Prolegomena to Any Future Criticism Which Shall Claim to Make Sense

Abstract

No one who has taught the history of criticism, who has contemplated the changes and vicissitudes in theorizing from Aristotle's day to our own, who has seen the mirror become a lamp and sincerity give place to irony is likely to delude himself with the hope that we shall finally settle down to one definitive and permanent framework of literary theory. The most impressive attempt in this line, Northrop Frye's, now seems like a heroic failure; although Anatomy of Criticism began as an attempt to make a final synthesis, it ended as an anthology of brilliant individual insights. Around us we see a chaotic pluralism; the formalists have grown, if not stale, at least venerable, having never quite displaced the historical tradition against which they had reacted; nor do they appear ready to give place to post-structuralism which has moved in from the Continent. There may be, nonetheless, reason to pause for a moment to take stock and to see if there is actually or potentially anything stable in the situation.