The ascendency of the practical

An interesting (if reactionary/old-codgery) article by William Chace about the "decline" of the modern English department. Among its highlights:

An argument to re-institute the canon?

"What departments have done instead is dismember the curriculum, drift away from the notion that historical chronology is important, and substitute for the books themselves a scattered array of secondary considerations (identity studies, abstruse theory, sexuality, film and popular culture)."

Hm. Sounds a lot like someone else I know.

Some post-"post-structural" angst:

"You need not even believe that works of literature have intelligible meaning; you can announce that they bear no relationship at all to the world beyond the text. Nor do you need to believe that literary history is helpful in understanding the books you teach; history itself can be shucked aside as misleading, irrelevant, or even unknowable."

History chucked aside? Maybe in the 60's, but now?

ORDER PLEASE:

"In short, there are few, if any, fixed rules or operating principles to which those teaching English and American literature are obliged to conform."

The answer? Oh, yeah, of course, let's teach Western things!

"First, several of my colleagues around the country have called for a return to the aesthetic wellsprings of literature...They urge the teaching of English, or French, or Russian literature, and the like, in terms of the intrinsic value of the works themselves, in all their range and multiplicity, as well-crafted and appealing artifacts of human wisdom."