Literary Culture in a World Transformed: A Future for the Humanities / Edition 1

by William Paulson

Overview

Literary studies are in danger of being left behind in the twenty-first century. Print culture risks becoming a thing of the past in the multimedia age; meanwhile, human life and society are undergoing rapid changes as a result of new technologies, the intensification of global capitalism, and the effects of human actions on the environment.In this transformed world, William Paulson argues for a radical renewal of literary studies. Modern literary culture has defined itself, in opposition to science, politics, and commerce, as a protected sphere of democratic and free inquiry, but today that autonomy may lead to isolation from the real dynamics of cultural and global change. Paulson clearly and convincingly demonstrates the need for literary studies to embrace both the unfashionable literary past and the technologically saturated future, and to train not a countersociety of cultural critics but citizens of the world who can communicate the irreducible strangeness and multiplicity of literature to a society on hyperdrive. His series of concrete proposals, ranging from a closer connection between literature and everyday language to the restructuring of undergraduate and graduate education, will immeasurably enrich current discussions of the humanities' role in the life of the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801487309
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/03/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

William Paulson is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. His books include The Noise of Culture: Literary Texts in a World of Information, also from Cornell, and Sentimental Education: The Complexity of Disenchantment.

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	Introduction: Literary Culture and the Life of the World	1
1	Becoming Modern: The Autonomy of Literary Culture	26
2	From mai '68 to the fin-de-millenaire	53
3	Becoming Nonmodern: Learning from Science Studies	78
4	Equipment for Living: Strategy, Feedback, Networks of Discourse	105
5	Keeping Up with the Past	128
6	Reinventing "Language and Literature"	149
	Bibliographic Essay	193
	Index	201

What People are Saying About This

Robert Weisbuch

In Literary Culture in a World Transformed, William Paulson argues for the humanities to relinquish a stance of opposition and autonomy and embrace a newly engaged notion of culture. This is real work, offering a new set of responsibilities for intellectuals, who are challenged not to criticize a reality made by others but to constitute reality.

Marie-Helene Huet

Literary Culture in a World Transformed reassesses the place of literary studies in both the academic and non-academic worlds. Looking beyond the aesthetic and theoretical traditions that have polarized discourse about literature in the last few decades, William Paulson calls for a radically new form of interdisciplinarity. This is a brilliant and indispensable work.

Editorial Reviews

Paulson clearly and convincingly demonstrates the need for literary studies to embrace both the unfashionable literary past and the technologically saturated future.... His series of concrete proposals... will immeasurably enrich current discussions of the humanities' role in the life of the world.

Fabula - Rene Audet

Paulson seeks a role for literary kinds of reading, steering between reactionaries on the one hand and radicals on the other.... His diagnoses and advice... are well balanced and clearly presented.... His book is one of the better examples of its kind, worthy of attention from anyone with a stake in the humanities, from upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Choice

His book convincingly argues that a skilled literary professional can be (at best, perhaps, must be) an amateur. As such, though it is very much written from the center, it outlines a radical openness to new modes of thought, new protocols of reading, writing, and teaching.

-- "Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association"

Paulson brings together some of the world's larger issues--a changing world in terms of economy and ecology, science and technology--and smaller issues: the effect of increasing electronic and audiovisual media on institutions of the book and the role of literary study in the academy.

-- "Book News"

Paulson clearly and convincingly demonstrates the need for literary studies to embrace both the unfashionable literary past and the technologically saturated future.... His series of concrete proposals... will immeasurably enrich current discussions of the humanities' role in the life of the world.

--Rene Audet "Fabula"

Paulson seeks a role for literary kinds of reading, steering between reactionaries on the one hand and radicals on the other.... His diagnoses and advice... are well balanced and clearly presented.... His book is one of the better examples of its kind, worthy of attention from anyone with a stake in the humanities, from upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

-- "Choice"

From the Publisher

"Literary Culture in a World Transformed reassesses the place of literary studies in both the academic and non-academic worlds. Looking beyond the aesthetic and theoretical traditions that have polarized discourse about literature in the last few decades, William Paulson calls for a radically new form of interdisciplinarity. This is a brilliant and indispensable work."

Marie-Helene Huet

"In Literary Culture in a World Transformed, William Paulson argues for the humanities to relinquish a stance of opposition and autonomy and embrace a newly engaged notion of culture. This is real work, offering a new set of responsibilities for intellectuals, who are challenged not to criticize a reality made by others but to constitute reality."

Robert Weisbuch

"Paulson brings together some of the world's larger issues—a changing world in terms of economy and ecology, science and technology—and smaller issues: the effect of increasing electronic and audiovisual media on institutions of the book and the role of literary study in the academy."

Book News

"His book convincingly argues that a skilled literary professional can be (at best, perhaps, must be) an amateur. As such, though it is very much written from the center, it outlines a radical openness to new modes of thought, new protocols of reading, writing, and teaching."

Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association

Paulson (French, University of Michigan) brings together some of the world's larger issues<-->a changing world in terms of economy and ecology, science and technology<-->and smaller issues: the effect of increasing electronic and audiovisual media on institutions of the book and the role of literary study in the academy. Paulson sees a literary future that "refuses a fatalistic or providential view of technology, maintains cultural contact with the past, and whose teaching mission is not that of training an academic counter-society of cultural critics but that of making the strangeness and multiplicity of literary culture part of an always interdisciplinary or an a- disciplinary education of world citizens...." Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews