ABSTRACT
I What are the constraints that govern our reading of texts, in particular those texts that implicitly thematize or foreground the activity of reading? Could one spell out any kind of ethical imperative that would lay down rules for this activity and thereby establish a generalized code for the practice of responsible criticism? And if so, what relationship could possibly obtain between the absolute, categorical nature of any such claim and the detailed business of applying it to this or that text? These are some of the questions that J.Hillis Miller raises in a series of essays first delivered as the Wellek Library Lectures at Irvine, California in 1985.1 As he remarks, there was a certain irony in this situation, since René Wellek is prominent among those who have condemned “deconstruction” in general-and Miller’s recent work in particular-as a species of last-ditch nihilism bent upon destroying the ethical and humanistic bases of literary study.2 These critics tend to compromise their own declared values by giving little sign of having carefully read the texts in question, or by conducting their polemics mainly at the level of unargued imputation. So when Miller takes the “ethics of reading” as his theme it is with a view to turning back these ill-founded charges by engaging his opponents very much on their own chosen ground.
