Book Review: Intertextuality and the Media. From Genre to Everyday Life

Abstract

in the interpretation of the text. The fact that 'very often we want to say the same kinds of things about the poems' (p. 17) seems remarkable in Jeffries's eyes. But the book's mission is to show how to base whatever we have to say 'upon known cause and rational deduction' (to borrow again Samuel Johnson's words). Even Mackay does this as he explores the stylistic features (lexical elements, locatives, enjambment, end-stopping) that have the potentiality of generating different responses in different readers. And when he reaches a point where he has to pass from the area of analysis into an area of subjectivity, all we can do is agree to differ.But the essence of the practical methods as presented by Contemporary Poems: Some Critical Approaches is that discordance and concurrence should be referred to the text after being closely analysed and prudently reasoned. Furthermore, the commentaries in these essays raise stylistic issues which are very stimulating and valid in a discussion on the linguistic nature of literature and the literary value of texts -issues which might lead the deliberation to new ground. They all, however, take for granted the clear distinction between stylistic analysis and the reading of literature. Stylistic observations are a discussion on literature and not a substitute for the actual reading of the texts themselves, although sometimes critical studies are misused as that. Pedagogically I believe that the experience of practical criticism should precede the study of critical theory and therefore I consider Contemporary Poems: Some Critical Approaches a useful compilation of critical approaches offering an expedient transition from practical techniques to theoretical consideration.