SOURCE: Bisztray, George. “Marxism and the Pluralism of Critical Methods.” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 26 (1977): 10-16.

In the following essay, Bisztray outlines the dialectical methods used by Marxist critics as an underlying criterion for the Marxist perspective in literary interpreation.

We are told that we live in an era of pluralism of literary methods. Today, in German literary scholarship, Methodenpluralismus is a fashionable term, which has already inspired a number of studies and anthologies. Jost Hermand's pioneering Synthetisches Interpretieren (1968) was followed by several similar investigations.¹ In France and the English-speaking countries, methodological discussion has been less profuse than in Germany, Scandinavia, and the East-Central European world. Nevertheless, even here the signs of change cannot be missed. In France, structuralism and its outgrowth, semiotics, challenged the monopoly of post-war existentialism (and, for that matter, pre-war explication de texte). Meanwhile, here in the United States, it has become fashionable...