Eugene Goodheart's book is as direct as its title: Does Literary
Studies Have a Future? As we approach the end of a millennium, the
battle for the fate of literary scholarship has taken on near
apocalyptic overtones, with more than a few predictions of the
imminent end of literary studies as we know it. In such an
environment, Goodheart's thoughtful and provocative book is sure to
cause a stir. Taking aim at culture warriors on the left and the
right, Goodheart provides a succinct and timely assessment of the
current state and the future of literary studies in the United
States. He argues that the battles that have been fought over
tradition, the canon, aesthetics, and objectivity not only distort
the issues at stake, but guarantee that nothing fruitful can emerge
from the battles. For Goodheart, the opposition between tradition
(the cause of the right) and innovation (the cause of the left) is
essentially false: tradition is an interactive history between the
given and innovation, not an inert set of values or a stable canon
of approved texts.
Does Literary Studies Have a Future? challenges the view that
literary classics must be relevant to our immediate concerns:
rather than providing easy recognition of what we already know, the
classic startles the unfamiliar in us. Goodheart addresses the
question of objectivity in humanistic study -- the vexed relations
between aesthetics and ideology. He also dissects the academy's
current love affair with popular culture. None of the other
writings on the culture wars has so successfully reconciled the
traditions of aesthetic and moral criticism and the new ideological
and sociological ways of reading criticism. As an epitaph to the
culturewars, Does Literary Studies Have a Future? reads like the
last word.
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