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PARTISAN REVIEW
You will have noticed that my selection is deliberately Anglo–
American and that I have purposefully separated many of the critics
William Phillips describes as theor ists who might to a greater or
lesser degree be related to developments in Germany and France, most
notably structuralism. I have not read all the books and essays by
Hartman, Bloom, and Fish, and I would not pretend to be able
to
summarize the swirl of controversy now surrounding their writings;
but I have read enough to convince me that their work (wildly
different as it is in crucial ways from the more traditional Anglo–
American criticism I am used to admiring) might also be fairly
described as allentive
to
language and effect in poetry, saturated in
literary and other kinds of history, methodologically self-conscious
and diverse; and important (among other reasons) for broadening not
narrowing the subject maller of criticism, and for asking us at least to
consider new ques tions and possibilities. And it cannot be fairly said
that their works are "academic exercises" or free from judgment or
value; indeed much of their writing has the most notorious and often
subversive kinds of social, political, and epistemological implications
(and that is one reason why it gets people so angry).
Although these writers (and the older Northrop Frye) cannot
be
usefully labeled "s truc turalists," they have been correctly seen by
William Phillips and others as related to a structuralist mood or
tendency. In other words, they are often interested in some of the same
issues and methods that have preoccupied European structuralists
(whether they are "neo" or "post" or whatever ) during the past
twenty-five years; and they have to some degree been influenced by
continental writings, often in the way of challenge and dispute. It is
this mood or tendency-however we agree to define the phenomenon,
assess its influence, or speculate about its future-that has been
attracting great interest and causing controversy in recent years; and if
one sees it as a negative or deplorabl e tendency , he will need a more
precise and extended set of formulations of the problems (and a fuller ,
less scattershot discussion of structuralism) than William Phillips has
given us . But we will hear more about these mallers this afternoon.
Now lest you think this breathless catalogue is meant to illustrate
a golden age of criticism, or that I am moving toward a conclusion
celebrating the glories of democratic pluralism, my last points should
dispel these notions and help focus some of my own uncertainties and
concerns. Even if you were to accept my description of the diversity of
recent criticism (and you will want to argue with general points,
specific examples, and perhaps the entire sketch), you
may
be willing
