The virtual suppression of ethical and evaluative discourse by current literary theory can be seen as the triumph of one post-Enlightenment tradition over others vital to a full account of humanity and literary value. In Ethics, Theory and the Novel David Parker shows that current silences about ethics are as damaging as the earlier political silences of Leavisism and New Criticism. He goes on to examine Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, and novels by D.H. Lawrence, exploring the consequences for major literary works of the suppression of ethical traditions.