ABSTRACT
In today’s rapidly changing academic/intellectual environment, Textual Carnivals is a helpful intervention into the programme of re-situating ‘composition’ in relation not only to ‘literature’ (its ‘complement’ in the English studies disciplinary programme), but more importantly to the broad shift in humanistic inquiry which is now under way. This shift-by no means a homogeneous or unified movement, but one characterized, as Miller indicates, by ‘struggle’—is today taking two broad directions: on the one hand, it is being drawn in the direction of the new ‘Textual Studies’ by those under the strong influence of (post)structuralism, and, on the. other hand, in the direction of ‘Cultural Studies’ by those who are wary of the political/social/economic implications of the other camp’s over-textualizing of cultural phenomena.
