I'm a fan or naysayer like everyone else, not an authority of any kind.

The mantra of the new historicists was "we have betrayed ourselves." Since their emergence, there have been more or less interesting paradigm shifts having mainly to do with Habermas and the increased focus on media studies, but the talismanic word has never ceased to be "history."

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

The basic change in the landscape since my salad days started with the defensive rediscovery of history and politics by all the theoretically-oriented academics in the late seventies and eighties.

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.

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

I myself always want to talk about "poetry," not "the poem."