Review: Contemporary Critical Anthologies

Reviewed Work(s): Textual Analysis: Some Readers Reading by Mary Ann Caws;
Contemporary Literary Criticism: Modernism through Poststructuralism by Robert Con
Davis; Contexts for Criticism by Donald Keesey; Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist
Reader by Robert Young
Review by: J. R. Bennett
Source: College English, Vol. 50, No. 5 (Sep., 1988), pp. 566-571
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/377492
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 J. R. Bennett

Review

Contemporary Critical Anthologies

Mary Ann Caws, ed. Textual Analysis: Some Readers Reading

(New York: Modern Language Association, 1986) 327 pp.,
$29.50, $15.00.
Robert Con Davis, ed. Contemporary Literary Criticism: Mod-
ernism Through Poststructuralism (New York and London:
Longman, 1986) 511 pp., $24.95.
Donald Keesey, ed. Contexts for Criticism (Palo Alto, CA:
Mayfield Publishing Company, 1987) 365 pp., $18.50.
Robert Young, ed. Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Read-
er (Boston and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981) 326 pp.,
$10.50.

These four anthologies offer an extensive though not exhaustive survey of mod-
ern criticism. Davis gives the sweep of critical thought from Hulme and
Shklovsky early in the century to Barthes and Derrida in recent years. The other
three anthologists concentrate upon contemporary criticism.
Not only because Saussure is considered a father of modern structural lin-
guistics, but because he contributed to two chief and contradictory strands in
modern criticism, as J. Hillis Miller has named them (in Davis 419), the "canny"
and "uncanny," the pursuit of what holds a text together and the analysis of
what dissolves it, Cours de Linguistique Gdnerale offers an appropriate begin-
ning for a critical discussion of these books (see Culler xiii). The study of lan-
guage-linguistics-has the goal of discovering general laws or systems of con-
vention. Every language system contains numerous conventional sub-systems or
practices: for example, Levi-Strauss' study of kinship, or Gerald Prince's of nar-
ration. We call this scientific production of models of signifying systems struc-
turalism or semiotics. It is scientific because it seeks to establish a coherent
body of concepts and methods aiming at knowledge of underlying laws. Meaning

James R. Bennett is professor of English at the University of Arkansas. He founded and edited Style
journal, 1967-1982; edited Prose Style: A Historical Approach Through Studies (1971); compiled
Bibliography of Stylistics and Related Criticism, 1967-1983 (1986); and compiled Control oflnformation
in the U.S. (1987).

College English, Volume 50, Number 5, September 1988

566

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 Review 567

derives from the existence of these laws. As Barthes says i

the Structuralist Analysis of Narratives":
Faced with the infinity of narratives [and] the multiplicity o
ical, psychological, ethnological, aesthetic, etc.-from which t
the analyst finds himself in more or less the same situation a
by the heterogeneity of language and seeking to extract a prin
and a central focus for description from the apparent confusi
messages. (Kaplan 557)

Here is the Saussurean scientist seeking meaning in taxonom

Few of the essays in these four anthologies employ classif
them do attempt to find some principle by which the infini
which Barthes refers might be shaped. Most of the thirty
anthology, generally speaking, share a pursuit of certitude
plicity to some central focus, particularly in or in close rela
divides his selections into eight parts: "Modernism: The Ca
malism," "The Historical Dialectic," "The Sexual Dialecti
ogy and 'The Scene of Writing': Jung and Freud," "The Str
versy," "The Affective Response," and "The Postructur
anarchic world, the modernists find order and meaning in
preoccupy the formalists, some of them, like Wimsatt and
isolation from author and readers. Not rejecting form but b
to the interaction of time, place, and texts, the historicist
proach texts as both complex revelations of and contrib
Frow). Similarly the feminists, whether via social or esthe
certain historical realities (patriarchy), embrace certain va
focus upon the mechanism of these realities and values as te
form them. The psychologists locate meaning in the ment
consciousness and individual narratives understood by ar
conventional (pre-Lacanian) Freudian formulation, by
model. The structuralists conceive of literature as a fun
some of the reader-response critics, those who stress cultu
Fish ("interpretive communities") and Culler ("compet
strained interpretations of texts.
Keesey arranges his thirty-three selections in five main c
constructive Epilogue." In distinct contrast to Davis' mainly
tions, Keesey in each section except for the Epilogue first g
frames and then employs those theories for three practical
texts: Hamlet, Lycidas, and Heart of Darkness. That Kee
contributors share a centered perspective, in the sense tha
cated in a text, is suggested by his declaration that the essa
looking at the literary work to decide what it means" (315).
Caws asked each of the twenty-four contributors "first to
tackling a text and then to exemplify it with a specific anal
ature and period each might choose" (viii), but she does not
tions into explicit categories. The title suggests and most o
through traditional interpretations of the cohesion of texts.

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568 College English

assert the possibility of determinate meaning and explicitly oppose deconstruc-

tionism.
To most of these critics, then, at least as represented in these anthologies, a
center does hold. They share with Saussure a confidence that a key to signifying
systems can be discovered. But Saussure expressed another and more funda-
mental theory out of which partly has arisen the subversion of that confidence
by "post-structuralism." The source of the conflict lies in the nature of Saus-
sure's concept of the sign. Language is a signifying system founded upon the
sign composed of signifying acoustical image and signified concept. Neither is a
stable object but exists and has its meaning only in relationship with the other
and by their relational differences from other (relational) signs. Some critics
have seen this argument as fatal to finality, because the sign, all signs, must
therefore be understood as signifiers. As Young suggests, a concentration upon
this formulation of the sign meant for some "a shift from meaning to staging"
(8). Davis describes this historical shift from text to reader, "really from text-as-
product to reading activity," as the development of a new paradigm, away from
the "Age of the Critic" to the "Age of the Reader" (6).
But although it may be the case that the specific mode of what is known as
post-structuralism took its shape from reaction to structuralist writings (repre-
sented in Davis by early Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Todorov, and Eco), and al-
though it may also be the case that a new paradigm is emerging committed to an
"irremediably problematic" subjectivity (Davis 9), framing post-structuralism by
these contexts obscures the essential tradition to which it belongs-that of skep-
ticism, from Pyrrho to Hume to Derrida. How difficult to know "what a thing is,
except by saying it is something else" (The Mill on the Floss, Bk. II, Ch. 1).
And now among some reader response critics and the critics labeled deconstruc-
tors, interpretation leads not to decodage, to unity and wholeness, to presence,
to meaning, but to reading and writing, to more signs. The center falls apart, or
the absence of the center is discovered, at least for a few critics.
The most traditional collection, Caws', contains perhaps no more than two
essays (Holland and Johnson) that exhibit the shift from analysis of determinable
structures to the analysis of the processes of signification. Of the thirty-four
essays in Davis, only about five represent this radical drive to dismantle the co-
herence of texts (Holland, Johnson, Kristeva, de Man, and Derrida), the "ver-
tiginous possibilities of referential aberration" (de Man in Davis 473). Keesey's
"affective" selections, particularly the two by Norman Holland (Iser's and
McNeal's essays are as much text as reader centered), assert the great depend-
ence of the text upon the individual reader, and the deconstructive essays by
Derrida and de Man argue the inherent indeterminacy of language and texts. In
contrast to the mainly centripetal tendency of these three anthologies, almost all
of the fourteen essays collected by Young exhibit deconstructive, centrifugal
skepticism.
The limitation of this general distinction between those who possess faith in
decidable texts and those who put their faith in radical plurality, play and inter-
rogation is that it obscures how much most of the ordering critics have already
committed themselves to a skeptical cast of mind, as reflected in their having jet-

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 Review 569

tisoned various traditional foundations and methods for as

Davis, Barthes and Wimsatt and Beardsley reject the trad
author; Eagleton lambasts the "organic" text. That Caw
cent than Young's may suggest, however, a resurgence or
of orthodox approaches (culture-author-text and text coh
Keesey's five contexts offer another way to concept
essays collected in these anthologies: "Genetic Criticism: A
"Formal Criticism: Poem as Context," "Affective Criticism
text," "Mimetic Criticism: Reality as Context," and "In
Literature as Context." I shall reduce these categories
(culture: period, nation, genre/intertext; author), textual
because chapters four and five on mimesis and intertexts c
the genetic approach. This framework reveals again how u
of the collections are (Keesey, Caws, and Davis). At leas
selections deal with some aspect of culture or author, for
tions of chapters one, four, and five, I add McNeal's J
Fish's interpretive communities. And at least fourteen of
Lycidas, and Heart of Darkness are text centered. Caw
response essays, perhaps five cultural/genetic (Gilbert, M
Sayre, Riffaterre), about an equal number of author/gene
Fletcher, Mendelson, Vendler), and the rest are textual st
quite old-fashioned explications innocent of theoretical se
also mainly text oriented, with the genetic/cultural-autho
priority (about a dozen essays: Ortega y Gasset, Jameson,
White, Showalter, de Beauvoir, Gilbert, Levi-Strauss, Tod
Only four of his selections represent the reader-response
course some overlapping in all the collections: in Davis, Todorov and Levi-
Strauss treat intertexts textually, Flieger and Hertz the relationships between a
text and its author. The text-oriented essays in Keesey, Caws, and Davis suffer
from their neglect of the linguistic methodologies developed during the past
twenty years within the field labeled stylistics.
Young reflects the critique of orthodoxy he evidently intended to provide, for
although he gives us three genetic-cultural essays (Foucault, Balibar and Ma-
cherey, and Wordsworth), the five reader response essays (Barthes, Johnson,
and Mehlman) predominate, and of the five textual studies, only one is
coherence-oriented (Riffaterre), while the others (Ellmann, Miller, de Man, and
Rand) pursue dispersal techniques.
Just as the anthologies differ sometimes extremely in content, they also vary
greatly in the quality of the essays and the quality of the editorial apparatus.
Davis' selections are outstanding, although several are virtually impenetrable
(Kristeva's particularly): great critics speak here to represent the eight "para-
digms." In spite of its sub-title, the book is not a history of twentieth-century
criticism. (For such an anthology, see David Lodge's excellent 20th Century Lit-
erary Criticism containing fifty selections.) Rather, he gives us primarily the sub-
ject of his main title: contemporary criticism. Nineteen of his selections were
published in the 1970s and 1980s. (His competitor, therefore, is the ample Crit-

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570 College English

ical Theory Since 1965 by Adams and Searle containing fifty-four essays.) Even
though Davis has edited two books on Lacan and one on deconstruction, he
seems generally even-handed in representing major approaches and in commen-
tary. He provides a useful though very brief general introduction that explains
the shift from the "old paradigm" of the authority and coherence of specialized
critical strategies and texts to the "new paradigm" of reader subjectivity (see
Craige). Each of the eight sections is preceded by a brief but useful introduction,
each of which is followed by a list of recommended books. His introductions to
the individual essays are often too brief, given the difficulty of many of them,
but usually helpful. Explanatory notes are urgently needed also. This text is
strictly for graduate students.
Keesey contrasts to the more theoretical Davis by his inclusion of practical
analyses of identical texts. Contexts resembles A Handbook of Approaches to
Literature, which discusses Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, a short story, and a
poem by the same approaches. Similar also is Literary Theories in Praxis, in
which the essays are organized by approaches but discuss the same short stories
or poem. Like Davis, Keesey provides a general introduction, paradigm intro-
ductions, introductions to each essay, and a name-subject index. I recommend
this book for upper-class undergraduate or higher criticism courses for its con-
ceptual clarity and practical utility; in difficulty it seems somewhere between the
easier Guerin text and the Staton collection.
Caws gives us the essays unassisted by commentary except for the mysti-
fyingly succinct Preface. There are a two-page list of terms keyed to the authors
and a list of works cited, but no index. The book seems designed for only a few
readers.
As I have indicated, Young's book is for specialized reading in contemporary
skepticism. Excellent headnotes place each article in its intellectual context,
offer analysis of "what it is doing," and suggest "problems and questions which
it may raise." For Johnson's nine pages, for example, Young gives three pages
of discussion. Explanatory notes are profuse: for Barthes' first essay, Young
adds sixteen notes, many containing helpful explanation. And he embeds notes
within authors' notes. His ample bibliography is presented as suggestions for
further reading following each selection. And he includes a name-subject index.
His is the editorially superior anthology of the four, and avant-garde difficulties
demand the assistance.
What is at stake? Power, "nothing less than that latent in the pedagogical dis-
course and practice of literary study at all levels, from post-graduate pro
grammes down to the school curriculum" (Felperin 111). The schools of cri
icism represented in these anthologies are contesting for intellectual dominance
and that conflict heightens the sense of urgency in the struggle for change i
English studies presently advocated by such critics as Paul Bove, William Cain,
Terry Eagleton, Gerald Graff, Jim Merod, and Richard Ohmann. The institution
of literary studies is under attack; revolution has broken through its walls; an in
vigorated and more significant institution seems approaching. But my analysis
four recent anthologies of criticism suggests how mainly stable and continuou
and how little in danger of surrendering is traditional literary study.

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 Review 571

Works Cited

Adams, Hazard, and Leroy Searle, eds. Critical Theory Since 1965. Tallahassee:
Florida State UP, 1986.
Craige, Betty. Literary Relativity. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1982.
Culler, Jonathan. Ferdinand de Saussure. New York: Penguin, 1977.
Felperin, Howard. Beyond Deconstruction: The Uses and Abuses of Literary
Theory. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985.
Frow, John. Marxism and Literary History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1986.
Guerin, Wilfred, et al. A Handbook of Approaches to Literature. 2nd ed. New
York: Harper and Row, 1979.
Kaplan, Charles, ed. Criticism: The Major Statements. 2nd ed. New York: St.
Martin's, 1986.
Lodge, David, ed. 20th Century Literary Criticism: A Reader. London: Long-
man, 1972.
Staton, Shirley, ed. Literary Theories in Praxis. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania
P, 1987.

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