Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-09T21:37:30.159Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Poetics against Itself: On the Self-Destruction of Modern Scientific Criticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Roger Seamon
Roger Seamon*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Modern critical theory is commonly thought of as a collection of diverse methods, schools, systems, and approaches. There is, however, a significant pattern in the diversity. This pattern is generated by the conflict between the widespread effort of twentieth-century theorists to make criticism scientific and the internal resistance to that effort presented by the hermeneutic impulse. The scientific tradition is characterized and unified by a set of common theoretical principles and by a common sequence of transformations that each school within it undergoes. The result of these transformations is that every proposed scientific model for criticism changes into an interpretive method and the project of scientific criticism is subverted.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 104 , Issue 3 , May 1989 , pp. 294 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. Ed. and trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill, 1977.Google Scholar
Belting, Hans. The End of the History of Art? Trans. Wood, Christopher S. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.Google Scholar
Blackwell, Thomas. An Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer. London, 1736.Google Scholar
Bryson, Norman. Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Crews, Frederick. “Anaesthetic Criticism.” Psychoanalysis and Literary Process. Ed. Crews. Cambridge: Winthrop, 1970.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge, 1975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Man, Paul. Introduction. Towards an Aesthetics of Reception. By Hans Robert Jauss. Trans. Bahti, Timothy. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982. vii–xxv.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Erlich, Victor. Russian Formalism: History-Doctrine. 3rd ed. The Hague: Mouton, 1969.Google Scholar
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frye, Northrop. “Literary Criticism.” The Aims and Methods of Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures. Ed. Thorpe, James. New York: MLA, 1963. 57–69.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic, 1973.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. “Criticism and Poetics.” French Literary Theory Today: A Reader. Ed. Tzvetan Todorov. Trans. R. Carter. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982. 8–10.Google Scholar
Hirsch, E. D. Jr. The Aims of Interpretation. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.Google Scholar
Hirsch, E. D. Jr. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale UP, 1967.Google Scholar
Holland, Norman. The Dynamics of Literary Response. New York: Oxford UP, 1968.Google Scholar
Holland, Norman. 5 Readers Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Ann, and Robey, David. Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction. London: Basford, 1982.Google Scholar
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. “The Modern System of the Arts.” Renaissance Thought II: Papers on Humanism and the Arts. New York: Harper, 1965. 163–227.Google Scholar
Ohmann, Richard. “Speech Acts and the Definition of Literature.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 4 (1971): 1–19.Google Scholar
Olson, Elder. “William Empson, Contemporary Criticism, and Poetic Diction.” Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern. Ed. Crane, R. S. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1952. 45–82.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. Trans. Savage, Denis. New Haven: Yale UP, 1970.Google Scholar
Riffaterre, Michael. Semiotics of Poetry. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Scholes, Robert. Semiotics and Interpretation. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. New Haven: Yale UP, 1974.Google Scholar
Seung, T. K. Structuralism and Hermeneutics. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. “Poetry as Fiction.” New Literary History 2 (1971): 259–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sparshott, Francis. The Theory of the Arts. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Taine, H. A. History of English Literature. 2 vols. Trans. Henry van Laun. Edinburgh: J. W. Lovell, 1873.Google Scholar
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Poetics of Prose. Trans. Howard, Richard. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.Google Scholar
Todorov, Tzvetan. “Some Approaches to Russian Formalism.” Russian Formalism: A Collection of Articles and Texts in Translation. Ed. Benn, Stephen and Bowlt, John E. New York: Barnes, 1972. 6–19.Google Scholar
Weitz, Morris. “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 (1956): 27–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wellek, René, and Warren, Austin. Theory of Literature. 1949. 3rd ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.Google Scholar
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Works and Worlds of Art. Oxford: Clarendon, 1980.Google Scholar
Ziff, Paul. “The Task of Defining a Work of Art.” Philosophical Review 62 (1953): 58–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar