Criticism dates far quicker than art. That is only to be expected: just, as well as natural. Now that F.R. Leavis's sword no longer sleeps - or rather does not sleep - in his hand, his attitudes to chosen texts are no longer inculcated, the students no longer exhorted to place themselves on the side of life by reading books that will show them 'where life flows'. Those socio-religious and poetic metaphors seem a little quaint now, but no doubt the time is not far off when 'discourses' and le jeu des signifiants will seem equally quaint.

LRB 24 July 1986 | PDF Download