2.2.2

Models for genetic criticism

Genetic critics are faced with what scientists call an inverse problem: starting from the observed effects (the final work and all the available traces left in the course of the labour of creation), they want to reconstruct the process that produced these effects. The solution of such problems generally involves the production of models and their subsequent adjustment to the empirical data. More generally, models are used to provide us with a simplified representation of reality whenever the data is too rich and the factors involved are too complex to be directly apprehended. In our field, models can hardly be mathematical formulae governing sets of identified parameters; they are more likely to be analogies that help us to grasp the peculiar logic that is at work in the creative process. Some of these models are implicit in the work of genetic critics: it is preferable to make them explicit so as to be conscious of their limitations.