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I
Why do we so often have to put up with terrible prose seeking to pass as legitimate expression? (By "we" I mean those professionally engaged in the study of literature in the university. No one else in their right mind would attempt to read a typical academic critical study.) I believe that there are two reasons; the first I will merely note, and the second I will discuss at some length. First, there are simply more writers writing. Too many university faculty with little talent for expression and even less regard for the time and intellectual energy of their readers are producing essays and books in order to advance professionally. Another reason for the prevalence of bad writing in academic criticism is that it can serve a rhetorical purpose in the expression of the critic's ideas. This is of course too clever a paradox to be true for the wide range of critical strategies available in the contemporary critical marketplace. I can, however, seek to demonstrate its truth in a specific but characteristic area of present-day literary studies-that of the New Historicism-and thereby suggest its possible applicability as a hypothesis in other areas.
The three examples of contemporary academic critical prose I wish to examine in detail all deal with late nineteenth-century American literature and culture. I have chosen these examples because they are found in prominent works in one of my fields of interest, works which I have read and considered. The three examples are drawn from Walter Benn Michaels's The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism (1987), Michael Fried's Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane (1987), and Mark Seltzer's Bodies and Machines (1992). The three works are considered major studies and are by well-known scholars who hold professorships in major research universities.
II
Before taking up these exemplary passages, however, I would like to discuss briefly a statement by Stephen Greenblatt in his essay "Culture," in Critical Terms for Literary Study (1990), edited by Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin.
In any culture there is a general symbolic economy made up of the myriad signs that excite human desire, fear, and aggression. Through their ability to construct resonant stories, their command of effective imagery, and above all their sensitivity...