'The history of exegesis in western thought has been marked by a polarisation between those who believe the meaning of anything can be determined once and for all by the simple exercise of our powers of observation and analysis, and those who see meaning as luminous, personal, and changeable through time. Standing like two cities, whose walls encompass most kinds of literary criticism (an opposition perhaps best represented by the methods of historicism and 'New Criticism'), they are the two encampments of pre-conceived method, and we contend that the only way to be truly open to literary texts is to escape to the open ground between them.' (Paragraph one of abstract)
