An Essay on Critical Method, Applied to the Comedia

Abstract

M Y PURPOSE HERE IS, first of all, to urge that a more modern and relevant approach to Comedia criticism is desirable, specifically one that will offer a realistic perspective on the relationship between traditional scholarship and modern literary criticism; second, to advocate greater critical rigor, which will encompass eschewing the intentional fallacy, hierarchies, cults of personality, biographical and cultural determinism, and moralizing; and, finally, to insist on the autonomy of the critic and on viewing criticism as a cumulative enterprise. When I speak of critics and criticism here and 'throughout, I have in mind academic critics and academic criticism; that is, the type of literary criticism practiced in the academy. A distinction needs to be made between -the academic critic's role when he deals with primary source material and when he writes reviews. In the latter capacity, he will almost invariably reach some conclusion concerning the value of the secondary source material being reviewed. In -the role of reviewer, he functions much like the drama and film critics who review current offerings in those areas. In reviews, of whatever kind, relatively subjective and negative criticism tends to flourish. In literary cri'ticism, the task should always be viewed and the criticism expressed in objective and consistently positive terms. Let me summarize briefly the current situation. With the exception of those of the British School who have been influenced at least indirectly by I. A. Richards' Principles of Literary Criticism (1924), it is clear that the majority of Comedia scholars are precisely that: scholars, rather than literary critics.' Among American Comediantes, a disproportionate amount of energy has traditionally been devoted to activities marginal to 'the explication of the literary artifact; specifically, to editing, biography, bibliography, staging, questions of influence and authorship, and preoccupation with antiquarianism and extrinsic concerns in general.2 The second truly significant book of this century, in point of its influence upon critical theory, has been largely ignored by those who publish on Golden-Age drama, and indeed by Hispanists at large. I refer to Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism (1957). There have been a few attempts at interpretation based on myth and archetype, but these have looked more directly to Jung, or perhaps Frazer, than to Frye; in other words, they look more to psychology and anthropology than to the myths and archetypes of literature itself. There have also been a few Freudian and Marxist interpretations, but, except for Noel Salomon's work, none of the lot has been particularly productive or convincing. The point I would make is the obvious one that we are, in the majority, at some distance from the mainstream of modern critical theory and