David Laurence

Continuity and Change in the Study of Literature

Abstract Its common knowledge that major changes have taken place in the college literature classroom. We hear that English departments across the nation have remade their curricula. The English faculty, which until recently concentrated on the well-known works and authors of the literary canon, now focuses on works by women and minorities, and also on products of popular culture and the mass media. Old distinctions of aesthetic quality have given way. The investigations of critical theory, deconstruction, feminism, and Marxism dominate the field. Educational goals for the classroom, which once centered on aesthetic appreciation, have altered accordingly. (For an account of literary study that takes these conclusions for granted, see Edward Jayne, “Academic Jeremiad,” Change, May/June, 1991, page 32.)