Introduction

Abstract

Although not focused on the Victorian period, John Guillory's recent Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study (2022) might seem to provide a bracing counter to the premise of this special issue. According to Guillory, framing our scholarly projects in political terms may ultimately be delusional, for whatever our aspirations or intentions, scholarship is rarely politically impactful. “Surely the political well-being of our society,” he writes, “is better served by producing one informed, insightful, and habitual reader than by the publication of any number of scholarly essays and books, however devastating these might be as criticisms of society” (78). For Guillory, claiming political significance for our scholarship amounts to an “overstatement of aim,” something he describes as “the principal form of professional deformation resulting from uncertainty about the social effects of literary study” (79).