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As a consequence of this idea of language, I argue in chapter 5, ‘Types of Poetry’, that the teaching and reading of poetry tends to be conducted as though its languages were approachable by way of a limited number of critical means, as though the many varieties of poetic discourse could be rationalised by a limited set of governing ideas.
This fallacy is akin to the notion, which persists despite acknowledgement from all sides that exact translation is impossible, that meaning from another language or another culture comes to us largely unmodified. Since popular critical ideas of literary interpretation are shaped by a (sometimes much delayed) filtering down of assumptions bequeathed by the academy, this is also the dominant idea of literary communication outside schools and colleges to the present. Readings are made, discussions centre upon, and reviews in newspapers are grounded in the conviction that literary meaning ought to be tidy, centripetal, uniform in its sanctioned varieties, intention-oriented, and communicable by way of good, old, reliable, plain-spoken, Anglo-Saxon, pragmatic discourse. Whatever literature thinks it is, whatever its makers imagine for it, if it wants to sell, it must never stray too far from the vulgate. In effect and on every side, literature is put on notice by the demos that it should mind its manners, to the extent that even the exotic should shock in familiar ways. Fortunately, literature at its best, at its greatest, is not so drearily obedient. Our responses need not be, either.