The rise and fall of English : reconstructing English as a discipline / Robert Scholes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Scholes, Robert, 1929-2016.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Scholes, Robert, 1929-2016.

Scholes, Robert.

English philology--Study and teaching--United States.

English philology.

Language arts (Secondary)--United States.

Language arts (Secondary).

English philology--Study and teaching--Great Britain.

English teachers--United States--Biography.

English teachers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (220 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1. The Rise of English in Two American Colleges

CHAPTER 2. "No dog would go on living like this"

CHAPTER 3. What Is Becoming an English Teacher?

CHAPTER 4. A Flock of Cultures: A Trivial Proposal

CHAPTER 5. A Fortunate Fall?

Appendixes

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-195) and index.

ISBN:

9786611729226

9781281729224

1281729221

9780300128895

0300128894

9780585343860

0585343861

OCLC:

952733891