Professing Literature
An Institutional History, Twentieth Anniversary Edition
With a new Preface by the Author
340 pages
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5-3/4 x 9
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© 1987, 2007
Widely considered the standard history of the profession of literary studies, Professing Literature unearths the long-forgotten ideas and debates that created the literature department as we know it today. In a readable and often-amusing narrative, Gerald Graff shows that the heated conflicts of our recent culture wars echo—and often recycle—controversies over how literature should be taught that began more than a century ago.
Updated with a new preface by the author that addresses many of the provocative arguments raised by its initial publication, Professing Literature remains an essential history of literary pedagogy and a critical classic.
“Graff’s history. . . is a pathbreaking investigation showing how our institutions shape literary thought and proposing how they might be changed.”— The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
Updated with a new preface by the author that addresses many of the provocative arguments raised by its initial publication, Professing Literature remains an essential history of literary pedagogy and a critical classic.
“Graff’s history. . . is a pathbreaking investigation showing how our institutions shape literary thought and proposing how they might be changed.”— The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
Contents
Preface Twenty Years Later
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: Humanist Myth
LITERATURE IN THE OLD COLLEGE: 1828-1876
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: Humanist Myth
LITERATURE IN THE OLD COLLEGE: 1828-1876
2 The Classical College
3 Oratorical Culture and the Teaching of English
4 The Investigators (1): The New University
5 The Investigators (2): The Origins of Literature Departments
6 The Generalist Opposition
7 Crisis at the Outset: 1890-1915
SCHOLARS VERSUS CRITICS:1915-1930
8 Scholars versus Critics: 1915-1930
9 Groping for a Principle of Order: 1930-1950
10 General Education and the Pedagogy of Criticism: 1930-1950
SCHOLARS VERSUS CRITICS: 1940-1965
11 History versus Criticism: 1940-1960
12 Modern Literature in the University: 1940-1960
13 The Promise of American Literature Studies
14 Rags to Riches to Routine
PROBLEMS OF THEORY: 1965-
15 Tradition versus Theory
Notes
Index
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Education: Higher Education
Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
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