Abstract

Early in February 1978, we received the following letter from Lowry Nelson, Jr., professor of comparative literature at Yale University: Regarding the exchange between Professors Martin and Hartman in Critical Inquiry 4 : 397-416, I would like to comment on the use of the institutional adjective "Yale." Labels are naturally sticky and attaching them is a habit and for a time a convenience. It would be unfortunate if the label that reads "the Yale group" or "the Yale critics" were to gain unchallenged currency. So far as I can see, there is nothing that could be called a "school" of criticism here and certainly there is no indoctrination of students of some touted orthodoxy. In literary criticism there is still, and I am confident there will continue to be, a great range of views and interests discussed generally with amicable forthrightness. Versions of Hegel and Freud, revivals of rhetoric, criticism as "literature," and etymological dabbling are not so very new or so very local. This still enlightened academic grove has not and will not become a lucus a non lucendo.