VIABLE DEPARTMENTS define their subject, and having done so create an introductory course that previews the undergraduate curriculum. Unfortunately, we in English do not now have such a definition. The combined bulk of survey texts in English and American literature illustrates the problem. It is absurd to expect anyone, much less an introductory student, to read and understand all that material, though many teachers apparently subscribe to the notion that excerpts from The Fneric Qzeene and Blake's prophetic books can be read in slapdash fashion. Most teachers follow some kind of selection process in teaching such texts, as their whims or specialties direct. It is foolish to impose so much bulk upon a student and call this mass a survey. A strictly chronological or historical organization makes no sense at all in literature, where the difficulty of comprehension increases prettv much in direct proportion to distance in time. We should change our principle of organization. Re-doing the survey actually implies a drastic revision of the whole philosophy of literature and its place in our society. Since this reorientation involves a challenge to many academic assumptions, I will briefly summarize the basis of my theor!r before outlining the plan itself. The first and most fundamental change was to think of a survey in the context of the modern world, the cultural revolution that began around 1500 and continued into the twentieth centurv. The last major poetic statement on the end of this era was, of course, The Waste Land. The central problem, as I saw it, was to find a thematic principle that would give the flavor of this era. Following Erich Fromm, I took psychology as the center of my interpretation, with his theme of alienation resulting from the breakup of the Middle Ages. Following Whitehead (Science and the Modern World, Ch. 5), I took the Romantic revolution as the pivotal point in this modern world. When the Romantics challenged the Baconian illusion of scientific infallibility and inviolability by a balanced interactionism, the mind of man became the dominant interest in poetry, then in fiction, and now even in science itself. This revolution in consciousness, with its option of dynamic ordering in aesthetic as well as psychic experience, gives the counterthrust to a restricting scientism and sets up the tensions that have dominated the modern world. I will begin my description of the new survey in English literature by stating the three premises that underlie the course structure. Because of space, I will