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> But I tend to agree with your take on New Criticism; or at least, once > taught it, it's difficult to get totally out from under it (& what's > wrong about paying such close attention to a text, anyway?).... > > Doug Well, it *can be distinctly time-consuming, Doug, and drive you blind. I've just been working my way through the 1702 and 1712 editions of Shirley's _The Triumph of Wit_, noting variants in the text of what's called there "The Budge's Song, in Cant". As the only variants seem to be that some words were changed from beginning in caps to beginning in lower case -- "Booze" to "booze", for instance -- I was beginning to think this was an exercise in utter futility when I thought, "Hey, at least this shows that the 1702 edition was popular enough to be actually worth the trouble of setting it up in print again ten years later, rather than just running off a few more copies from the same formes with a different title date." So even the leastest dustmote of history can have some, albeit minor, significance. Dunno whether that makes me a New Historicist, an Old Historicist, or still a New Critic, but. Robin