Abstract

The future of the English department and the among its various parts are much-debated issues, with special attention now given (as it will be here) to the problem of connecting literature and composition. If English departments have a future (besides the one we are often asked to go back to), will that future combine or separate lit and comp? There are among us many who propose or announce the death of the English department altogether; indeed, one often finds its obituary in the more exciting journals. Others, given to slightly less drastic cures, argue for the separation (amputation?) of composition from literature, with composition forming an independent department. A more difficult problem faces us when we presume that English departments will continue to exist, that composition should be a part of them, and that literature and composition can and should cooperate in some way, not go about their work independently. I want to explore the possibilities of such cooperation, focusing on the key terms, the figurative devices, and to some extent the genres we use in formulating our visions of a connected English Studies. I should say right off that I will be looking closely at our rhetoric of connections for my own rhetorical reasons. I will be arguing for an antifederalist view of such a union, a Jeffersonian and not Hamiltonian notion of the English department and the profession. Like Jefferson, I think that certain ways of defining the union can be tyrannical, that some disconnections can be constitutionally healthy, and that in every generation we must be prepared, indeed eager, to rethink and rearrange our relationships. In this generation, there is certainly much to arrange and rearrange. Just a random sample from what I assure you were entirely unsolicited brochures sent