What I am advocating here is not a

What I am advocating here is not a reconfiguration in our habits of reading but rather a new awareness of what we already do. Sophisticated readers have learned to balance ambiguity with such dexterity that the process moves forward without conscious effort. So far, formal criticism has not generated a metaphoric system that can articulate the complexities of that process. My efforts do not aim to dismiss the achievements of previous critics but rather to introduce a vocabulary and an analytic method that allows expansion of existing formal responses to literature.