ABSTRACT
It is a curious confession to make for someone who has, one way or another, been involved in the teaching of English for over 20 years — but it is only recently that I have begun to consider what knowledge in English constitutes. This belated interest has arisen for two main reasons: one, a growing interest in assessment; and two, an awareness that what once constituted knowledge within the discipline has been subtly, almost imperceptibly changing. The two are not unrelated. Consideration of what to assess takes us beyond the broad view of the subject and asks us particular questions of what it means to know in that subject; it takes us beyond a general philosophy to what might loosely be called epistemology.
