The English Department: Essays in Literary and Cultural Studies

The formal beginning of English literature as a discipline is a contested site, if not shrouded by mystery altogether. Ben Jonson, Dr Johnson, Matthew Arnold—all these and many more can claim to be the beginner of a tradition which has travelled deep and wide in time and space for more than ten centuries now. But though the beginnings cannot be ascertained with accuracy, it is clear that the discipline has started falling apart. The essays collected in this book is a modest attempt at understanding the dynamics of this tradition from the literary to the cultural, from “English” to “englishes,” from literary criticism to critical theory, from literary studies to cultural studies