ion and elaboration involves a continuing redefinition of the subject--a reader who is as much a part of the work as the work is part of the reader's consciousness. As Geoffrey Hartman has observed, the critic need no longer be thought of as a service station attendant, fueling readers with meaning; rather he or she might be thought of as a traffic warden, warning of impending impasses.4 Consider the following exercise, and keep in mind that it is intended to illustrate a fairly simple point about what a person hears. I play a sequence of four notes on the piano-G, G, G, E flat-and ask you, What did you hear? 1. If you are tone-deaf, you will note merely that you heard a sequence of four sounds. The sequence is all that you will have heard. In my rendition of four notes, the last one is held slightly longer than any of the first three; your tone-deafness will enable you still to hear that. 4Geoffrey Hartman, Criticism, Indeterminacy, Irony, in Criticism in the Wilderness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 265. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.243 on Wed, 05 Oct 2016 04:52:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms