Something Else in Place of All That

As we near the end of the century and, indeed, the end of a millennium, some academics in American Studies are running Going Out of Business advertisements in the journals and academic press. Historians among us will recall that the events of 1989 were to signal the end of history in general, and we have had one recent book entitled The End of American History. In the industry of American literature as well, several scholars have lost their leases and requested Chapter 11 protection for the field. Not long ago, College English ran an article entitled "The End of American Literature"; its first sentence reads, "It is time to stop teaching 4 American' literature." And my remarks here are occasioned by the most recent essay on the topic, a piece by Christopher Clausen in the January 1994 issue of New Literary History that begins, "The concept of ' national literatures ' in English has outlived its usefulness and should be abandoned " We all know that the American jeremiad tends to flourish at the fin de siecle, but I think we should not dismiss this "death-of-American-literature" motif as mere turn-of-the-century rhetoric. We may be at the turning point of a paradigm shift. In any event, here in the congenial company of my fellow American Studies practitioners this modest version of the apocalyptic gives me an occasion for some reflections on the study of American literature and the writing of its history as those subjects have engaged me for a good many years. And I think I must begin with the new world/old world metaphor.