The current debate about the nature of English studies has questioned the status of English as a discipline. In this 1993 book, 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 state of disciplinary knowledge, together with its social and philosophical preconditions; they analyse 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.

A materialist account of Wilde's writing career, based on publishing contracts and other documentation as well as detailed evidence of how he composed, this book argues that Wilde was not driven by an oppositional politics, nor was he an aesthetic 'purist'. Rather, he was thoroughly immersed in the contemporary 'commodification of culture' in which books became product. His writing practices, including his 'plagiarism', reflected the pragmatism of a professional.

The current debate about the nature of English studies has questioned the status of English as a discipline. In this 1993 book, 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 state of disciplinary knowledge, together with its social and philosophical preconditions; they analyse 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.

Academics, researchers, postgraduates, upper level undergraduates, educated general readers in Fin de Siècle, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Late Victorian Literature & Culture, Decadence, The New Woman Literature, Aestheticism, Fantastic Fiction, The Visual Arts.