Theory in literary studies is not an count of the nature of literature or methods for its study (though such matters are part of theory and will be treated here, primarily in Chapters 2.5. and 6). It's a body ofthinking and writing whose limits are exceedingly hard to define. The philosopher Richard Rory speaks of a new. d genre that began in nineteenth century Beginning in the days of Goethe and Macaulay and Carlyle and Emerson. a new kind of writing has developed which is neither the evaluation of the relative merits of literary productions, nor intellectual history, nor moral philosophy nor social prophecy, but all of these mingled together in a new genre.' The most convenient designation of this miscellaneous genre is simply the nickname theory. which has come to designate works that succeed in challenging and reorienting thinking i in fields other than those to which they apparently belong. This is the simplest explanation of what makes something count as theory works regarded as theory have effects beyond their original field