The Debate with Method in the History of Literary Studies

Drawing upon Hillway’s three types of research, this paper seeks to take a look at the nature and scope of literary research. It focuses on early works on the subject: Altick (1950, 1963), Sanders (1951), and Bateson (1972) – to demonstrate how some facts lying there can be uncovered through a slightly different reading of these texts. It highlights the similarities that make literary criticism, literary research, and literary scholarship synonymous, if not the same. It ends by mentioning briefly the approaches and methods of literary research.

Reframing Critical, Literary, and Cultural Theories, 2018

2013

The preposition of this paper is that the study of the competition between the public and the academic discourse on literature can contribute to our understanding of the underlying norms and values that define the academic study of literature (at a given historical moment). The infamous lecture ‘Literary Studies: the Riddle of Unreadability’ ('Literatuurwetenschap: het raadsel der onleesbaarheid') (1978) deliverd by Dutch professor of Slavic Literary Studies, Karel van het Reve, is taken as a case study. The lecture meant a frontal attack on the work of contemporary Dutch literary scholars and the way Literary Studies was practiced at that moment. What arguments did Van het Reve use to legitimate the profession of the literary scholar? What were the intertextual scientific traditions he placed himself in? And what normative statements did he make in respect to the scholarly enterprise of Literary Studies in general?

Tekstualia

The authoress of the article shows literary history conducted in a responsible manner, concentrating on working with sources, precisely setting out its poles of investigation, undertaking reflection on the limits of literariness, and refusing to avoid methodological interdisciplinary reflection (that is, defining the character of the relationship of its own language and its own context-oriented research tools vis-à-vis the languages of other areas of scholarship) – such a literary history may assist in the development of the ability clearly to perceive a situation in which it has come to an auction of methods of working on concepts that create a real chance of integrating knowledge.

BODHI International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science, 2024

This article explores the pivotal role that various literary theories have played in the institutionalization of literary studies. It argues that these theories have not only formalized the discipline but have also challenged and reshaped its contours. It has employed a historical method, and traces the evolution of literary theories from structuralism and poststructuralism to cultural and critical theory. It also demonstrates how each theoretical movement responded to specific intellectual and cultural contexts and contributed to the establishment of literary studies as a rigorous academic field. The analysis highlights how these theories fostered interdisciplinary connections, expanded the literary canon, and influenced curriculum development, thereby transforming literary studies into a globally recognized and influential discipline. Through a detailed examination of key texts and theoretical developments, the article underscores the necessity of these frameworks in elevating literary analysis and shaping the future of literary scholarship.

In our time literary history has increasingly fallen into disrepute, and not at all without reason. The history of this worthy discipline in the last one hundred and fty years unmistakably describes the path of a steady decline. Its greatest achievements all belong to the nineteenth century. To write the history of a national literature counted, in the times of Gervinus and Scherer, De Sanctis and Lanson, as the crowning life's work of the philologist. The patriarchs of the discipline saw their highest goal therein, to represent in the history of literary works [Dichtwerke] the idea of national individuality on its way to itself. This high point is already a distant memory. The received form of literary history scarcely scratches out a living for itself in the intellectual life of our time. It has maintained itself in requirements for examinations by the state system of examinations that are themselves ready for dismantling. As a compulsory subject in the high school curriculum, it has almost disappeared in Germany. Beyond that, literary histories are still to be found only, if at all, on the bookshelves of the educated bourgeoisie who for the most part opens them, lacking a more appropriate literary dictionary, to answer literary quiz questions.

Methods of literary history revolve around the question of what the fields accompanying literary fields are and how they can be determined because, like a gradually growing and developing organism, literary histories need to complement and reproduce themselves in terms of knowledge, comment and method in order to be able to reveal a picture of the literary world at intervals and through new devices developed in accordance with the needs. Indeed, it wishes to systematize the relationships of the literary works with literary periods and with literary and non-literary factors like socio-cultural conditions. The need for making the literary history within the scope of certain criteria has brought along suggestions by different conceptual approaches. In this study, methods of literary history will be presented from a general perspective. Key Words: literary history, literary methodology, postmodern paradigm