ABSTRACT
It scarcely needs arguing in the present context that the notion of literary discourse that underwrites the modern academic study of literature is the product of specific historical forces. Critics as diverse as E.D. Hirsch, Jr. and Raymond Williams have remarked upon the turn to the aesthetic that characterized late eighteenth and early nineteenth century approaches to writing, although they attribute the shift to forces of differing sorts. 1 Ivan Ulich reminds us that the habits of reading and writing that made possible the modern institutional framework of literature were to a large extent created by late medieval scholasticism. 2 Following his account, we might redescribe the modern invention of a discipline of literature as the substitution of secular scripture for sacred, with the surrounding institutional apparatus adjusted accordingly. 3 Even to discuss the possibility of disciplining literature otherwise, as this collection does, is to put into question the subject, process, and context of literary studies. To paraphrase Tzvetan Todorov, "Literature in general does not exist, but variable conceptions of literature exist and will continue to exist, not only from one period or country to another but also from one text to another." 4
