Preface xi 1 Pleasure: Have we neglected it? 1 Fiction for pleasure 1 The case of tragedy 3 The English curriculum 6 Cries of joy 7 'Aesthetic' pleasure 9 The Pleasure of the Text 12 Modernist unpleasure 14 Gaiety 15 2 Piety: Haven't we overdone it? 18 Criticism on the defensive 18 Classic defences 22 The advent of theory 24 Law 28 The superego 29 Neurosis 30 Complacency 31 Culture and Anarchy 32 Artefacts and pleasure 33 Critical writing 34 3 Biography: Friend or foe? 37 Life and art 37 Biography in theory 39 What the authors say 42 New Historicism 43 Shakespeare's life 44 Fact or fiction? 46 Shakespeare's memory 47 Romance 51 The death of the reader 52 4 Realism: Do we overrate it? 54 A disputed value 54 The default genre 55 Imitation 57 Insight 60 Totalization 62 Suspicion 63 Objections 64 The radical view 66 Recuperation 68 A counter-example 70 5 Culture: What do we mean by it? 72 Cultural criticism 72 Twin perils 75 Culture as meanings 76 Meanwhile, in Paris . 80 Anthropology 80 Another culture 83 Perils circumvented 85 Work to do 88 6 History: Do we do it justice? 90 Official usage 90 Cultural difference 91 History and criticism 93 Customary knowledge 94 Dissonance 97 An example 99 The old historicism 101 Criticism as cultural history 103 The uses of criticism 103 Critical skills 105 7 Desire: A force to reckon with 107 Pleasure revisited 107 Orpheus 108 Loss 109 The desire of the protagonist 111 Stand-ins 113 The desire of the reader 114 The desire of the text 116 Substitution 118 Pacification 119 Defiance 120 Breaking the rules 123 And so . 126 Criticism 126 Notes 128 Index 140.