It has been traditional for New World literary scholars to follow the direction of European theorists. If Aristotle has been the bedrock referent, in recent years the theorists writing from France have become objects of incantation. Reading articles submitted to journals for publication, one gets the impression that many young scholars in this hemisphere believe that to legitimize anything they write they must make it clear at the outset that their approach has been sanctified by Genette, Greimas, Todorov, Kristeva, Barthes, and so on.