The State of Theory [antikvár]

PREFACE The relationship between literature and the academic study of literature has never been a particularly happy one, and over the past three decades there have been rumours of a trial separation. Since the end of the seventeenth century, novels, collections of short stories or poems, and performances of plays have been profitably sold to people who might want to entertain or divert themselves in those spare moments between their more pressing domestic or professional commitments. But, as we are regularly reminded, this lucrative monopoly of entertainment has for the past century had to endure competition from film, radio, television and other electronic media. So academics and students face a number of related arguments against the relevance and general usefulness of spending three (or now possibly two) years in the intensive study of English or comparative literature. Knowing about narratology does not equip us to write saleable novels or screenplays or submit usable news copy. Nor is it of much use to those who do not re-enter the education system and who find themselves facing the non-literary requirements of the civil service, industry, marketing or self-employed pig farming. But it could be argued that civil servants, managers and pig farmers are united with refuse collectors, poUticians and the unemployed in an addiction to reading stories, and that this addiction has sustained the profitability of the printed word against its electronic competitors. If many of us spend a significant part of our waking lives tracking through worlds and experiences created entirely by the linguistic resources of other people, should we not vni