ABSTRACT
In the last chapter, it was observed that the advent of ‘Theory’ (with a capital T) has played a significant role in recent histories of literary disciplines. By ‘Theory’ I mean that aspect of conceptualising literature and criticism in general terms (i.e. not just in relation to specific texts and contexts) which has become a distinct institutionally recognised component of disciplines of literary studies, so that it is now ensconced in pedagogy and academic discourse. Attempts at conceptualising literature and criticism without such institutional impetus – or ‘theory’ (with a small t) – have a considerably longer history. We would probably need to go back to Aristotle’s Poetics or Horace’s Ars Poetica or Bharatamuni’s Natya Shastra or Cao Pi’s Lun Wen or other such from classical antiquity to begin a historical trace. However, the term ‘theory’ itself, and in the latter sense, was particularly in the air by the 1970s as something distinctive and new in literature and criticism. In this chapter we are concerned with the relatively recent, 1970s onwards, institutional appropriation of Theory from theory.
