Why literary periods mattered : historical contrast and the prestige of English studies / Ted Underwood.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Underwood, Ted.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Periodization.

English literature.

English literature--Study and teaching--History.

English literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

Physical Description:

viii, 199 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the mid-nineteenth century, the study of English literature began to be divided into courses that surveyed discrete "periods." Since that time, scholars' definitions of literature and their rationales for teaching it have changed radically. But the periodized structure of the curriculum has remained oddly unshaken, as if the exercise of contrasting one literary period with another has an importance that transcends the content of any individual course. Why Literary Periods Mattered explains how historical contrast became central to literary study, and why it remained institutionally central in spite of critical controversy about literature itself. Organizing literary history around contrast rather than causal continuity helped literature departments separate themselves from departments of history. But critics' long reliance on a rhetoric of contrasted movements and fateful turns has produced important blind spots in the discipline. In the twenty-first century, Underwood argues, literary study may need digital technology in particular to develop new methods of reasoning about gradual, continuous change.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Historical Contrast and the Prestige of Literary Culture

1. Historical Unconsciousness in the Novel, 1790–1819

2. The Invention of Historical Perspective

3. The Invention of the Period Survey Course

4. The Disciplinary Rationale for Periodization, and a Forgotten Challenge to It (1886–1949)

5. Stories of Parallel Lives and the Status Anxieties of Historicism in the 1990's

6. Digital Humanities and the Future of Literary History

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Nov 2020)

ISBN:

9780804788441

0804788448

OCLC:

1224278452