Page 104 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

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and unpredictable lives which we ourselves lead are also
preordained by linguistic structures even if these are far more
various than those which restrict literary characters. Our
vaunted individuality may not be a liberty which we seize but a
licence which words grant. Perhaps only through words do we
become sufficiently discriminating to identify ourselves and
sufficiently audible to be recognized by others. Without
personal pronouns and personal names, could we tell ourselves
apart?
Some critics would now argue that it is the English
language that speaks us rather than we who deign to speak
it. You may have no individual intellectual existence beyond
the innumerable texts which have ordered your thoughts.
You will not yourself have directly read most of these texts.
Yet their vocabulary and usage may have influenced the
phrasing of some speech that you have heard, or contributed
to the style of some book that you did once read. They may
thus have indirectly determined how you will decode the
next of those relatively few works which you will read for
yourself.
Perhaps there is a never-ending interdependence through
which understanding of one text is programmed by knowledge
drawn—however unconsciously—from others. Such
intertextuality may mean that even a work which is now
scarcely ever read is still influencing the language in which we
shape our ideas. These views—just as much as traditionalist
ones—suggest that describing any work in the past tense as if it
is a spent force must be misleading.
For not unrelated reasons, authors as interesting, historical
personalities who once led idiosyncratic lives seem
unimportant to many modern critics. You may still believe
that the purpose which a work was designed to serve is
discoverable; you may consequently wish to write in terms of
its author’s apparent intentions. If you do leave the secure
grounds of the text to enter the danger zone of literary
biography, tread warily. Return as soon as possible to
observing only those authorial choices which can still be seen
at work in the text. These must be reported in the present
tense. Those ideas or actions of an author which are not
recorded within the work under discussion may tempt you to
use the past tense, but they are likely to be irrelevant. By