ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests the choice of a context of consumption which makes the doctrine of the work of art itself plausible. It considers considering how the specific regulative principles of consumption themselves misrepresent the practice of artistically relevant controversy. Now nobody denies that poems are consumed and that the consumption is important to the consumers. So, in one way or another, is everything else consumed that is neither ignored nor destroyed. Precisely the most sophisticated critic most consistently considers the poem as a fact in the public domain of proper understanding and instruction. Of all the rules of consumption, the rule of right brings discussion most sharply against the trouble with critical objects in the context of consumption. "The poem in proper relation" must be the critical object of poetically relevant controversy, "the work of art in proper relation" the critical object of artistically relevant controversy in general.
