Re: authorial intent

I think that's a valid distinction, but I would say Woolf, Eliot, Pound,
C.S. Lewis, and Tolkein engaged in what you could call theory. I think
you're probably right to exclude Updike, but doesn't every act of literary
criticism assume certain theoretical assumptions? Literary theorists are
simply literary critics who spell out the assumptions behind their approach
to literature.

Jim

Kim Johnson wrote:

> --- Jim Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu> wrote:
> > Quite a few notable authors in the past (and
> > present) also did/do a good
> > bit of literary criticism -- Updike, Miller, Eliot,
> > Woolf, Ezra Pound,
> > Wyndham Lewis, C.S. Lewis, Tolkein...the list could
> > go on and on.
>
> i guess in my mind there's a difference between
> literary criticism and literary theory. some one like
> updike, say, certainly isn't considered a literary
> theorist. his innumberable book reviews hardly count
> as literary theory. by miller, i assume you mean henry
> not arthur. i don't recall miller being much a
> theorist about writing, apart from an equation of the
> phallus and the pen. though new directions did do a
> volume of miller on writing, grant you. woolf
> certainly had a vision of the novel, and did do a lot
> of great work outside of her 'sunday essays' collected
> in the common readers. pound, okay, had many theories
> about writing--his fetish for the image, the vortex,
> the ideogrammatic method-- but much of his noncreative
> work is simply: read this you idiot. or: let me
> enlighten you about economics, etc.
>
> i guess i mean i don't see creative writers itching to
> read the next issue of pmla. that there's a difference
> between practicing the art and analyzing it (almost to
> death). there are exceptions, yes.
>
> kim
>
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Received on Fri Oct 25 14:46:25 2002