The rhetoric of theory is always in a bind. It pronounces ideas and denounces failures to accept or grasp them while insisting that there are no grounds either for accepting or grasping ideas.

Satire about any and all professionals with a special vocabulary has been a staple of fiction and popular ridicule since the 18th century.

Every original poet has a new insight, or rather introduces a new power.

I don't think theory adds to criticism. (Methodology does, for better or worse.) Theory's function is to make criticism self-conscious, maybe even a little sheepish, about its ex cathedra pronouncements.

The rhetoric of theory is always in a bind. It pronounces ideas and denounces failures to accept or grasp them while insisting that there are no grounds either for accepting or grasping ideas.

Criticism is concerned with evaluation. There may be evaluative principles implicit in this or that form of theory, but theory in and of itself is not prescriptive.

I make a distinction between theory and methodology, the latter being the practical deployment of a premise. Theory on the contrary may well be applied, hence becomes methodology without a hitch, but isn't necessarily practical at all.