Reconstructing Literature

English studies have become the scene of the intense controversy with Marxism, feminism, deconstruction and the many varieties of structuralism all claiming to offer new insights into literature. In this book eight critics (John Holloway, Gabriel Josipovici, Cedric Watts, Wayne Booth, Robert Pattison, Anthony Thorlby, Roger Scruton, and Laurence Lerner) respond to the new movements, united by a refusal to abandon their trust in reason, the possibility of meaning and the need for value judgments. The result is a lively and humane book which offers new insights into literary theory and into particular works. The contributors, while taking the new schools of criticism seriously, often disagree with them, offering serious discussion on the value of structuralism and the merits of many of its practitioners.