Drol Noryb

I'm not 100% certain, but I believe that the answer is yes, they require the subject test.

For the broad overview, I found "How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies" by Robert Dale Parker really helpful. Also the Norton Anthology of criticism. The trick to getting both of these cheaply is to buy the first edition (which are both almost the same thing).

Funny how random the subject test can be. As I recall Shakespeare didn't even show up in mine (but Milton seemed to be a favorite for close-reading/grammar questions because his syntax can be weird). The Romantics seemed to show up more than any other group.

Though I applied straight from a BA, it looks like we had the same strategy and similar results. And if I had ordered my list according to schools that I honestly felt I fit most easily, it would have been the three I got into. I bet my SOP reflected that in ways I might not have even been thinking about.

I'm pretty happy with where I ended up, but I did have to compensate for coming from a non-prestigious, small liberal arts college (though I did well there). There's been some talk here as to how general or focused the SOP should be. I think in my situation it was helpful to pitch a really specific research project, because it gave me a chance in the SOP to show engagement with the field without looking heavy-handed or capriciously throwing out names. Also, for what it's worth, I only sent the GRE Subject Test (which was all right—north of 600 but not stellar) to one school and got in there. I don't know whether it would have made a difference to send it out more widely, but it might have.

I made it official: I'm going to CUNY Graduate Center.

Totally. Also, there are times when socio-historical contexts of canonical works are glossed over because of a narrow aesthetic focus or an appeal to "universality." (Ulysses, I'm looking at you.) But I'm with Bennett: it is a false opposition to have to choose between aesthetics and politics, and the two are linked.

Bennett: I think we're pretty much in agreement (and draw from a lot of the same influences, too!).

I heard they throw in a puppy.

I definitely would not say that we can't make aesthetic judgments ie. "Paradise Lost is a major aesthetic achievement." I just think the question isn't very interesting. I'd much rather ask, "How does Paradise Lost function as a piece of culture?"--for good or ill. Aesthetics are a part of that for sure, but it's not for the purpose of declaring some superior "canon" of work. Even so, if I make the aesthetic judgment that reality TV is trash (which I do), I think there still could be enormous value to a critical study of reality TV (as there could be for the pop culture of any era). Do canonical works suffer if we consider these things? I don't really think so... And if we're talking about teaching literature, pushing the canon is often a vestige of the imperial origin of the English canon which I mentioned in an earlier post. Whether we're talking about imperial India or teaching lit today, I don't think the purpose of English education is to make students more "cultured," but to build a critical literacy for use with many different kinds of texts. But aesthetic decisions are often tied to political and ideological realities, including empire. Something like Culture and Imperialism by Said makes this point while still explicitly not dismissing the aesthetic value of the texts he analyzes. I certainly wouldn't call this second-rate social science.

I definitely respect this position, because I'm definitely not saying that works thought to be inside the canon shouldn't be read. I am saying, though, that when someone says the "traditional canon," I don't know quite what they mean, because canons have always been evolving and serving specific political moments. But I don't think the canon is only a question of representation, but also of accuracy. If one of the purposes of literary study is to examine how culture is produced and circulated globally (at least I think it is), then I think national canons are at best misleading in how they suggests isolated national traditions that clash with each other (rather than highlighting their interconnectedness).

I'm going to explain my vote, because I could have conceivably answered in a few different ways, and it depends on which "canon" we're talking about. I think the emerging "world literature" canon is totally problematic in how it promises a "world" audience but ends up reinforcing a Western perspective of history. For me, the idea of a canon is ahistorical, though I find the histories of how canons are constructed really interesting. This is why I ended up answering #4: if we're talking about an English canon, I find it really significant that the development of a canon and the education thereof was in origin a management tool for colonizing India.

I think the reasoning was that they are so cutting edge that they don't even EXIST yet.

It just seems that for (apparently) a rhet/comp person, that the rhetoric of his posts is what's entirely lacking.

This person's name wasn't by chance "anotheranotheremoryenglishphd"?