David Novitz

Professing Literature: An Institutional History (review)

One can kill a book with a title, and Gerald Graff almost succeeds in the act. His latest book, if judged by the bold print on its dustjacket, promises to be a monumental bore, for it suggests that a prominent and stimulating professor of literature has abandoned the literary in pursuit of historical minutiae. Nor does Graff promise us a history of literature. His is the history of professing literature: the history of the tuition of literature in the American academe from the Yale