This excerpt, chosen by Jay, is from "Generational Conflicts within Hispanism: Notes from the Comedia Wars," published in Cervantes and His Postmodern Constituencies, ed. Anne J. Cruz and Carroll B. Johnson (New York: Garland, 1999): 68-78. The volume contains selected papers read at the Southern California Cervantes Symposium held at UCLA on May 23, 1996, entitled "Colloquies in Conflict: Cervantes and His Postmodern Constituencies." The question we must ask of a piece of criticism is a ... simple ... one: how does it illuminate the work it treats? Not "How does it reveal the limitations of the text's author" or "What clues does it offer as to the nature of those limitations?" nor "How elegantly does it validate the theory being applied?" Those are perfectly legitimate questions, but they are not literary criticism. Which brings us to the real issue: what question do we put to the literary work?
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