ABSTRACT
It is impossible to fathom Maxine Greene’s regard for literature without first understanding her enduring mission. The nature of her ‘lifetime pursuit’ is summarized with characteristic clarity and eloquence in the ‘Introduction’ to The Dialectic of Freedom (1988, p. xi), and then reiterated in the ‘Introduction’ to her latest book, Releasing the Imagination (1995, p. 1). The quest, she reveals, has been, on the one hand, deeply personal, ‘reaching, always reaching, beyond the limits imposed by a woman’s life,’ and on the other, deeply public, ‘that of a person struggling to connect the undertaking of education…to the making and remaking of a public space…’ (1988, p. xi). Whether in her own personal/professional sphere or in larger public arenas, Greene’s quest has been, like a life lived in narrative form, always open, always in the making (1995, p. 1), consistently longing for ‘something better,’ than unacceptable present conditions, that which ‘might be in an always open world’ (1988, p. xi).
