| This dissertation demonstrates that no rigorous account of the development of twentieth-century English literature, literary criticism, and critical theory can afford to overlook the relationship between the State's repression of its archives and the implications that such a concealment entails not only for the practice of literary historiography, but for any method that attempts to provide an account of itself, its development, and its contemporary elaboration. Drawing on a collection of recently declassified texts obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the Public Records Office in London, and the National Archives in Washington, D.C., this dissertation elucidates how the State's repression of its archives establishes the limits of literary historiography. Focusing on the literary works of George Orwell (chapter one), the criticism of Lionel Trilling and R. P. Blackmur (chapter two), and the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno (chapter three), this dissertation provides an interpretative account of the irreconcilable relationship between the institutions of literature, literary criticism and theory, on the one hand, and the exercise of State authority, on the other. |
