In literature, too, critics have been willing to accept
complexity and contradiction in their medium. As in architectural
criticism, they refer to a Mannerist era, but unlike
most architectural critics, they also acknowledge a "mannerist"
strain continuing through particular poets, and some,
indeed, for a long time have emphasized the qualities of
contradiction, paradox, and ambiguity as basic to the medium
of poetry, just as Albers does with painting.