The problems created by the competing claims of various schools of criticism for a unified view of meaning are examined in this book. Chapters deal with the following topics: the problem of the plurality of modes, Ronald Crane and the pluralism of discrete modes, Kenneth Burke's multiplication of perspectives, history as criticism and the plurality of histories in M. H. Abrams, the pursuit of understanding as a limit of pluralism, the reader and alien modes, and our many different businesses with art. An appendix contains a Hippocratic oath for the pluralist. (DF)