And resistance isn t easy. Where there is noparaphrasable meaning, dissent is impossible, because there is no threshold for attack. It is like trying to disagree with a poem by Mallarm . I stop talking in seminars altogether. No one has mentioned enjoying a book.
Analysis is practiced completely free of evaluation.
Manifestly, analysis is more important than the texts themselves. In a class on The Canterbury Tales , the secondary literature dwarfs the Tales . We are asked to review books on Chaucer, and even review reviews of books on Chaucer. I see an infinite sequence of mirrors into which Chaucer has disappeared. In the lift down from the English department, I ask one professor what is on her bedside table.