Reconnection: Dualism to Holism in Literary Study

by Betty Jean Craige

[published by University of Georgia Press, 1988]

In Reconnection I shall investigate the discipline of literary study in relation to Cartesian dualism, which provided for the objectification of knowledge and, consequently, academic specialization in a body of knowledge. Although my major interest is the discipline's present function in American society, I shall trace its development from the time of the Scientific Revolution, with the hypothesis that literature and the discipline of literary study obtained definition in opposition to science and, later, in opposition to other apparently utilitarian endeavors. I wish to show how the emergence of the holistic paradigm means an increase in interdisciplinary, or nondisciplinary, research and teaching in the humanities and a shift in focus from canonized texts to methods of contextual interpretation, a shift that is occurring now.

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