Page 45 - Decoding Culture

38 DECODING CULTURE

his response to Wellek's (1937) philosophical demand that he lay
bare his assumptions and produce a theory in their defence, he
falls back on the notion that what is required of philosophy is very
different to that which is required of literary criticism. One must
avoid the pernicious consequences of 'queering one discipline with
2
the habits of another' (Leavis, 1952: 1 3) and so resist the tempta­
tion to formulate general axioms of method. Leavis does grant that,
over time, the critic may achieve consistency and coherence from
which abstract principles may be inferred, but this is not the pur­
pose of the critical enterprise. Leavis has quite other goals.

I hoped, by putting in fr ont of them [readers of poetry), in a criti­
cism that should keep as close to the concrete as possible, my own
developed 'coherence of response', to get them to agree (with, no
doubt, critical qualifications) that the map, the essential order, of
English poetry seen as a whole did, when they interrogated their
experience, look like that to them also. Ideally I ought perhaps . .
.
to be able to complete the work with a theoretical statement. But I
a m sure that the kind of work that I have attempted comes first, and
would, for such a theoretical statement to be worth anything, have
to be done first. (ibid: 214)

I have quoted this passage because it encompasses so many fea­
tures of Leavis' tacit epistemology. One should keep close to the
concrete, to - a favoured concept this - experience. Theoretical
statements can only be arrived at (if they should be advanced at all)
after the fact: only when the critic has done the work of concrete
textual analysis might there be a place for theory. The idea that the­
oretical presuppositions inform, even constitute, the grounds on
which concrete analysis is built is bypassed in the claim that the
work comes first. Leavis' methodology, then, is a form of induc­
tivism. The skilled observer (critic) examines and explores the
concrete material (poetry) and lays bare its 'essential order'. And
then the readers are invited to 'interrogate their experience' so

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