Professing Literature

More about the book

Widely considered the standard history of the profession of literary studies, Profound Literature unearths the long-forgotten ideas and debates that created the literature department as we know it today. In a readable and often-amusing narrative, Gerald Graff shows that the heated conflicts of our recent culture wars echo—and often recycle—controversies over how literature should be taught that began more than a century ago. Profound Literature remains an essential history of literary pedagogy and a critical classic.