| This book relates contemporary theory to critical and pedagogical practice. That it has no single identifiable origin suggests (better, allegorizes) the way theory and practice are intertwined and interimplicated. The joint labor of two editors and twelve (amazingly cooperative) contributors, Contemporary Literary Theory is actually a creature of multiple origins. In one sense, it derives from several years of teaching graduate courses in criticism and theory by one of the editors, me, who came late but happily to this burgeoning subdiscipline, and from the recentand equally happydiscovery of the "field" by my coeditor. Laura, who remains, she insists, a close reader rather than a theorist, convinced me of the need for such a textbookfor herself as teacher and for the students she and so many others encounter. In another sense, this text derives from a semester-long symposium held at the University of Kansas in fall 1985 on literary theory, critical practice, and the classroom, which week in and week out attracted dozens of teachers and students from English and the other languages and literatures as well as from history, philosophy, anthropology, and various other (sometimes surprising) disciplines. In still another sense, Contemporary Literary Theory derives from the dawning recognition, abetted by the experience of codirecting that symposium and team-teaching a seminar offered in conjunction with it (a recognition now shared by many other critics and theorists), that, as prominent, influential, and important as theory has become in the last few years, it has not significantly affected classroom teaching, particularly at the undergraduate level. This is so for a number of reasons, one of which has to do with an |
|
