When I was a young untenured professor of philosophy, I once received a visit from a colleague from the Comparative Literature Department, an eminent and fashionable literary theorist, who wanted some help from me. I was flattered to be asked, and did my best to oblige, but the drift of his questions about various philosophical topics was strangely perplexing to me. For quite a while we were getting nowhere, until finally he managed to make clear to me what he had come for. He wanted "an epistemology," he said. An epistemology. Every self-respecting literary theorist had to sport an epistemology that season, it seems, and without one he felt naked, so he had come to me for an epistemology to wear--it was the very next fashion, he was sure, and he wanted the dernier cri in epistemologies. It didn't matter to him that it be sound, or defensible, or (as one might as well say) true; it just had to be new and different and stylish. Accessorize, my good fellow, or be overlooked at the party.
Example of professing a belief - here, belief is a fashion statement, or something fun to whip out at parties, not a thing that actually constrains anticipation.
I think an epistemology is something a literary theorist in particular has special need of. One thing you can do with an epistemology is recognize meaningless or unknowable claims.
I mean, I don't know much about literary theory. But I expect my belief that literary theorists need to know epistemology is common here. I mean, one of the (older) posts uses a literature professor as an example of someone trapped by a meaningless claim (No Logical Positivist, I).
As for "an" epistemology, yes, there are a plurality of them. Of which one (or more?) is B...
Rationality quotes time!
The usual rules: