Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature Book

	Foreword	v
	Preface	ix
	Introduction: Falling into Theory	1
Part 1	Why We Read: The University, the Humanities, and the Province of Literature	15
	What We Have Loved, Others Will Love	31
	Disliking Books at an Early Age	41
	The Rise of English	49
	Introduction to Masks of Conquest	60
	The "Banking" Concept of Education	68
	Toward a Revolutionary Feminist Pedagogy	79
	The New Advocacy and the Old	85
	The Function of English at the Present Time	89
	Teaching Culture	96
	The Demise of Disciplinary Authority	103
	A Fortunate Fall?	111
Part 2	What We Read: The Literary Canon and the Curriculum after the Culture Wars	121
	Masterpiece Theater: The Politics of Hawthorne's Literary Reputation	137
	Contingencies of Value	147
	Treason Our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon	153
	What Is a Minor Literature?	167
	Canon-Formation, Literary History, and the Afro-American Tradition: From the Seen to the Told	175
	From Epistemology of the Closet	183
	The Politics of Knowledge	189
	Introduction to A Feeling for Books	199
	Telling Our Story about Teaching Literature	211
	The Canon as Cultural Capital	218
	Elegiac Conclusion	225
Part 3	How We Read: Interpretive Communities and Literary Meaning	235
	The Death of the Author	253
	Actual Reader and Authorial Reader	258
	How to Recognize a Poem When You See One	268
	Do We Write the Text We Read?	278
	The Female Swerve	290
	From Sexual/Textual Politics	295
	Dancing through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism	302
	Black Matter(s)	310
	An Image of Africa	323
	The Frontier on Which Heart of Darkness Stands	334
	Imperialism and Sexual Difference	340
	Who Is Responsible in Ethical Criticism, and for What?	349
	The Literary Imagination	356
	Wanted Dead or Alive: Browning's Historicism	366
	Reclaiming the Aesthetic	378
	Aesthetics and the Literal Imagination	391
	Appendix	399
	Index	405