More info on the Chicago School here. fine article by Brian Corman ("Chicago Critics" entry in Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism).

Here's an interesting bit:

"One of the more controversial consequences of their [the Chicago critics] assumption that literary meaning is to be found in the (generic) intention of the text is that like Aristotle, they subordinate the function of literary language to the larger structure of the work as a whole: "The words must be explained in terms of something else, not the poem in terms of the words; and further, a principle must be a principle of something other than itself; hence the words cannot be a principle of their own arrangements" (Olson, On Value 13)."