In Jorge Luis Borges's short story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" we learn that Menard, the fictional 20th century writer of the eponymous title, immerses himself in the language and culture of 16th century Spain (pre-1602, to be precise), to the point where he writes a chapters of a book which are word-for-word identical parts of Don Quixote.

Yet the literary criticism of Borges's short story points out how the two texts have different messages.

For Cervantes, this is a book for the people, written in the language of the people.

For Menard, this is a book for specialists, who would understand the old Spanish language.

In the 20th century of Bertrand Russell and William James, the philosophical concepts that an educated writer like Menard would know are far different than 16th century Spain, so an expression like "history, the mother of truth" has different meanings.

Since you mention Homer, if I were to write of the wine-dark sea you would know I am referring to Homer. It brings along cultural connections, including its own Wikipedia page.

While when Homer uses it, it doesn't have those connections.

The idea that a text stands alone is a formalist style known as New Criticism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism .

> New Criticism developed as a reaction to the older philological and literary history schools of New England, which focused on the history and meaning of individual words and their relation to foreign and ancient languages, comparative sources, and the biographical circumstances of the authors, taking this approach under the influence of nineteenth-century German scholarship. The New Critics felt that this approach tended to distract from the text and meaning of a poem and entirely neglect its aesthetic qualities in favor of teaching about external factors. ...

> It was frequently alleged that the New Criticism treated literary texts as autonomous and divorced from historical context, and that its practitioners were "uninterested in the human meaning, the social function and effect of literature."

Borges's story is a commentary about this debate.

While the linked-to essay in the Chronicle made no mention of the long discussion of the relevant literary theories, seemingly insisting that analytical writing somehow stands outside that debate, by simply ignoring the debate.

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