Between Discipline and Transgression: Re-Tracing the Boundaries of British Hispanism

Abstract

Over the last few years in Britain, conventional attitudes towards literature, the principles by which it is studied, its purposes and value have been subjected to a growing radical critique, crucially informed by developments in literary and cultural theory. The force of this critique has come, however, not so much from specific theoretical 'approaches' such as Marxism or Structuralism, many of whose concerns are by no means incompatible with a traditional emphasis on the analysis of the isolated literary text. More fundamental, perhaps, in unsettling received ideas have been the attempts to break down the ideological fences which enclose the category of literature as a definable field, as a privileged set of 'great works'. Indeed, the traditional boundaries of the entire discipline of literary studies are being re-drawn to take into account other forms of writing and signifying practice. In short, a move is well under way to repeal what might be called the Literary Enclosure Act.1