After the New CriticismUniversity of Chicago Press, 2018 M12 14 - 398 pages This work is the first history and evaluation of contemporary American critical theory within its European philosophical contexts. In the first part, Frank Lentricchia analyzes the impact on our critical thought of Frye, Stevens, Kermode, Sartre, Poulet, Heidegger, Sussure, Barthes, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, and Foucault, among other, less central figures. In a second part, Lentricchia turns to four exemplary theorists on the American scene—Murray Krieger, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Paul de Man, and Harold Bloom—and an analysis of their careers within the lineage established in part one. Lentricchia's critical intention is in evidence in his sustained attack on the more or less hidden formalist premises inherited from the New Critical fathers. Even in the name of historical consciousness, he contends, contemporary theorists have often cut literature off from social and temporal processes. By so doing he believes that they have deprived literature of its relevant values and turned the teaching of both literature and theory into a rarefied activity. All along the way, with the help of such diverse thinkers as Saussure, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Bloom, Lentricchia indicates a strategy by which future critical theorists may resist the mandarin attitudes of their fathers. |
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aesthetic Barthes Barthes's Birth of Tragedy called claim cogito cognitive concept consciousness contemporary context critical theory critique Culler cultural Dasein Derrida Derridean difference discourse distinction dualism essay existential existentialist fictions force Foucault Frye's Georges Poulet Harold Bloom Heidegger Heidegger's hermeneutics Hillis Miller Hirsch historicism human Husserl Ibid idea imagination intention interpretation isolated Jacques Derrida Kant Kantian Kermode language Lévi-Strauss linguistic literary history literary universe literature Man's meaning metaphor metaphysical misreading mode myth nature neo-Kantian New-Critical Nietzsche norms Northrop Frye notion object ontological origin perspective phenomenological philosophical poem poet poetic poetry position poststructuralist Poulet principle privileged reader reading reality rhetoric romantic romanticism Sartre Saussure Saussure's self-consciousness sense signified speak Stevens structuralist structure symbol tells temporal textual theoretical things thought tion tradition traditionalist trans truth unique University Press vision Wallace Stevens Window to Criticism words Wordsworth writing Yale