Pragmatic pluralism

[Michael Joseph]

A year or two ago Denis Donoghue published an essay, forget where, in
which he schematizes the progress of nineteenth century criticism in three
progressive stages. It's a simplified schematic (it skips the influence of
Comte and the positivists, for example, and the sociology of literature),
but it makes a good point. He starts with M.Arnold, who believes that a
poem contains authored meanings, which criticism can apprehend and convey
to readers; then, in comes Pater, who denies the accessibility of authored
meanings, but posits, instead, that a poem stimulates sensations in the
critic, and it is these, and nothing else, that it is the critic's task to
understand and communicate. Finally, at the fin, there's Wilde, who agrees
with Pater's first premise, that the critic has only his sensations with
which to operate; but, Wilde interrogates assumptions about communication.
He believes that sensations oblige the critic to enact a kind of
performance, the point of which is to creatively enable readers to
experience like sensations, or to prompt sensitive readers to have
aesthetic experiences (whatever they are).


Yours,
Michael