Politics and Value in English Studies: A Discipline in Crisis?

by Josephine M. Guy , Ian Small

• ISBN13: 9780521112130
• ISBN10: 0521112133
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-06-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The current debate about the nature of English studies has questioned the status of English as a discipline. Josephine Guy and Ian Small set this so-called 'crisis in English' within the larger context of disciplinary knowledge. They examine the teaching of English and literary studies in the United States and Britain, and argue that the explicit attempt by some radical critics on both sides of the Atlantic to politicise the discipline has profound consequences for the nature of English studies. They describe the current state of disciplinary knowledge, together with its social and philosophical preconditions; they analyse recent proposals for reform; and they discuss the ways in which these proposed reforms would affect the three main practices of the discipline - literary criticism, literary history and text-editing. In the process they demystify issues and arguments which have often in the past been obscured by jargon and polemic.

Table of Contents

Preliminaries

The nature of disciplinary knowledge

Authority and value

Value in literary history

Value in text-editing

The discipline of English

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.