2018

Jonathan Culler stands today as one of the most influential scholars of literature – and historian scholars of literary theory. The following interview provides only the snapshot of Culler’s significant presence and influence through his decades of scholarship and teaching in university classrooms. As we follow his path from Harvard (B.A. 1966) to Oxford (Rhodes Scholar and M.Phil 1968) through to his dissertation work at Oxford (D.Phil. 1972), followed by his directorship of modern languages at Cambridge (1969-1974) to his life-time career at Cornell (since 1977), Culler has singularly dedicated his career to formally exploring the theoretical frameworks that might best open literature to how we as readers explore and create meaning in its apprehension. As such, we see Culler’s scholarly journey zigzag in and through insights from philosophy (Phenomenology, for instance), linguistics, anthropology, and semiotics (Structuralism, for instance).

critics, 2015

Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 2005

Orbis Litterarum, 1979

Some critics see the recent interest in readers and reading as a threat not only to authorship but to the very notion of text. This paper contends that no such threat exists since contemporary concepts of the reader are rather the result of a displacement which works to extend the privileges of literariness and authorship.