Discusses examples in "Moby Dick" of Melvillean words symptomatic of the significance of Ishmael's rhetorical energy, in order to suggest that Ishmael's language reflects Melville's search for lexical and rhetorical forms that express the democratic impulse. (SRT)

Presents axioms about scholarship, learning, English scholarship, and English teaching and examines a little recognized intellectual crisis in current English scholarship. (GW)

Argues that D.H. Lawrence's "The Rainbow" can be interpreted as a parable of all reading of literature because its plot tolerates the wish for resolution as long as nothing is taken to be final. Concludes that all interpretations are merely provisional, lasting only until another comes along. (SRT)

Discusses the lack of communication and the need for a community of scholarship among literary critics and rhetoric theorists. (SRT)

Discusses various theories of literary criticism and recommends that critics take their work seriously. (AEA)

States that interdisciplinary studies have a long history in North American universities, but that those who teach in American and English literature departments have been accused of colonizing in the name of cultural studies. Distinguishes between interdisciplinary "tourism" and interdiscursivity. (PA)

Suggests ways to respond to the changes in the teaching of college literature wrought by recent literary criticism and theory. (DD)

Contends that feminist criticism can bring vitality to college English programs deep in the doldrums. (DD)

Encourages English teachers to consider student themes as real texts, and discusses the bond between the teaching of literary works and the teaching of composition that would be forged thereby. (DD)

Literature, which deals with truth, should be the focus of the English department instead of writing, which is a trivial technology. (DD)

Muses on such topics as the importance of teaching students about the craft of poetry and of helping them see that life can turn into literature. (GT)

Presents an exchange between two English professors who offer opposing perspectives on the profession of English. Covers arguments on the understanding of theory, literary history, reading, curricular design, and pedagogy through the examination of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil." (MM)

Argues that the heritage of the past forms the substance of the present and literary criticism, especially the New Criticism, serves the central function of defending civilization as it is or may be. (RB)

Discusses the contradiction of teaching English literature, which has an elitist history, to students in a modern democratic society based on the postulate of universal education. (RB)

Examines the administrative and organizational implications that Cleanth Brooks methods of criticism hold for modern English departments. (RB)