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Edward Pechter argues that the turn toward cognition in literary studies is a retrenchment of the supposedly discredited idea of literary character. The decline in character studies through the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth parallels a decline in literary criticism's focus on the literary and a rise in its concerns with the linguistic, the political, and, more recently, the scientific. Pechter sees in literary criticism's appropriation of these scientific theories a rationalization of its methods in an attempt to reclaim its cultural authority. A turn toward consciousness and/or cognition will not, in Pechter's view, solve the problem of the decline of the humanities. Pechter concludes with a consideration of William Flesch's Comeuppance, largely because Flesch does not claim determining privilege for his theoretical arguments.

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-59541-6_3

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