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Whose Field? Whose MLA?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Roger Shattuck
Roger Shattuck*
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Extract

The questionnaire ruffled me a bit. “did your field exist in 1900?” My field? There's the rub. “Il faut cultiver notre jardin,” Voltaire writes in the last sentence of Candide. Not my garden: our garden. Our field, the study of literature as a heightened form of language, came into existence by 500 BC in a few languages. In the modern languages, our field arrived a little later, let's say by the fourteenth century. And today our field, with all its knolls and swales, remains one, embracing many, rewarding all.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 115 , Issue 7: Special Millennium issue , December 2000 , pp. 1982 - 1985
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2000

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