Critical Conditions

Literary theory has undergone tumultuous change in the past twenty years, and much of the battle over its directions has taken place on the terrain of history, its role in shaping literature, and the extent to which the literary is impervious to it, if at all. In many of its North American manifestations, this struggle has often pitted the seemingly anti-historical practices associated with deconstruction (sometimes lumped together with "postmodernism") against the critical school given the name "New Historicism." But this agonistic representation of the problems besetting literary theory and criticism has itself prevented further examination of the historical moment in which both critical modes operate. This volume addresses the deeper problem by focusing on critical discourse and institutions, on cultural practice, and the social role of writers and scholars. The essays in this volume examine the historical and political implications of the work of several leading critics, including Sacvan Bercovitch, Stanley Fish, Stephen Greenblatt and Paul de Man. In addition, the volume confronts the problematic links between criticism and history as such.
In examining these interconnections, the essays' topics range from more traditional concerns about the role of literary character to decolonization, the organization of knowledge and the question of the intellectual. The contributors also raise questions about the possibilities for authentic exchange and historical understanding between text and reader, critic and reader, within and outside the profession of criticism. Michael Hays is Professor of Theatre and Cultural Studies at Cornell University. He has published many essays on 19th- and 20th-century European drama and culture as well as on critical theory. His books include "The Public and Performance: Essays in the history of French and German Theatre 1871-1900" and "Empowering Aesthetics: the Politics of the New in the Modern Drama". He is also the editor and translator of books by Peter Szondi and H.R. Jauss. This book is intended for.