ABSTRACT
As can be seen, this French criticism is both 'national' (it owes little or nothing to Anglo-American, Spitzerian or Crociana criticism) and up to date orif the expression seems preferable-'unfaithful to the past' (since it belongs entirely to an aspect of contemporary ideology, it can hardly consider itself as being indebted to any critical tradition, whether founded by Sainte-Beuve, Taine, or Lanson). However, the last-named type of criticism raises a particular problem in this connection. Lansonb was the prototype of the French teacher of literature and, during the last fifty years, his work, method, and mentality, as transmitted by innumerable disciples, have continued to govern academic criticism. Since the principles, or at least the declared principles, of this kind of criticism are accuracy and objectivity in the establishment of facts, it might be thought that there would be no incompatibility between Lansonianism and the various forms of ideological criticism, which are all interpretative. But although most presentday French critics (I am thinking of those who deal with structure, not those concerned with current reviewing) are themselves teachers, there is a certain amount of tension between interpretative and positivistic (academic) criticism. The reason is that Lansonianism is itself an ideology; it is not simply content to demand the application of the objective rules of all scientific research, it also implies certain general convictions about man, history, literature, and the relationship between the author and his work. For instance, Lansonian psychology is quite out of date, since it consists fundamentally of a kind of analogical determinism, according to which the details of a given work must resemble the details of the author's life, the characters the innermost being of the author, and so on. This makes it a very peculiar ideology because, since it was invented, psychology has, among other things, imagined the opposite relationship of negation between the work and the author. Of course, it is inevitable that an ideology should be based on philosophical postulates; the argument against Lansonianism is not that it has assumptions, but that instead of admitting them, it drapes them in a moral cloak of rigorous and objective investigation; it is as if ideology were being smuggled surreptitiously into the scientific approach.
