| Chapter 1: | What Happens? What Is to Be Done? A Paean to Bricolage |
|
|
Norman Holland lends himself to this pattern of reading because in his system of analysis the literary work stands in a ‘deeper’ foundational relation to the identity of the reader, some of whose important idiosyncrasies are foregrounded as “identity theme(s)”.5
Examples of theories grounded in “discontinuities” notions of reading are Wolfgang Iser’s, which envisages “blanks” or “gaps” left in the literary work which must be completed by the reader before those works can be construed, and Pierre Macherey, who ties his bridging of gaps to an ideal (that is, a Marxian) reader.
Beyond their value in focussing attention on the individual in the act of reading, these categories offer a means of broadening the appeal of theorists whose oblique similarities are usually overlooked. For instance, Georges Poulet and E. D. Hirsch can be combined under this heading even as the sharp differences between their theories are acknowledged, insofar as both critics hold (in very different ways and degree) that an author’s mind can be known ‘beneath’ or ‘inside’ the textual presentation.6
In this approach, it is the reader who dominates rather than the theorist invoked by that reader. For example, it would be open to the reader of an unusually allusive poem to decide that the task of clarifying his responses would be better trusted to—say—Georges Poulet’s style of reading than to the model proposed by E. D. Hirsch. In thinking of Hirsch and Poulet, the invitation is to take up into a pattern of response a conscious re-writing of either theorist or both of them or neither. No allegiance to authorities is tolerated at any stage. Hirsch and Poulet might be as readily discarded as embraced, and other theorists who seem more helpful, brought to bear. The reader consciously appropriates, even dominates, the theorist at every point according to what he or she decides is most useful at the time of reading.
It is not necessary that Poulet or Hirsch or any other theorist or theory be known intimately before the process of self-reformation may begin. The silly requirement that the commanding heights of theory be conquered before climbing commences is refused absolutely.