1 - Interaction

Summary

All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudo-scientific classifying and analysing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.’ The first thing to say is that Lawrence’s protest deserves honest respect. If one had to make an exclusive choice between that version of ’criticism’ which confines itself to the technical and the typical, and a kind that sees as its task assessment of particulars unfettered by reference, even, to types and to any sort of technical consideration: if one must choose, one must choose the latter. Comparative inarticulacy is preferable to a decreative sophistication. And the second thing to say is that we need not make such a choice. Our ability to confront literature fruitfully - to be creative - requires articulacy; and true articulacy requires the direction of the recreative mind. But must articulacy imply classification and analysis?