Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- I From chaos to case
- II The bizarre territory
- III The curve of the mirror
- IV From ‘so complex an irony’ to ‘such a textual logic’
- V From ‘wit’ to ‘astonishment’
- VI ‘Fool’ and ‘pharmakon’
- VII ‘The monstrous clarity’
- VIII From ‘ensemble’ to ‘exception’
- IX Pagan perspectives
- X The Tao of criticism
- Notes
- Index
I - From chaos to case
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- I From chaos to case
- II The bizarre territory
- III The curve of the mirror
- IV From ‘so complex an irony’ to ‘such a textual logic’
- V From ‘wit’ to ‘astonishment’
- VI ‘Fool’ and ‘pharmakon’
- VII ‘The monstrous clarity’
- VIII From ‘ensemble’ to ‘exception’
- IX Pagan perspectives
- X The Tao of criticism
- Notes
- Index
Summary
When I. A. Richards set out his account of the ‘chaos of critical theories’ as they appeared in 1924 it was deployed as a comic scherzo on the miscellaneous:
A few conjectures, a supply of admonitions, many acute isolated observations, some brilliant guesses, much oratory and applied poetry, inexhaustible confusion, a sufficiency of dogma, no small stock of prejudices, whimsies and crotchets, a profusion of mysticism, a little genuine speculation, sundry stray inspirations, pregnant hints and random aperçus; of such as these, it may be said without exaggeration, is extant critical theory composed.
The collective wisdom that follows is a rag-bag of incongruities. But Richards's ironising does not assess the message that such a bizarre miscellany may contain. The mosaic of hints does not suggest a coherent subject, for the ‘stray inspirations’ and ‘random aperçus’ do not address the same kind of questions; nor does it suggest any kind of consensus as to what expectations of a critical theory there might be. Furthermore, the effect of so many different kinds of what might pass as critical theory blurred the identity of the word ‘critical’ itself. For the diverse kinds of explanation which were applied to the understanding of literary language and of its position in the world were not so redirected as to govern the working of commentary. Neither models, nor procedures, nor methods naturally arise.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Myth of Theory , pp. 1 - 22Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994