradition al, or humanisti c p aradigm of the writing and
reading of litera ture. The writer is conceived, in Wordsworth 's terms,
as "a man speaking to men ." Litera ture, in o ther words, is a transac–
tion between a human author and his human reader. By hi s command
of linguistic and literary possibilities, the author actualizes and records
in words wha t he undertakes to signify of human beings and actions
and about matters of human con cern , addressing himself to those
readers who are competent to understand wha t he has written. T he
reader sets himself to make out wha t the author has designed and
signified, through putting into playa lingui sti c and literar y experti se
that he shares with the author. By approximating what the author
undertook to signify the reader understands wha t the language of the
work means.
In
our Age of Reading, the first casualty in this literary transaction
h as been the author. T o the noninitia te, it is bemusing to observe the
complacency with whi ch authors of recent books an d essays announce
their own demi se. " It is about time," says Michel Fo ucault, " th at
criti cism and philosoph y acknowledged the di sappearance or the death
of the author." "As instituti on," according to Roland Barthes, " the
An expanded version of a paper read at the Lionel Tri lling Seminar, Columbia
University, February 23, 1978.
