Art of Literary Research

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Summary: Art of Literary Research
Review: Altick and Fenstermaker's standard work combines investigative, even forensic, zeal with a love of reading to produce good advice and timely admonition for all students of literature, not just those working in text editing, bibliography, biography, and source, reputation, or influence studies. In this new edition, old Chapter 4, "The Task," is gone; bibliographies and exercises have been updated and reorganized; and the text has been augmented to include more discussion of the scholarly use of computers. Although the authors claim "to align historically oriented literary scholarship with the latest trends in theory and criticism," they provide little evidence of having contended with such trends. For example, their sense of cultural history is unproblematized by questions of race, class, or gender, by distinctions of popular and high culture, and by the thought that, like reputation, the "esthetic," too, might be ideologically conditioned. Similarly, the minatory specter of Derrida goes unnoticed when they talk about meaning and intentionality. Recommended for all academic libraries, whose parent institutions would be better places if the authors' standards of intellectual rigor, self-criticism, and professional good manners prevailed.