Liberal Theory and Eighteenth-Century Criticism

Abstract:In recent years the academic study of literature has been riven by debates over the merits of “critique” (and near synonyms like “strong theory” and “hermeneutics”). In most of these debates, the only imaginable alternatives to the ostensibly destructive and “suspicious” practices of critique have been various forms of “weak” (i.e., descriptive, contextualizing, or affective) theory. In this essay we argue that: a) the dichotomy presented by advocates of “critique” and “postcritique” is a false one, and b) there is an ambitious and complex species of theory native to the eighteenth century that stands outside this dichotomy altogether. We trace the origins of this “native” theory in the work of a series of authors from Locke, to Dryden and Behn, to Addison, Fielding, and Johnson, to (ultimately) Wollstonecraft and Wordsworth. We argue that this native theory is an outgrowth of period thinking about contracts and (especially) liberalism. Although this theoretical tradition was extinguished, primarily by the “hermeneutic turn” of the early nineteenth century, before it could be fully articulated, we argue that it points to an ethical mode of reading that may be vital to the survival of the discipline today.