Ginger:
Ralph Ellison says somewhere that the imagination is integrative: It finds connections; it includes. A metaphor, after all, is an imaginative connection.
I think the first and best impulse behind much of contemporary literary criticism was to make connections that had long been disallowed. It is interesting to read "Pride and Prejudice" and try to connect the characters' wealth and leisure to the slavery that produced it. It's interesting to read Byron and think about the cultural values that allowed him to relegate half the human race to the role of mysterious playthings.
Like any other impulse, that one became corrupted by opportunism and fashion. Much discussion of literature now, especially on campus, amounts to deciding which ghetto to place it in: gay, black, feminist, Hispanic. So that urge to make connections has become instead an urge to impose divisions.
But I still agree with Ellison. There's little in my experience to compare with reading a poem and discovering I can connect with another human being -- and strangely enough, the connection I discover is often with his or her connections; that is, the poet offers a metaphor and I say, "Of course!" As critics and teachers, we could hardly find a higher calling than passing that experience on.
RPW
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