Eliot to Derrida
The Poverty of Interpretation
Authors: Harwood, John, Forlenza, Rosario
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- About this book
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'...a book which should be read by all students contemplating enrolment for a university course in modern English or European literary studies.' - Roy Harris, Times Higher Education Supplement Eliot to Derrida is a sardonic portrait of the cult of the specialist interpreter, from I.A. Richards and the Cambridge School to Jacques Derrida and his disciples. This lucid, iconoclastic study shows how, and why, so much of the academic response to a rich variety of literary experiment has been straitjacketed by the vast industries which have grown up around `modernism' and `postmodernism'. For anyone disenchanted with the extravagant claims - and leaden prose - of literary theorists, this will be an exhilarating book.
- About the authors
-
Eliot to Derrida is a sardonic portrait of the cult of the specialist interpreter, from I. A. Richards and the Cambridge School to Jacques Derrida and his disciples. This lucid, iconoclastic study shows how, and why, so much of the academic response to a rich variety of literary experiment has been straitjacketed by the vast industries which have grown up around 'modernism' and 'postmodernism'. Tracing the reception of T. S. Eliot's poems - notably The Waste Land - from the earliest reviews to the post-war era of mass-produced interpretations, it shows how the insights of Eliot's first readers were lost in a fog of reverent explication. Just as 'Mr. Eliot' was co-opted by Richards, Leavis and the New Critics to serve as their patron saint, so Derrida - perhaps the last person Eliot would have chosen as his successor - became the principal guru of the new theoretical dispensation. And just as the quest for the One True Meaning collapsed under the weight of its inherent contradictions, so the quest for the One True Theory was destined to end in factional brawling between rival personality cults. For anyone disenchanted with the extravagant claims - and leaden prose - of literary theorists, this will be an exhilarating book.
- Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Prologue
Pages 1-29
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The Invention of Modernism
Pages 30-60
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‘These fragments you have shelved (shored)’: Pound, Eliot and The Waste Land
Pages 61-85
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Death by Exegesis
Pages 86-109
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The Case of the Missing Subject
Pages 110-139
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- Eliot to Derrida
- Book Subtitle
- The Poverty of Interpretation
- Authors
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- John Harwood
- Rosario Forlenza
- Copyright
- 1995
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan UK
- Copyright Holder
- John Harwood
- eBook ISBN
- 978-1-349-23977-1
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-1-349-23977-1
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-0-312-12558-5
- Softcover ISBN
- 978-0-333-64180-4
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- VIII, 244
- Topics
