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equivalent to Dickens or Tennyson. Or consider the enormous impor–
tance of classroom anthologies designed for that mass sale which is the
dream of anyone who has edited such a book. The effect of these on
establishing the relative standings of writers and the lines of force in
literary history is in all likelihood predominant.
It
is probably therefore impossible to talk intelligently about the
shape of contemporary literary culture, especially since there are
those who take this to mean culture itself, without knowing something
about the curriculum of English Studies, its permutations, and its
growth . The technologies of English Studies-its methods for select–
ing certain materials out of the mass presented to it, its techniques for
assembling and coordinating and disposing of these materials-have
been the means of hoarding enormous cultural authority. And this
has gone along with the assumption that English
~tudies
has the right
always to grow, like other largely American inventions. If growth has
seemed like manifest destiny to most English departments, and
perhaps
it
is, there are nonetheless problems which result from it.
These belong, I'd like to insist again, to the history of the profession,
and not
to
the agitations of any caucus or to the demands of any
group.
Given the fact that English departments are supposed to be re–
sponsible for the language, isn't it in the nature of that responsibility
that they should also become the unofficial custodians of the culture?
Wasn't this the case even before the English departments became
imperialistic for reasons more evidently economic and having to do
with the natural desire to hold on to and expand its territories within
the fields of education? When Roger Ascham in the 16th century
opposed the inkhornists on the grounds that they threatened to make
English into a Latin patois, he was, like his ally, Sir John Cheke,
defining his functions as a schoolmaster; he was doing so, however, in
terms that of necessity constituted a prescription for the emerging
shape of English culture. Even four centuries ago, that is, questions
about which kind of English "course" was best suited to the times and
to the social class and prospects of the students were also questions
about the nature of culture.
Professors of English have thus understandably come to see the
fuzziness on the border of their subject as if it were a gateway to
power. Fiercely defensive in its nationalism, the profession is just as
