Despite the critiques that I have made, I readily admit that each of the approaches outlined above functions as a highly sophisticated and, within its parameters, an extremely effective means for interpreting literature. At the same time, each methodology relentlessly deletes what are perceived as extraneous elements to produce an explanation of a work’s function that conforms to the critic’s specific point of view. Like the blind men describing the elephant, each topical or ideological effort at criticism tends to distort perceptions of the work under consideration, and each produces a fragmented impression that never blends into a complete picture. Sometimes these views are linked, producing a false sense of multiplicity by overlooking the contradictions in the competing critical approaches, but in fact these amalgamations take on a hierarchical form and in the end give primacy to a single perspective.28 To have relevance for more than a select few whose subjective responses come close to the critic’s own, formal readings need to adopt patterns of reading followed by any individual. This means applying a nonlinear, nonexclusionary, open-ended approach.In this study, I am seeking neither closure nor indeterminacy. Rather, I am endeavoring to articulate a strategy that enables a genuine acceptance of pluralism, one that reflects the way reading encounters literature. This means advancing a system of criticism grounded upon the way a typical reading simultaneously sustains a range of different responses to a work without giving primacy to any.
Despite the critiques that I have made, I readily admit that each of the approaches outlined above functions as a highly sophisticated and, within its parameters, an extremely effective means for interpreting literature. At the same time, each methodology relentlessly deletes what are perceived as extraneous elements to produce an explanation of a work’s function that conforms to the critic’s specific point of view. Like the blind men describing the elephant, each topical or ideological effort at criticism tends to distort perceptions of the work under consideration, and each produces a fragmented impression that never blends into a complete picture. Sometimes these views are linked, producing a false sense of multiplicity by overlooking the contradictions in the competing critical approaches, but in fact these amalgamations take on a hierarchical form and in the end give primacy to a single perspective.28 To have relevance for more than a select few whose subjective responses come close to the critic’s own, formal readings need to adopt patterns of reading followed by any individual. This means applying a nonlinear, nonexclusionary, open-ended approach.<br>In this study, I am seeking neither closure nor indeterminacy. Rather, I am endeavoring to articulate a strategy that enables a genuine acceptance of pluralism, one that reflects the way reading encounters literature. This means advancing a system of criticism grounded upon the way a typical reading simultaneously sustains a range of different responses to a work without giving primacy to any.
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