The Current Situation of Literary Theory: Key Concepts and the Imaginary

Abstract

I N THE LAST TEN YEARS, literary theory has made a powerful impact on criticism, giving new direction to a discussion that was losing itself down a very blind alley. But despite this impact, it is still dogged by an unmistakable element of ingenuousness as evinced not least by its opalescent character. What exactly is literary theory? Does it mean theorizing about literature, or about possible means of access to literature? If the distinction between the two has not yet been adequately brought out, this is mainly because literary theory sprang not from any intensified study of literature so much as from the parlous state of literary criticism at the universities-a state which it was meant to remedy. Literature has, to a large extent, lost its social validity in contemporary society, and it was the attempt to counteract this erosion that led to the breakthrough of theory; but this, in turn, brought out into the open problems inherent in literary theory. As a reaction to the crisis in the humanities, literary theory became increasingly dependent on the relationship between literature and society-a relationship which stood in urgent need of clarification. In this sense, literary theory was certainly linked to literature, but only under conditions that were relevant to the current preoccupations of that society. Consequently the study of literature had to be channeled into this conditionality, with the result that the needs of the moment somehow became norms governing the assessment of literature. Thus literary theory swiftly fell under the influence of prevailing social objectives, which as commonplaces of the time scarcely needed literature as a medium through which to articulate themselves. The result was that in these early stages, literary theory was more or less in the nature of an apology, for it was attempting to explain the uses of literature to a society whose appreciation of learning was at best confined to applauding the winners of TV quiz shows. The endeavor to salvage the traditional of literature in the face of new social requirements has formed a basic impulse for a rapidly developing diversification of literary theory over the last ten years. Its vindication of literature, however, has tended to gloss over the question of what exactly is this old status which is to be pre