High Level Literary Theory and the Amateur

I should have noticed when I read Lentricchia's "Confessions of an Ex-Literary Critic" years ago, but I've realized recently why I can't get on board, at least not all the way, with the various "hermeneutics of suspicion" movements: I'm just not jaded enough.

Perhaps, years from now, when Chaucer and Shakespeare and Milton have said to me all they have to say (may the day never come!), when Dickens ceases to shock and shame me into awareness of the poor (may my heart never be so hard!), when Ovid and Sophocles stop looking so darn classical in my starstruck eyes (may I go blind first!)--perhaps then I'll be interested in their Marxist "secret agendas" or in their "deep structural" oppressive characters. Perhaps when that day comes, I'll be able to join in the ranks of the Wordsworth critics so convinced that they've got him whipped when it comes to avoiding self-delusion.

A pity that day will be.

For now my hermeneutics have to be something more like a "hermeneutics of Malorian worship." When one knight in Morte d' Arthur extolled the worth of a superior, through words and through symbolic actions such as bowing and presenting arms, Malory without hesitation called that action "worship." Now I'm not talking about the nasty latria stuff that gets people in a bind about idol-latria and such. No, just the acknowledgment that Malory and Marlowe and Herbert and Coleridge are more worthy knights than Gilmour.

Perhaps this hermeneutical stance will work its way into my dissertation or research. Maybe not. But that's three blog posts in two days--my little mind must be bearing some crazy fruit!