Literary Study and the Social Order

by Stephen L. Tanner

Literary study used to be a repertoire of often compatible approaches (formalistic, biographical, psychological, philological, archetypal, moral, etc.). These approaches shared the fundamental assumption that authors are human beings capable, within broad linguistic possibilities, of describing and interpreting in meaningful ways to others the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual range of human experience. Movements in literary theory now come congealed with exclusionary ideological and anti-metaphysical woridviews that call into question human nature, agency, and communication. Before we continue the interminable but ever necessary debate regarding the relation of literary study--as literary study--to the social order, we need to confront more deliberately the full implications of postmodern literary-intellectual opinion for the social and moral order.