On the work of the critic... The study of literature is fraught with tension. As a writer and an academic, I feel this tension every time I enter a classroom. The writer is working toward ultimate subjectivity: I may call it my voice, my vision, or, if I am feeling especially full of myself, my truth. The academic is attempting a position of objectivity, looking for evidence of meaning, often interacting with previously documented critical thought. I suspect that, placed against the background of the religious or the mystical worlds, the states of both ultimate subjectivity and objectivity will prove to be illusion or human arrogance, but if I am honest, I will admit to believing a bit more in writers than in critics. This means that in everything I say as a teacher, there is a writer hiding. When I use terms that have been handed down from one critic to another or repeat a piece of the canon of literary analysis, I often feel a kind of boredom and creative guilt. On the other hand, when I read a piece of good criticism and discover a new perspective on something I have read, I feel a sense of academic guilt, perceiving selfishness in my favoritism. After all, I am not here in the classroom for me, am I? I am here to teach students what has been thought about literature in a systematic and comprehensive fashion. Am I not? Here you can see why I might be tense. "Enough about you," you might be thinking at this point. "The writer and the critic be damned," you might be saying. Where is the reader in this monologue? Where is the student? If you are saying this, you are recognizing the tension central to all discussions of literature—that of the writer, the reader, the critic...and all of their contexts. Wait a minute. Context? By context, I mean nothing less complex than the cultural, social, philosophical, political, and personal environment of all those involved in the writing and the reading of a work of literature. Context influences who we are and what we think at any given time. If we deny the context in which a writer has written or a reader in reading, we will have incomplete communication. What does communication have to do with literature? Isn't art just a means of self-expression? A thing unto itself? Something with its own magic rules? This is another one of the tensions in literary criticism—the question of whether art exists for its own sake or for a purpose. Your own experience may help you with this argument: If one writes a diary or journal and hides it in a drawer, that writer may reasonably argue that this text was written, merely for the purposes of self-expression. When a writer publishes a text or presents it to others, one may reasonably argue that communication is being attempted. With communication come the problems of encoding and decoding content. With encoding and decoding come the problems of language and symbols and semiotics—all that goes into the creation of a message, from cultural background to personal psychology. With communication also comes the question of purpose: Am I sending my text into the world in order to amuse, to enlighten, to teach, to share experience, to relieve my overburdened heart or mind? And when I read, am I looking for entertainment, instruction or a different view of the world? When you read the first chapters of our textbook, you will see many issues brought up that revolve around these basic tensions. This does not mean that we, as readers, must take up the values and viewpoints of the writer; it means that they should be identified and taken into account. Likewise, we should recognize the context for a critical school, whether Marxist, feminist or Freudian. We will be less able to put our own criticism into the perspective of other critics and remain unable to present an effective case for our own views if we do not understand the context of critical approaches other than our own. Finally, we should try to understand our own context as readers. What we bring to a work affects what we think it means. All in all, understanding writers, critics and contexts puts what a reader is thinking and feeling into relief and helps her or him put these feelings into words that others may understand. In accordance with this thought, literary criticism is not so much about discovering what one feels about a piece of literature as finding a way to describe it and learning how to participate in a broad based discussion of literature that has been taking place over centuries.   Copyright by Deborah Griggs. Free for use in educational activities with proper citation.