Representation and Symbolism as Critical Centers

The most obvious distinction between poststructuralism and new criticism is that the new critics zeroed in on symbolism, frequently a symbolism with spiritual reverberations, whereas for poststructuralists issues of representation were central, often foregrounded by self-reflective authors. In this issue Megan Williams examines Melville's "probing the limits of representation" and valorizing the literary over the photographic, and Adam Sonstegard shows James getting in some digs at the illustrators of his stories, demonstrating "what verbal artists can 'do' . . . that visual artists cannot." In contrast, Klaus P. Stich examines the "exploration of myth" in two Willa Cather novels, and Stacey Peebles explores the "mythic resonance" of Cormac McCarthy's allusions to Yuma Indian lore in Blood Meridian. Both critical procedures yield new insights into the works examined. Indeed they are not altogether out of accord. If Melville's images tell us that the modern hero has been "turned into a mechanical instrument whose disinterest precludes the possibility of depth of a soul," Peebles argues only for a mythic minimum of soul in the dubious and doomed protagonist of Blood Meridian.