The rise and fall of English : reconstructing English as a discipline

In this lucid book an eminent scholar, teacher, and author takes a critical look at the nature and direction of English studies in America. Robert Scholes offers a thoughtful and witty intervention in current debates about educational and cultural values and goals, showing how English came to occupy its present place in our educational system, diagnosing the educational illness he perceives in today’s English departments, and recommending theoretical and practical changes in the field of English studies. Scholes’s position defies neat labels - it is a deeply conservative expression of the wish to preserve the best in the English tradition of verbal and textual studies, yet it is a radical argument for reconstruction of the discipline of English. The book begins by examining the history of the rapid rise of English at two American universities - Yale and Brown - at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Scholes argues that the subsequent fall of English, discernible today in college English departments across the United States, is the result of both cultural shifts and changes within the field of English itself. He calls for a fundamental reorientation of the discipline - away from political or highly theoretical issues, away from a specific canon of texts, and toward a canon of methods, to be used in the process of learning how to situate, compose, and read a text. He offers an eloquent proposal for a discipline based on rhetoric and the teaching of reading and writing over a broad range of literatures, a discipline that includes literariness but is not limited to it. Annotation. In this lucid book, an eminent scholar, teacher, and author takes a critical look at the nature and direction of English studies in America today. Robert Scholes offers a thoughtful and optimistic argument to preserve the best in the English tradition of verbal and textual studies, while arguing for a radical reconstruction of the discipline of English--away from political issues and a specific canon of texts and toward a canon of methods. Book jacket Contents 7 Preface 9 Acknowledgments 13 CHAPTER 1. The Rise of English in Two American Colleges 17 CHAPTER 2. "No dog would go on living like this" 53 CHAPTER 3. What Is Becoming an English Teacher? 85 CHAPTER 4. A Flock of Cultures: A Trivial Proposal 119 CHAPTER 5. A Fortunate Fall? 159 Appendixes 197 Works Cited 207 Index 213