The professor and the profession

Robert Bechtold Heilman is one of the last survivors of a generation of American critics that included such literary giants as Cleanth Brooks. Allen Tate, and Edmund Wilson, men to whom literary criticism was not a profession or an academic necessity but a calling. In a distinguished career that has spanned nearly six decades. Heilman has influenced generations of scholars and critics through his exquisitely written commentaries on subjects ranging from William Shakespeare to Thomas Hardy. In The Professor and the Profession, Heilman looks back over his life and times from his perspective as both an academic and an American. The Professor and the Profession will appeal to a broad array of scholars, from young academics wanting to know where they came from to those of Heilman's generation who can appreciate this personal reminiscence into the world of letters.

Includes index.

I. The Self Displayed. 1. From Parsonage to Podium. 2. Baseball: Random Connections. 3. Football: An Addict's Recollections and Observations. 4. The Rail Way of the World -- II. Writers Portrayed: Recollections. 5. Eric Voegelin. 6. Robert Penn Warren. 7. Theodore Roethke. 8. Malcolm Cowley as University Professor -- III. Literary Types and Problems Inspected: Shakespeare. 9. Farce: The Taming of the Shrew. 10. Romance: Cymbeline. 11. Timon in Context -- IV. Literary Types and Problems Inspected: Later Writers. 12. Good Guys and Bad Guys and What the Stage Does with Them: Dramatic Types. 13. The Novel: Ideas versus Drama in Hardy. 14. Short Story and Novella: Corrington's Tales. 15. Comic Prose Epic: Welty's Losing Battles. 16. Three Generations of English Studies: Impressions. 17. Post-Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow: An Aspect of the Humanistic Tongue -- V. Education Examined. 18. Semicentennial Retrospections: The Past as Perspective. 19. Back to Basics: Issues. 20. Humanistic, Humane, Human. 21. The Great-Teacher Myth. 22. Sabbatical Leaves: Pay for Play, or Pattern for American Life? 23. Citizenship, Imagination, and Novels.