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Article: The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline.
- Article from:
- Yearbook of English Studies
- Article date:
- January 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Modern Humanities Research Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline.
By Robert Scholes. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press.
1998. xvi +203 pp. $15.95.
Robert Scholes discusses the history of English studies with especial regard to the USA. He shows how arbitrary is the present form of the English department. Not until the later nineteenth century was English taught as literature, with reference to greater poets and prose writers from Spenser to Arnold. By a natural transition, this led to the mid-century school of the New Criticism. Here literature was professed in a discussion notably text-centred. This became intermingled and quite recently ...