[Milton-L] historicism, formalism, etc.

[jfleming at sfu.ca]

My perspective (from philosophical hermeneutics and the ordinary-language
trad): historicism and formalism are indeed, as per Prof. Strier’s post,
non-antipathetic. Both are objectivisms: theories of interpretation as
cognitive adequation to a pre- or extra-interpretative posit. The
historicist version of this posit is a past intention: what a given
historical utterer meant, or was able to mean. The formalist version is a
present intension (“intension-with-an-s”): what a given utterance means, or
is able to mean. Since the formalist posit is a function of the historicist
one, one sees that these are fish of the same pond. The objectivist telos is
an understanding of the interpretandum just as the latter is. 

The problem with this telos, despite its evident reasonableness, is that it
can never be reached (or be known to be reached). For the only way to know
that one’s interpretation had reached it would be by comparison with an
understanding of the interpretandum just as it is. But reaching  an
understanding of the interpretandum just as it is is precisely what one is
trying to do through (objectivist) interpretation; and there would appear to
be no other way to reach that understanding. Therefore, in its own terms,
objectivism can never be validated. (It is as though a cooking-show host,
reaching the end of his patter, said: “Now compare your cake with the one
you made earlier.” What?) The result is deconstruction, which always opens
up from the inevitable failure of the objectivist telos. This is why
theoretically-hip historicists are always so surprisingly comfortable with
showing the sceptical "contingency" of their own premises. This is why
Geoffrey Hartman admired Jacques Derrida. Deconstruction is another fish in
the objectivist pond. It's the one that keeps the other fish going round and
round. 

The alternative is to identify understanding with the interpretative event.
That's the hermeneutic pond. I try to give an account of it in _Milton's
Secrecy_. 

JD Fleming

On Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:46:23 -0600 (CST) milton-l at lists.richmond.edu wrote:
> Actually, Paul de Man was a big Empson fan.  The essay on 
> American formalism in Blindness and Insight seens Empson as 
> offering a way out of the "dead-end."  Empson did not see 
> himself as part of the same "school" as Brooks and Wimsatt.	
> He found their denial of intentionalism particularly 
> puzzling.  See his review of Well-Wrought, etc, "His Darling 
> in an Urn" in Argufying.  Also, see his essay called "Verbal 
> Analysis" there, which makes it clear that Empson never 
> excluded historical and other considerations from his 
> analyses.  This is equally true of the analyses in 7 Types as 
> of those in the pastoral book.  The "tyes" in 7 Types are 
> purely heuristic.  My former colleague Elder Olson's critique 
> of Empson in Critics and Criticism is completely misguided; 
> Ronal Crane on Brooks is better.	
> 
> For Empson as a better model for historical criticism than 
> Rosemond Tuve (!), see the first chapter of my Resistant 
> Structures.  For some general thoughts on the non-necessity 
> of a conflict between formalism and historicism, see my 
> epilogue to Kent Rasmussen, ed., Renaissance Lit and its 
> Formal Engagements.
> 
> ---- Original message ----
> >Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:24:05 -0800 (PST)
> >From: Kim Maxwell <kmaxwell at stanford.edu>	
> >Subject: [Milton-L] new critics and empson	
> >To: John Milton Discussion List <milton-
> l at lists.richmond.edu>
> >
> >   Regarding Carrol Cox remark
> >
> >   The book from which New Criticism took its name (by
> >   John Crowe Ransom in 1941) includes a chapter on
> >   Empson.  New Criticism, in its denigration following
> >   DeMan, Frye, and Abrams in the 1950's, became more
> >   monolithic (around poetic autonomy and close
> >   reading) than any of those who claim to practice it
> >   actually practiced it.  It most famous advocates
> >   were Ellot, Richards, Empson, Brooks, Warren, and
> >   Leavis, not a homogeneous group (Eliot late in his
> >   life repudiated his connection with the movement,
> >   although he is surely its godfather).  I think
> >   Empson's book on ambiguity actually makes the
> >   mistake that doomed new criticism as a movement (it
> >   is still what most of us really do when we read
> >   poetry), namely, the presumption that ambiguities
> >   can by themselves be classified and then interpreted
> >   in some determinate manner, rather than taken as 
> >   self-conscious  moments demanding  interpretation,
> >   which interpretation must take into account many
> >   other things (often), including (as Eliot himself
> >   argued all his life) the historical circumstances
> >   and  reading skills of the moment the poem is
> >   read.   I think Empson next book, Some Versions of
> >   Pastoral, does just that, and drifts away from
> >   autonomous reading, but would still be classified as
> >   close reading.
> >
> >   Kim Maxwell
> >________________
> >_______________________________________________
> >Milton-L mailing list
> >Milton-L at lists.richmond.edu
> >Manage your list membership and access list archives at 
> http://lists.richmond.edu/mailman/listinfo/milton-l
> >
> >Milton-L web site: http://johnmilton.org/
> _______________________________________________
> Milton-L mailing list
> Milton-L at lists.richmond.edu
> Manage your list membership and access list archives at
> http://lists.richmond.edu/mailman/listinfo/milton-l
> 
> Milton-L web site: http://johnmilton.org/
> 


James Dougal Fleming
Associate Professor
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
778-782-4713
cell: 604-290-1637

"Not always, nor of necessity, nor for the most part."