PARTISAN REVIEW
527
purpose they became, when translated into pedagogy, increasingly
mechanical and sometimes prejudicial to certain kinds, notably
to
Romantic literature. Still, there have also been some extraordinary
masters, and some impressive efforts in certain colleges and univer–
sities to create sensible curriculum against the dead weight of en–
trenched interests. Some things can indeed be summoned up as pos–
sible clues to a future, but nothing that constitutes a firm tradition,
nothing most people can agree on as properly defining (and confin–
ing) the dimensions of the subject. Very few can even agree on what
those dimensions ought to be. The very nature of the literary–
humanities enterprise doesn't allow that. And because there is so little
agreement about what literary studies is and what it should or should
not be responsible for, the subject swells and contracts with the sea–
son. The developments of the past decade, the uncertainty of the
present one, and the serious doubts everyone feels about the profes–
sion of literary studies can only
be
profitably considered if those in–
terested in it see that where it now finds itself is
to
a great extent
where it has always been. The difference is that the evidences of an
always incipient illness are now easier
to
see; if the enterprise is
to
move on to anything better we must know where it has been.
It
is necessary always to remember that when we think of the
study of literature we are, or ought to
be,
thinking not only of an
operation on the barricades of western culture, but also of puzzling
out a reading list, planning a class, grading papers, and the like. The
issue of the proper relation between popular and high culture, the
supposed retreat from rationality and intellect, the attacks against
trendiness, the debate about the status of Black, Third World, and
Women's literature, the claims of the sciences , especially of
psychoanalysis, in matters where "the literary imagination" has been
imagined dominant, the omens for literature in the vogue of literary
self-consciousness and self-parody, both of which may be derivatives
of a certain kind of literary study-all of these issues are indeed of
large historical consequence, and it is hard to think of an English
department seriously considering the nature of its curriculum without
having to discuss one or all of them.
Indeed it could
be
argued that literary culture does largely de–
pend on the technologies which serve it and the principal technology
is the operation of departments of English. This is probably a fair
