What Is the History of Literature?

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Preface vii
4. Literary History
5. A Trout in the Milk 1
6. Literary History: Some Roads Not (Yet) Taken 13
7. What Is the History of Literature? 23
8. The Once and Future Middle Ages 35
9. Literature, Meaning, and the Discontinuity of Fact 45
10. Empiricism Once More 51
11. Some Prospects for Literary History 63
12. Literature in History
13. Public Memory and Its Discontents 73
14. Understanding the Living and Talking to the Dead: The Historicity of Psychoanalysis 93
15. Figures of the Feminine: An Amazonian Revolution in Feminist Literary History? 107
16. Editing as Cultural Formation: The Sexing of Shakespeare's Sonnets 129
17. Textual Politics/Sexual Politics 143
18. The Pedigree of the White Stallion: Postcoloniality and Literary History 159
19. The Victims of New Historicism 187
20. Literature as History
21. Preface to a Lyric History 199
22. Can We Be Historical Ever? Some Hopes for a Dialectical Model of Historical Self-Consciousness 219
23. On Literature Considered as a Dead Language 233
24. More Speech on Free Speech 243
25. Textual Conquests: On Readerly Competence and "Minority" Literature 255
26. The Hum of Literature: Ostension in Language 269
27. Contributors 289
28. Index 293