Here I attempt to explain how literary theory, whose concern is interpreting texts, has expanded into Theory, that “totalizing account of human consciousness and human culture’ (David Lodge). In my view the problematic of reading literary texts is intimately connected with a much wider problematic, since (1) reflection on the problematic of reading literary texts provides a privileged access to “reading in general,” and (2) the problematic of reading in general is part of the problematic of the project of modernity, that is, the project of becoming (in a sense defined by Descartes, Kant and Hegel) ‘‘self-conscious.” Any reflection on reading becomes finally a reflection on the project of modernity, and thus by neglecting its own (artificially drawn) limits, literary theory naturally becomes Theory.

theory, problematic, interpretation, totalizing, reflection, appropriation, modernity, distantiation, Theory, self-concretization