Reflections on Recent American "Left" Literary Criticism

Abstract

Never before in the history of American literary culture has there been such widespread and, on the whole, such serious, sometimes technical and frequently contentious discussion of issues in literary criticism. Certainly this symposium is one indication of richness of effort, if not always of result, and I doubt that any participant thinks that this contemporary battle of the books does not concern what he or she does as a teacher, critic, or scholar of literature. On the other hand there will not be automatic agreement on what the main or even the important issues are in the critical hurly-burly. It is probably true, for example, that even though many of the critical schools (among others, semiotics, hermeneutics, Marxism, and deconstruction) still continue to have their strict apostles, it is the case that the critical atmosphere is a mixed one, with everyone more or less in touch with, if not necessarily completely involved in, most of the reigning methods, schools, disciplines. Nevertheless it is almost certain that no one will underestimate the sociological as well as the intellectual importance of the large division separating adherents of New new criticism from those of the old, or traditional criticism. Not all critics are polarized