THE FUTURE OF LITERARY THEORY Edited by Ralph Cohen

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: LITERARY THEORY

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: LITERARY THEORY

Volume 6

THE FUTURE OF LITERARY THEORY

THE FUTURE OF LITERARY THEORY

Edited by RALPH COHEN

Reprint 2020

First published in 1989 by Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. This edition first published in 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1989 Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 9781138492325

Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

Printed and bound in India For sale in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka only.

Prefatory Note

This Routledge Library Edition of The Future of Literary Theory, an anthology of theoretical essays first published almost three decades ago, may seem an anomaly. What could a collection of theoretical essays on the future of theory writing possibly inform us about a future—our present—which comes, as many have declared, “after theory,” a future that was envisioned in the 1980s? Is this anthology simply another recycling of obsolete papers, another herbarium of dead flowers? If such were the case, there would be no need to reissue this volume. Yet reviving the collection is especially appropriate because “the future” to which these essays refer is the very present in which we live, breathe, think, and theorize. If the “theory movement” of the last three decades of the twentieth century is past, literary theory as a kind of writing continues to inform our mode of existence. And these theoretical essays, composed by eminent scholars who have contributed to shaping our future, map the transformative process from which we have emerged. Their essays raise vexing issues that are still very much in need of elaboration and resolution. In that sense the future of literary theory is still unfolding before us. “Why this collection?” the editor wrote in 1989. “Because we are in the midst of rapid changes in the practice of literary theory and we need to understand why received views of formalism, of literary history, of literary language, of readers, writers, and canons have come to be questioned, revised or replaced. Because we need to examine why and how the writing of theory is undergoing revision. Because the very process of literary change needs to be examined in order to realize which components of past theories are continued and which are abandoned. Because the writing of theory can be enjoyed aesthetically as well as cognitively as its structure changes” (Cohen, vii). These reasons remain as pertinent today as when written. Since the 1980s the necessity of systematically distinguishing and accounting for literary and cultural change by examining the combination of formal components within and between texts has not altered. Advances in literary theory have led to abandoning the received view of theory as prophesy, as abstraction, as “writing.” Inquiries into the materialities of communication, into the actual forms in which we write, perform, and technologize have proliferated. Who sets herself the task simply “to write”? This interrelated collection of essays demonstrates that any composition has a purpose and purposes assume forms, a combination of forms, that are socially constructed.

Don’t these “journalistic essays,” confronting vital issues and written expressly for this publication, re-envision the anthology on the model of the learned journal? Furthermore, new understandings of historical time and its variable rhythms of continuity and discontinuity have resulted in an acknowledgement of some of the inclusive social aims we share and in the rejection of the exclusionary aims of an outmoded temporality. New literary histories have fashioned a postformalist mode, an open horizon of critical inquiries. At the same time, disagreements persist about the best strategies and practices to achieve the common purpose of understanding past texts—in their synchronic temporalities and their diachronic nature. Grasping the nature of change as implied in our forms of writing, in our politics, in our society, and in the joys and sorrows of composing literary theories remains challenging to the point that some historians and genre critics are content to abandon the concept of periodization altogether. We might pick up this volume again with the knowledge that the four areas the editor selected in which to group the essays were not only prescient in the 1980s but are indeed reliable directions to pursue well into the twenty-first century. If we accept the implications of this volume, we can see that 1) genre theory is becoming the most illuminating form of literary theory, 2) that any adequate literary history requires a comprehensive theory of genre, and 3) that the genres of our everyday life—novels, essays, films, sitcoms, other language technologies—share, and are often governed by, compositional relations with the group of texts we call theory. It should be obvious that we are still extending the possibilities that literary theory affords us. For that reason this reissue serves to indicate and explain the transition from received abstractions of non-literary Theory to the actualized specificities of literary theories. There is much left to be done in charting these changes, yet this volume’s revitalization serves as a living model for understanding the manner in which we continue to transform the inquiry. The hopeful future foreseen by The Future of Literary Theory is that of our long present—that is, a segment of time in which forms of writing and other cultural genres are governed by theoretical texts. These texts constitute an independent genre—literary theory—and this journalized anthology rehearses the basis for its future. John L. Rowlett Charlottesville, Virginia March 2016 © John L. Rowlett

Exclusively distributed by: Manohar Publishers & Distributors

MANOHAR

4753/23, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002 India Tel.: 23289100, 23284848, 23275162 e-mail: [email protected] www.manoharbooks.com

UK Original Price: £ 32.99 1695.00 Special Indiantitus Price: salt building

ISBN: 978-1-138-49232-5

www.routledge.com

For sale in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka only.