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Presidential Address 1989: Mediating the Work: Or, The Legitimate Aims of Criticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Victor Brombert
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Extract

It is not always easy to communicate with the larger community and the general public. In the field of literary studies our times betray a deep malaise. Belletristic exercises have been discredited as frivolous and elitist. The very underpinnings of any critical discourse are being scrutinized. What is criticism, and what for? To some, it is an analysis of functions, to others an elaboration and testing of theories, to still others a study of the modes of production and reception, while to not a few it has an ideological thrust of its own. There are those who nourish even more grandiose ambitions—who see criticism as a means of rethinking or undermining Western metaphysics and of shaking the foundations of a logocentric and anthropocentric cultural consciousness.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 105 , Issue 3 , May 1990 , pp. 391 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1990

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