December 6, 2002

Thesis and Antithesis: Rewriting the Rules on Writing

By HEATHER DUBROW

When you have all the answers about a building before you start building it, your answers are not true. The building gives you answers as it grows and becomes itself. -- Louis I. Kahn

Accustomed to the intellectual shenanigans of professors, the undergraduates in my Renaissance literature courses and general surveys attend politely if I tell them that certain contemporary critics challenge the idea that Shakespeare was a great writer and, indeed, challenge the very concept of a