In it, they attempt to explain the literary history of the genre, but also the sciences such as physics and astronomy.
His 1982 book Semiotics and Interpretation was praised in the Times Literary Supplement as offering "a clutch of examples of semiotics usefully and intelligently applied, which Scholes's patient, cheerful tone and his resolutely concrete vocabulary manage to combine into a breezily informative American confection.
Scholes held honorary doctorates from Lumière University Lyon 2, France, (1987) and SUNY Purchase (2003).
He was a fierce proponent of abandoning a restrictive definition of literature and reorientating the study of English around the concept of 'Textuality'.
By expanding the field of study and emphasizing the importance of both reading and writing when teaching students, he sought to revitalize English into a discipline which could be useful in the twenty first century.