EN 466 LITERARY THEORY
MIDTERM EXAM ESSAY
DIRECTIONS: Write an essay that responds to the questions below, taking special care to incorporate the concepts in bold print.
Duke University is a "center" of literary theory and cultural studies. There,Jane Tompkins is a Deconstructivist theorist colleague of reader-response theorist Stanley Fish. Tompkins accuses Fish of being just another New Critic in disguise, and participating in the "guilty silence" which bedevils the New Critical approach. Is Tompkins right? What are the common grounds of New Criticism and reader-response theory? Where do they differ?
Fish hasn't specifically done so in print, but he could counterattack that Tompkins' own critical procedures are contaminated by New Criticsm.. What are the common grounds of New Criticism and deconstruction? How do they differ?
Could this quarrel be resolved by teaching the conflicts, as their colleague Graff proposes?