The stasis, stock, kinetic, spectator, and dialectic responses to literature all serve to deny the popular misconception that literary analysis invariably deals a death blow to the vitally engaged, spontaneous, and thus authentic response. Stasis is a response in which an intuited imaginative identity between subject and object develops in an…

Advocates a balance between engagement and disengagement, between overintellectualizing and oversentimentalizing in literary criticism. Recommends literature education as dialectic and gaining the best of both worlds--engagement and detachment. (JDH)

Ruminates on and analyzes the author's experiences in teaching the first course in women's literature and feminist criticism at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Asserts that the course brought to consciousness the author's femininity, feminism, and a new understanding of feminist criticism. (MM)

Examines the study of literature and literary values, the need for such study, and the problem of justifying such study. (RL)