Postcritique, Critique, Precritique: A Personal View

Abstract

The discipline of literary studies finds itself in a nebulous zone that has been dubbed “postcritique”. The term recognises that the age of critique (for forty years the dominant paradigm within “literary theory”) is over. Teachers and researchers appear somewhat divided as to how to proceed. This article suggests that the answer lies in a return to “precritique”—not an era in time but a position created by review of the logical misstep that made possible the application of theory to the practice of literary criticism in the first place.

Keywords:

• postcritique
• critique
• close reading

Acknowledgements

My thanks to David Cornwell, Judy Cornwell, and Marius Vermaak. Financial assistance from the Division of Research at Rhodes University is also acknowledged.

Notes

1 An honourable exception is Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan’s excellent Narrative Fiction: Contemprorary Poetics (1983), which has nothing to do with critique but makes a valuable contribution to narratology by innovatively consolidating classical, Anglo-American, and European scholarship in the field.