I will be confining my observations to a number of critics on the American scene. My objective is not to conduct a survey but to examine — through a few examples — a persistent and unintended consequence of the recent antithematic direction in theory: thematising is to be avoided as theory is to search for a purity that would celebrate method while suppressing substance, and structural functions while suppressing ideology. Such an emphasis, with its fear of the ontological and its consequent suppression of the worldly references of words, has led to an imbalance and, in some quarters, a smugness that regards with disdain the critical concern with the moral and ideological consequences of literary works. My use of the term ideology, I hasten to add, covers a spectrum of commitments far broader than the political — indeed the entire range of moral-thematic belief systems — although in the end most of them may be seen as having political consequences.