Professing Literature
An Institutional History, Twentieth Anniversary Edition
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
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
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Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: The Humanist Myth
- Literature in the Old College: 1828–1876
- The Early Professional Era: 1875–1915
- Scholars Versus Critics: 1915–1950
- Scholars Versus Critics: 1940–1965
- Problems of Theory: 1965–
- Notes
- Index