Summary
Critic whose Validity in Interpretation opens “Sense and Sensibility”, Said’s essay on R. P. Blackmur and Georges Poulet (Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, PDF p.41-42).
Details
- Hirsch divides criticism into two moments, the first intuitive and deeply sympathetic, the second reflexive and logical, and focuses his book exclusively on the second, although, in Said’s account, the first moment always influences the second (PDF p.41).
- His book argues for a modest hermeneutic in which intention (in Husserl’s sense), or meaning as opposed to significance, is common to every use of language, and genre is the broadest category of intention in literature (PDF p.41).
- He is prudently hamstrung, in Said’s account, by two limitations: “there are no general rules which are at once general and practical”, and there are no rules for generating insights (PDF p.41).
- His most interesting observation, for Said, is that in criticism “to understand is to understand as necessary” (PDF p.41).
Related pages
R. P. Blackmur, Georges Poulet, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays