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persist in the assuran ce tha t a competent reader of Milton , for exampl e,
develops an experti se in reading hi s sentences in adequate accordance
both with Milton 's lingu isti c usage and with the strategy of reading
that Mil ton himself depl oyed, and assumed tha t hi s readers would
dep loy. T hi s experti se is not an a rbitrary stra tegy-though it remains
con tinuously open to correcti on and refinement-for it has a sufficient
warrant in evidence th at we tacitl y accumul a te in a lifetime of speak–
ing, writing, and reading Engli sh , of reading English literature, of
reading Milton 's contemporaries, and of reading Milton himself.
T hose wh o share thi s assurance set themselves to read Milton 's text, no t
as pretext for a creati ve adventure in libera ted interpreta tion, but in
order to understand wha t it is that Milton meant, and meant us to
understand. For ou r p repossession is tha t, no ma tter how interesting a
critic's created text of Milton may be, it will be less interesting than the
text tha t Milton himself wrote for hi s fit readers though few.
The Scene of Literature: Harold Bloom
Haro ld Bloom's th eory of reading and writing literature centers on
the a rea that Derri da and the structuralists call " intertex tuality."
Bloom, however, empl oys the traditional term "influence," and pre–
sents hi s theo ry in oppositi on aga inst " the anti-humanisti c p lain
drearin ess of all those developments in European criti cism that have
yet to demonstrate that they can aid in reading anyone poem by an y
poet whatsoever." " Poems," he affirms, "are written by men "; and
aga in st " the pa rti sans of
writing .
..
like Derrida and Foucault who
imply . .. tha t langu age by itself writes the poem and thinks," h e
insists tha t onl y " the human writes, the human thinks." Unlike
Stanl ey Fish , then , Bloom restores the human writer as well as reader to
an effecti ve role in the literary transacti on . But if Fish 's theory is a h alf–
humani sm, Bl oom's is all- too-human , for it screens out from both the
wri ting and reading of "strong" literature all mo ti ves except self–
concern and all compun ction about giving free rein to one's will to
power:
.. . the li ving labyrinth of literature is built upon the ruin of every
impul se mos t generous in us. So apparentl y it is and must be-we are
wrong to have founded a humanism directl y upon literature itself,
and the phrase "humane letters" is an oxymoron.... The strong
imagination comes
to
its painful birth through savagery and misrep–
resentation.
L ike man y recent criti cs, Bl oom pos its a great di vide in literary
