Indiscernible Counterparts

While the plays of classical France achieve an unprecedented scenic perfection, what ultimately distinguishes classical drama is its unique awareness of its literary properties: the canny excavation of its resources as the site, instrument, and product of a concerted act of writing. But this self-conscious literariness also bears witness to the era's corollary awareness of the predicament in which even great art works stand as the occasion and counterpart of a critical, often ironic act of reading. In &quote;inventing,&quote; that is, creating and discovering, the text as a vehicle of self-determining authorship, the &quote;grands classiques&quote; simultaneously invent the key critical insights shaping the methods we ourselves bring to bear on the poetic monuments they have left us. The literary monument thereby becomes its own &quote;indiscernible counterpart,&quote; deliberately engaging what, in theory, ought to escape it--the deconstructive &quote;other&quote; only another contrives to see.