Rationality quotes time!
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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 Bayesian epistemology. Imagine if Dennet taught the literary theorist that, don't you think he'd do better literary theory? Don't you think he'd avoid traps that other theorists fall into, of arguing the meaningless or unknowable?
You seem to miss Dennett's point: the guy wasn't there because he cared about having a good epistemology, an accurate theory of the world - it's merely what everyone else is doing at the minute, and so he's doing it too.