[Comment by robinr on LL "Literary Evolution" 8/3/2008]

Longtime lurker, first time commenting. I began my undergrad work in literary studies in 1976, but due to a number of factors did not finish my doctorate until 1992. I began interested in linguistics when I had a course with Shirley Brice Heath at the Bread Loaf School of English in the early 1980s, and did a secondary field in linguistics/sociolinguistics for my doctorate in English (my main areas of interest are Halliday's functional grammar). I think this post does an excellent job of covering different methodological debates in literary studies but ignores one huge major question which has been my focus for decades: what texts are deemed "worthy" to be analyzed as "literature" (by whatever methodology chosen)?

Just from my perspective, a lot of the "radical" or deconstructive approaches still stuck with the literary canon (elite dead white men), rather than take on any sort of popular texts (I do my work with speculative fiction--especially by women--and fan fiction). Marxist literary criticism (some examples of it) disdains "popular" authors (there's a whole collection on Tolkien's work by British Marxists that basically sums up Tolkien's popularity as being due to one, American college students taking drugs, and two, the common people being too stupid to appreciate "true" literature, and falling for the "true king" myth--my paraphrase is of course oversimplified!). A number of the Marxist scholars I've read/heard at conferences are men who completely ignore gender issues (and a number of feminist scholars ignore issues of class).

One major question/conflict that is ongoing is what texts are the focus of literary studies: is our goal to "teach" a canon of texts (and yes, canons change over time)? Is the goal to teach ways of reading and writing? Does literary studies include only written texts (what about scholars who are applying literary theory and methods to video games?)? Where do film and television fit in? Are they the purview only of media or communications studies? What about stigmatized literary genres such as romance (written and consumes mostly by women) and speculative/science fiction/fantasy and mysteries? What about fan fiction?

These are my concerns, and the concerns of many of the scholars I work with, who draw upon different methodologies. I'm not sure that any shift in methodology means much if the only texts analyzed/taught as "literature" are those in a small literary canon.