A poem or story was a puzzle for which critics could be sure they had all pieces and that these dovetailed. Now neither assurance is available; one cannot be certain a work seen as engaged in history is internally cohort, or that the issues it treats finally hang together. This development is not altogether congenial to literary critics who mean to analyze works, not to dismantle them. But if we take literatures link to history seriously, we will have to admit that it renders literature contingent, like history itself (The Ties That Bind: Race and Sex in Pudd ‘n Head Wilson by: Myra Johlen Source: American Literary History, Vol. 2, No. 1, (Spring 1990), pp. 39-55, Published by Oxford University
A poem or story was a puzzle for which critics could be sure they had all pieces and that these dovetailed. Now neither assurance is available; one cannot be certain a work seen as engaged in history is internally cohort, or that the issues it treats finally hang together. This development is not altogether congenial to literary critics who mean to analyze works, not to dismantle them. But if we take literatures link to history seriously, we will have to admit that it renders literature contingent, like history itself (The Ties That Bind: Race and Sex in Pudd ‘n Head Wilson by: Myra Johlen Source: American Literary History, Vol. 2, No. 1, (Spring 1990), pp. 39-55, Published by Oxford University