A note to all literary critics, aspiring and otherwise: when providing "context," it is not necessary to begin from the dawn of time. As a general rule, your reader expects the context to be in some manner relevant to the matter at hand. Besides, this is literary criticism, not James Michener.
It's the historian's temptation, when confronted with a difficult issue, to drop back a couple of centuries and punt.
Posted by: rluker | August 26, 2004 at 12:16 AM