The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline [Paperback]

Robert Scholes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0300080840 | ISBN-13: 978-0300080841

A critical look at the nature and direction of English studies in America. It offers an intervention in debates about educational and cultural values and goals, showing how English came to occupy its present place in the American educational system.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

English majors and literary critics take note! Here is an energetic exegesis of the rise and fall of the oft deplored, slightly suspect academic discipline "English." Critical of literary theory occupying center stage in the teaching of university English, Professor Robert Scholes adopts "a militant middle position on many of the questions that currently vex English studies." In our already imperiled, latter 20th century, what might those vexations, be? Lack of teaching the "truth," the waiving of the responsibilities in the higher halls of academe to teach composition, a "devotion to the morality of the marketplace and the aesthetics of fashion ... " to name a few. These constitute vital arguments, indeed, for a reinvigoration of the field.

Five chapters make up this lucid text, beginning with a historic overview. In 1701, there were no English professors. Pontificating rectors held the power and prestige; raw and recent Harvard graduates did the dirty work of teaching composition. "This division of labor, as may have occurred to you, is still with us," notes Scholes, whose intent is to trace this classic division and offer up a plan to unite them. Each chapter addresses a particular detail in the evolution of the discipline and concludes with a personal addendum, an "assignment," in which Scholes drops the scholarly persona, adopts the "I," and inserts personal reflections based on his experience in academia. He ponders, for example, why English departments are regarded as responsible for teaching all possible kinds of writing, from the scientific and technical to the literary. His conclusion: "The useful, the practical, and even the intelligible were relegated to composition so that literature could stand as the complex embodiment of cultural ideals.... Teachers of literature became the priests ... while teachers of composition were the nuns, barred from the priesthood, doing the shitwork of the field."

The Rise and Fall of English represents a powerful marriage of the past, providing a fascinating, if sweeping portrait of early American higher education, in brash juxtaposition with current attacks on the humanities. It's a deep read, although Scholes serves up his scholarship with wit and passion, to a readership possessed both of affection and affinity for the field. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Part history of the college English department, part polemic for rethinking high school?and higher?education, this witty, engaging tract should earn Brown professor Scholes (Protocols of Reading) new friends and enemies inside and outside the academy. Unthinkable until well into the 19th century, the study of English literature quickly rose out of the study of Rhetoric and soon replaced the classics as the keystone of a liberal arts education. Scholes emphasizes the combination of "Romantic notions of genius and imagination" with a Victorian "high seriousness," that gave the study of English a sense of quasi-religious moral betterment. Until now, students read the little-c classics, from Beowulf to Baldwin, as morally improving stories. It is time, Scholes argues, to shift the emphasis of English education from canons to the more pragmatic discipline of reading and writing about books, pictures, movies, TV, etc.?an argument he makes largely in reference to the canon (most visibly Hegel, Buber, Derrida), not Beverly Hills 90210. While Scholes's specific suggestions, which have been incorporated into an experimental high-school course known as Pacesetter English, will seem heretical to those with a vestigial, democratic faith in the contemplative life, these readers may find his critique of that faith difficult to ignore. If his proposals stray occasionally into goofiness (how many students now need to be coached to notice race and gender in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?), educators will be indebted to Scholes for addressing the problems and doubts they face.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 222 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (November 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300080840
• ISBN-13: 978-0300080841
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #664,705 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Scholes was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929. His mother was one of five Brooklyn girls orphaned by the influenza epidemic, raised by the oldest sister, with the help of the Catholic Church. Her parents were Italian immigrants to the U. S. Robert's father (Ted Scholes) was from Philadelphia, of English and Irish background. The name (pronounced skoles) comes from Yorkshire.

Robert went to public schools in Forest Hills, Queens and then, from the fourth grade through High School in Garden City, on Long Island, New York. He graduated from Yale in 1950 and spent several years on active duty with the U. S. Navy, after attending Officer's Candidate School in Newport, RI. He served in the U. S. S. Helena, a heavy cruiser, which was involved in combat during the Korean War, making two extended cruises to the Pacific and bring newly elected President Eisenhower from Guam to Hawaii in 1952. Serving as a gunnery officer, Scholes lost some hearing during this period. After the Korean war, he spent a year in the Philadelphia Navy Yard,helping with the overhaul of destroyers. During his time on active duty his first wife, Joan, had two children, Christine and Peter.

In 1955 he entered graduate school at Cornell on the G. I. Bill, getting his MA in 1956 and PhD in 1959. His dissertation was a catalogue of the newly acquired papers of James Joyce in the Cornell Library. His first academic job was as an Instructor at the U. of Virginia, where he was promoted to Assistant Professor after two years. At the U. of Virginia William Faulkner came to his class when he taught one of Faulkner's novels.

In 1964 he became an Associate Professor at the U. of Iowa, where he was made a Professor in 1966. In 1970 he moved to Brown, where he has been ever since. In the spring of 1971 his first wife died of cancer. In 1972 he married Jo Ann Putnam and acquired four more children: Cynthia, Rick, Greg, and Mike.

During his career he has been author, co-author, or editor of more than thirty books, and has served as President of the Semiotic Society of America and of the Modern Language Association. His books range from literary theory and modernist studies to matters of the class room and the curriculum. He helped to found the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown, and, in 1995 he began the Modernist Journals Project, which provides digital editions of modern periodicals for use by scholars, teachers, and students. In 1999 he retired from full-time teaching and became an unpaid Research Professor of Modern Culture and Media, as well as a Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Practical & inspiring proposals for lit studies, June 18, 1999

By 

Chazzbot (Enoch, Utah) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline (Hardcover)

This book will probably never make the NYTimes Bestseller list, but for its intended audience of literature and English composition instructors, this is a thought-provoking text which provides a much-needed jab in the ribs to English departments everywhere.

This is not a dry critical review, but a practical, specific and inspirational text regarding the declining status of English studies in the U.S. Scholes doesn't just whine about what's wrong, but shows readers some ways to make English a useful and necessary component of a university education.

As an English graduate student, I was particularly intrigued by Scholes' ideas of making English composition courses more than just a dumping ground for underpaid instructors and unenthusiastic students. Scholes expanded my own conceptions about what English composition should do, and how it can be made more relevant to today's attention-challenged students.

Scholes has renewed my faith in English studies. Anyone who has taken or taught a college-level English course and wondered what the hell they were doing should read this intelligent and challenging book (or text, if you prefer).

13 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars English Now, February 14, 2000

By 

Himansu S. Mahapatra (Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline (Paperback)

TEXTUALISING WITH A DIFFERENCE

Himansu S. Mohapatra

The Rise and Fall of English : Reconstructing English as a Discipline. By Robert Scholes. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1998. pp. 203. $ 16.50.

Scholes's book about the rise of English, its fall and its possible re-rise as a vastly augmented domain of textuality is quite simply the best book to have been written on the subject till date. Where the earlier accounts, especially the ones by the English Left named above, had stopped short at detecting the crisis and suggesting, in the name of a cure, a wholesale dissolution of such an ideologically tainted project, Scholes charts out a `militant middle position', firmly convinced that the extremes of traditionalism and iconoclasm are no help. Another aspect of the book's goodness is that it is addressed to the actual teacher of English, who, like Scholes, loves language, but who is lying dormant, if not dead, at the moment, and, who must rise phoenix-like from her ashes in the reconfigured domain of textuality.

The empowering concepts that Scholes has used throughout are those of the `text', `textuality' and `intertext'. Although a slight concession to `hypocriticism' (which in Scholes's usage designates a surrender to critical fashions) cannot be ruled out, Scholes is certainly no Barthesian glorifier of textuality as pure difference. This is despite the fact that he defines text, a la semiotic and deconstructive writers, as the `fabric of culture itself, in which we and our students find ourselves already woven' (73). For one thing, his notion of textuality does not exclude concepts like truth ad reality. Thus, if his version of text has an ideology, it is certainly not the pernicious non-cognitivist ideology of the poststructuralist and postmodernist text that Fredric Jameson and Satya P. Mohanty have chosen to criticise. For another thing, Scholes's position on the subject of textuality seems to be an echo of I.A. Richards's 1924 prefatorial claim in The Principles of Literary Criticism to `reweave on the loom of Literature some of the tattered sleeves of civilization'.

It is all too apparent that Scholes shares Richards's concern with truth, reality and with the well-being of civilization. Furthermore, both of them find themselves driven to the metaphors of weaving and textuality to express their sense of the worth of written compositions. The only difference between them is where Richards spoke of Literature with a capital `L', Scholes speaks of verbal and written texts, that is, textuality in its unrestricted sense, something that would include both poems and bumper stickers. It should be noted, however, that Scholes has both retained the Richardsian moment and gone beyond it.

Scholes himself traces the roots of such an attitude to the evangelical fervour of his former Yale colleague Billy Phelps. The rise of English to a place of prominence in the curriculum of Yale and Brown at the turn of the nineteenth century intersects with the career of Phelps. Classics and philology were on their way out, and, the full professionalization literary studies, signalled by the New Criticism, was yet to begin. Phelps, who studied at Yale from 1883 to 1887 and later taught there from 1892 to 1933, represented a moment of poise between philology and New Criticism. What this particular location implied was the synthesis of teaching and preaching, of reading and writing. Ironically this unity was broken during the period of full professionalization, first under the New Criticism, and, then under `theory'. This was the period when rhetoric yielded place to the speculative bias of literature, turning the earlier `actant', who did things, to the present `patient', to whom things were done. Scholes resurrects the past with such ardour in his opening chapter only in order to highlight its contrast with the doggy plight of the present-day teacher of English.

The rest of Scholes's story is soon told. He embarks in his last two chapters on a full-blown reconstructive programme. First of all he puts forward a `a trivial proposal'. This is an attempt to revive the medieval trivium of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. Scholes's innovation is to rewrite these categories in modern and contemporary terms. For example, rhetoric gets redefined as `persuasion and mediation'. Scholes moves on to outline a proposal for a modern quadrivium. If English is to be a discipline proper, then it must be organized around a `canon of methods' rather a canon of texts. This quadrivium of theory, history, production and consumption is the best guarantee of a paradigm shift in English studies. It is our best bet for recapturing the earlier Phelpsian unity of theory and practice, but in a modern context of difference, diversity and a pervasive intertextuality.

There is just one missing strand in this otherwise superbly-woven fabric. It is to do with the whole discourse of the colonial rise of English. Scholes has, at two places in the book, conceded its central importance. There is no attempt, however, to go into the matter of the colonial origins of English at any length and to draw out its implications. It does not matter to the reader that this ground has been covered in earlier studies such as Gauri Viswanathan's Masks of Conquest (1989), Sara Suleri's The Rhetoric of English India (1991) and Harish Trivedi's Colonial Transactions: English Literature and India (1993). What the reader would like to know is how a consideration of the colonial underpinnings of English can be accommodated within Scholes's textuality paradigm without at the same time punching a gaping hole in it. As postcolonial critics have reminded us, English as a subject was forged `in the smithy of empire'. Scholes's textuality paradigm is conceived within the framework of the national culture. It will perhaps not survive a bracing encounter with the imperial formations. But that is no reason for us not to salute this bracing, witty, candid and infinitely charming book that sets out to textualise with a difference.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rise & Fall, June 6, 2007

By 

R. Swaney - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline (Paperback)

I finally finished it, his ultimate diagnosis is that English will either become a classical field in nature or will need to alter to embrace the present and the future. With Scholes specifics I disagree to some extent as he seems to want to turn undergraduate English into an advanced Intro to Communications course but I do agree that English (as well as most any liberal arts degree) need to alter. One idea of his I greatly enjoy is altering the LERs (liberal education requirements) to better fit a person's major than to just allow students to select randomly. Otherwise, fabulous book, not quite a page turned, and if you're not interested in English and literary theory I'd avoid to like the plague.