John hopkins

Thirty years ago, it was common to pick up a newspaper or a magazine and read about high drama in university literature departments. Star professors were either master thinkers introducing new rigor and glamour into a tweedy profession gone stale, or theory-addled tenured radicals taking a hatchet to the masterpieces of Western culture. These days, though, the news out of literature departments — and the humanities writ large — tends to be less about juicy faculty-lounge flame wars than about declining majors , shrinking budgets and the collapsing job market for Ph.D.s. Enter another professor, with a big book that aims to shift the conversation. In 1993, John Guillory published “Cultural Capital,” a dense study of the then-raging canon wars that has become a stealth classic. Now, in a follow-up, “Professing Criticism,” he takes on an even bigger question: What is literary criticism — specifically, the kind of highly specialized, theoretically sophisticated textual readings … [Read more...] about What Is Literary Criticism For?

See the article in its original context from February 9, 1986 Section Page Buy Reprints View on timesmachine TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. THE ENGLISH department at Yale used to resemble a sort of English country estate. It included a great house of many wings and rooms (the Elizabethan Pavilion, the Metaphysical Poets Billiard Parlor, the T. S. Eliot Chapel and so forth) and, normally, one entered this house via certain well-marked paths and avenues that ran through a spacious park. The park looked as though Nature had … [Read more...] about THE TYRANNY OF THE YALE CRITICS

See the article in its original context from August 28, 1988 Section Page Buy Reprints View on timesmachine TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. THE BAR IN THE AUDITORIUM lobby at the University of Antwerp was crowded with scholars in baggy suits, itinerant students, assorted hangers-on. There were also a few prosperous-looking older men, who turned out to be childhood friends of Paul de Man - the focus of an international conference held last June at the university. You wouldn't have known from the sessions listed in the … [Read more...] about The Case of Paul De Man

See the article in its original context from February 25, 1984 Section Page Buy Reprints View on timesmachine TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. When he died last December at the age of 64, Paul de Man left behind a provocative school of literary criticism that will be studied by generations of scholars to come. And even now, two months after his death, his students and colleagues at Yale University say his absence - as teacher, as critic, as inspiration - has left a huge gap. The death of a professor leaves a university … [Read more...] about YALE STILL FEELING LOSS OF REVERED PROFESSOR

See the article in its original context from June 5, 1988 Section Page Buy Reprints View on timesmachine TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. THE PHILOSOPHER GEORGE SANTAYANA was once asked which books young people should read. It didn't matter, he replied, as long as they read the same ones. Generations of Eng. lit. majors in American colleges followed his advice. You started with the Bible, moved briskly through Beowulf and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, the 18th-century novel, the Romantics, a few big American books like … [Read more...] about ON CAMPUS: THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS