Old(e) English(e)

INSTRUCTOR OF ENGLISH Allison W. Phinney didn't quite know what to do Neither did Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities Susan R. Suleiman. Both were more than a bit surprised to see in excess of 60 students at the first meeting of their classes this term. Both wound up excluding most of those in attendance the first week, because they really had no other choice; there was no way to accommodate all of the prospective students. After all, neither English 288 nor Literature 104 was designed to admit all interested, or even all qualified undergraduates: Phinney's was a graduate-level offering, and Suleiman's was required for concentrators in an honors-only department boasting only a score of graduates per year.

And what, besides oversubscription, did the two have in common? They were two of the four courses on literary theory--arguably one of the hottest tickets on the intellectual scene today--that undergraduates can even get a glimpse of. These four courses, including one each on "Semiotics" and "Deconstruction" are all no older than last year's catalogue "Deconstruction" remains bracketed this year, and those itching to study "Semiotics" (also presently bracketed) will have to hold out until '86-87. No wonder Phinney and Suleiman found themselves over-whelmed by hordes of theory-hungry students--of all levels, from more concentrations than could be counted.

Phinney, who is teaching "Introduction to Modern Critical Theory," was just hired this year as the English Department's sole theorist. The Literature Department, which offers Suleiman's "Modern Literary Theory," is itself the youngest of Harvard's concentrations. Things really are looking up, what with Harvard's nabbing Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Barbara E. Johnson from Yale and with Assistant Professor of the same Alice A. Jardine teaching something exciting each semester in that department. But the fact is, judging from student interest and enthusiasm, as well as the attention devoted to literary theory in universities all over the country as well as on The Continent, things aren't looking high enough up.

Each semester, students concentrating in everything from English to Biochemistry, undergraduates and graduate students, a good handful from the Law School, the Kennedy School and even from MIT, try to enroll in whichever of those four courses on literary theory is offered. They don't want to take it courses for concentration credit. They aren't looking for the easy grade (they sure as heck aren't going to find one, anyway). They are not, to belabor the point, attempting to fulfill elusive distribution requirements. What the University should find exciting about this interest is that it's an example of what every liberal arts education is supposed to contain and so sporadically does: study for study's sake. Those who flock to hear Jardine and Johnson, Suleiman and Phinney know that lit crit is a combination, in its broadest description, of such disparate disciplines as linguistics, philosophy, and traditional literary analysis. And they want to study it because it's interesting and important. It's move than a shame that there isn't enough room for them: there people are there for all the right reasons.

THE PROBLEM IS that great universities, or rather those that would sooner appear great than be great, hum along towards the intellectual frontier with all the speed and grace of a brontosaurus. Harvard is notorious, particularly in the English Department, for sitting tight and hoping whatever's new and exciting will go away with next year's graduates. But that strategy hasn't paid off with all the permutations of New Criticism, which refused to crawl away and die, and the odds aren't in the department's favor now. As it is, students are deserting the English Department in large numbers for the greener pastures of Literature or of History and Literature.

"Obviously there's a lot of frustration--things are getting more available, but there simply aren't enough courses," says Phinney, who wound up accepting three of the 30 undergraduates expressing a desire to enroll (one also got into Suleiman's course and opted for it instead). Unfortunately, Phinney has no immediate plans for an undergraduate lecture course on theory, let alone a smaller, more intense version of the kind Suleiman had originally planned. So those motivated to do so will continue to slug it out for spots in other courses. Those motivated and in the English Department will have to hunt around for sophomore tutorials offering theory several, if not the majority, have none at all) and the valiant concentration offerings that don't consider secondary sources to be of tertiary significance.

Larry D. Benson, chairman of the English department, said recently that "We have expanded," but that until the department can hire more professors "we hope students will avail themselves of the opportunity" afforded them by those four limited-enrollment courses Needless to say, this sounds rather cheap to upperclassmen frantically looking for advisers with interest and ability in theory.

How long will it take before Harvard recognizes not only the legitimacy but the importance of this discipline and the remarkably widespread interest it holds for students? And how long until the University decides to fund an expanded, non-selective Literature concentrations and more professors who can teach theory in the English-department? Probably, as Professor Jardine put it, "as long as it takes for students to make their wishes very well known to the powers that be." Or maybe just a little while longer.