The Limits of Literary Historicism

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments To begin at the beginning, we would like to thank the members of the Critical Theory Reading Group at the University of Tennessee for their insight, enthusiasm, intellectual integrity, and fellowship. This volume was conceived amidst the Group’s vigorous exchange of ideas and conspicuously bears the influence of its discussions. In addition to the editorial board of the Tennessee Studies in Literature series, we would like to thank Don Cox, former director of the series, for his early interest in and encouragement of this project, and Mary Papke, who succeeded him and brought to bear upon it her keen critical eye and her indefatigable red pen. The volume is immensely stronger because of her efforts . We are also indebted to the two anonymous readers who reviewed the volume as a whole and to Scot Danforth, director of UT Press, for his contributions . The Hodges Better English Fund of the University of Tennessee English department provided monies to compensate the two readers and to acquire permissions. Jane Gallop’s essay, “The Historicization of Literary Studies and the Fate of Close Reading,” originally appeared in a slightly different form in Profession (2007): 181–86. Charles M. Altieri’s essay, “Why Modernist Claims for Autonomy Matter,” originally appeared in a slightly different form in the Journal of Modern Literature 32 (Spring 2009): 1–21. We are grateful to the Modern Language Association and to Indiana University Press for permission to reprint these essays here. Finally, we would like to thank the contributors to this volume for their impressive work and professionalism, and Honor McKitrick Wallace for her continuous moral support. ...