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PARTISAN REVIEW
there is one aspect of Marxist criticism, as of much social criticism, its
playing down the text, that connects it with its opposite, the concen–
uation on the text, that runs from the New Criticism to the latest
linguistic and semiological studies. The connecting link is the
emphasis on the reader-or perhaps I should say on the idea of the
reader. Marxist criticism would have no meaning if it did not assume
that a mass of readers were the beneficiaries of the progressive aims of
literature. After all, literature can be politically meaningful only if it
is capable of advancing or liberating the consciousness of its readers.
And it is probably no accident, as Marxists would say, that most left–
wing critics-Marcuse is a notable exception-have favored art forms
and art works that have a popular appeal. Perhaps it is fitting that in
a civilization catering to every quirk and whim of the coddled self all
the roads of literary theory should lead to the reader.
I should add that there are several unattached critics who have
one foot in theory, of whom the foremost are Northrop Frye and
Harold Bloom.· Frye's system of classifications, connected with his
belief in archetypes, and Bloom's parricidal doctrine of influence are
directed toward the student reader, the newly organized and regi–
mented consumer of literature created by mass education. It is
interesting to note that Frye considered judgment to be part of the
history of fashion , not criticism.
It
is also interesting that Hartman
regarded Frye as a. structuralist. Earlier, there was the large but
marginal figure of Winters, who was somewhere between a moralist
and formalist. Then there are those who have thought of themselves
as exponen ts of
a
subject ca lled comparative literature- in my view
all study of literature is comparative-some of whom, like Hartman,
de Man, and Said, have incorporated structuralist thinking into their
own, more empirical, habits of criticism. My sense of their position–
or predicament-is that whi le they have been swayed by the struc–
turalist theory of the protean text and of interminable analysis, their
natural bent is toward a more traditional type of exegesis, that
presumes a more or less stable text, and toward a more discursive type
of critical writing.
I do not want to encroach on the panel dealing with structuralist
criticism.
It
is a big and growing subject. But I shou ld like to stress
the fact that structuralism can
be
seen as the cu lmination of recent
tendencies in the cu lture as well as in criticism. As I have suggested,
·This is not a roll-call of modern cr itics who have ventured into theory. H ence I am
not considering such critics as Wimsatt. Wellek. Miller. Spitzer. Abrams. to mention
on ly a few.
