The Muses on Their Lunch Hour

As a break from their ordained labors, what might the Muses today do on their lunch hour? This collection of witty, shrewd, and imaginative essays addresses interdisciplinary topics that range widely from Shakespeare, to psychoanalysis, to the practice of higher education today. With the ease born of deep knowledge, Marjorie Garber moves from comical journalistic quirks (ΓÇ£Fig LeavesΓÇ¥) to the curious return of myth and ritual in the theories of evolutionary psychologists (ΓÇ£Ovid, Now and ThenΓÇ¥).
Two themes emerge consistently in GarberΓÇÖs latest exploration of symptoms of culture. The first is that to predict the ΓÇ£next big thingΓÇ¥ in literary studies we should look back at ideas and practices set aside by a previous generation of critics. In the past several decades we have seen the reemergence ofΓÇöfor exampleΓÇötextual editing, biography, character criticism, aesthetics, and philology as ΓÇ£hotΓÇ¥ new areas for critical intervention. The second theme expands on this observation, making the case for ΓÇ£cultural forgettingΓÇ¥ as the way the arts and humanities renew themselves, both within fields and across them. Although she is never represented in traditional paintings or poetry, a missing MuseΓÇöwe can call her AmnesiaΓÇöturns out to be a key figure for the creation of theory and criticism in the arts.