The Law and the Prophets

Abstract

Whereas critics like Blackmur had seen themselves as high priests at the altar of literature, the religious (or religiose) attitude to writers characteristic of the 1950s faded rapidly from the work of the newly-converted theorists in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Criticism could now become as difficult and unparaphraseable as the texts it had formerly served; theory was subordinate only to the master theorists. The old author-worship was apparently dead; religion, according to many theorists, is simply another form of establishment mystification, waiting in line for deconstruction. In reality, the mantle had passed from the poets to the theorists; the high priests of the old dispensation had become the gods of the new one.

Now the method of growing Wise, Learned, and Sublime having become so regular an Affair, and so established in all its Forms; the Number of Writers must needs have encreased accordingly, and to a Pitch that has made it of absolute Necessity for them to interfere continually with each other. Besides, it is reckoned, that there is not at this present, a sufficient Quantity of new Matter left in Nature, to furnish and adorn any one particular Subject to the Extent of a Volume.

Swift, A Tale of a Tub