The Yale Critics: Deconstruction in America (Theory & History of Literature)

261 Pages·1983·14.14 MB·English

by  Wlad Godzich

The Yale Critics: Deconstruction in America
Theory and History of Literature
Edited by Wlad Godzich and Jochen Schulte-Sasse
Volume 1. Tzvetan Todorov Introduction to Poetics
Volume 2. Hans Robert Jauss Toward an Aesthetic of Reception
Volume 3. Hans Robert Jauss
Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics
Volume 4. Peter Burger Theory of the Avant-Garde
Volume 5. Vladimir Propp Theory and History of Folklore
Volume 6. Edited by Jonathan Arac, Wlad Godzich,
and Wallace Martin
The Yale Critics: Deconstruction in America
The Yale Critics:
Deconstruction
in America
Jonathan Arac, Wlad Godzich,
Wallace Martin
Editors
Theory and History of Literature, Volume 6
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
The University of Minnesota Press
gratefully acknowledges assistance provided
by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
for publication of this book.
Copyright © 1983 by the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press,
2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis, MN 55414
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
The Yale critics.
(Theory and history of literature; v. 6)
Bibliography: p. 203
Includes index
1. Deconstruction—Addresses, essays, lectures.
2. Criticism—United States—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Arac, Jonathan, 1945-
II. Godzich, Wlad. III. Martin, Wallace. IV. Series.
PN98.D43Y34 1983 801.95'0973 83-1127
ISBN 0-8166-1201-3
ISBN 0-8166-1206-4 (pbk.)
The University of Minnesota
is an equal-opportunity
educator and employer.
Contents
Key to Brief Titles vii
Preface ix
Introduction Wallace Martin xv
PART I
Variations on Authority: Some Deconstructive
Transformations of the New Criticism Paul A. Bove 3
The Domestication of Derrida Wlad Godzich 20
PART II
Aesthetic Criticism: Geoffrey Hartman Michael Sprinker 43
J. Hillis Miller: The Other Victorian at Yale Donald Pease 66
Error in Paul de Man Stanley Corngold 90
The Genius of Irony: Nietzsche in Bloom Daniel O'Hara 109
PART III
History, Theory, and Influence: Yale Critics as
Readers of Maurice Blanchot Donald G. Marshall 135
Joining the Text: From Heidegger to Derrida Rodolphe Gasche 156
Afterword Jonathan Arac 176
Bibliography Wallace Martin 203
Contributors 213
Index 217
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Key to Brief Titles
The following abbreviations are used for citations; publication informa-
tion appears in the bibliography. When authors or full titles are cited
in parentheses—e.g., "(Morris, p. 70)" or "(Bassett, "Tastes Criti-
ques')"—the references can be found in the bibliography.
ABW Miller, "Ariachne's Broken Woof"
AI Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence
AR de Man, Allegories of Reading
BF Hartman, Beyond Formalism
BI de Man, Blindness and Insight
BT Hartman, "Blessing the Torrent"
BV Bloom, The Breaking of the Vessels
CCC de Man, "The Crisis of Contemporary Criticism"
CW Hartman, Criticism in the Wilderness
DC Deconstruction and Criticism
DDW Hartman, "Diction and Defense in Wordsworth"
DG Miller, The Disappearance of God
EHH de Man, "Les Exegeses de Holderlin par Martin Heidegger"
EM Derrida, "The Ends of Man"
FCI Bloom, Figures of Capable Imagination
FR Hartman, The Fate of Reading
G Derrida, Of Grammatology
vii
viii D KEY TO BRIEF TITLES
I de Man, "Introduction" in Studies in Romanticism
ICF de Man, "Impasse de la critique formaliste"
KC Bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism
LG Derrida, "The Law of Genre" in Critical Inquiry
MM Bloom, A Map of Misreading
NC de Man, "New criticism et nouvelle critique"
P Derrida, "Pas I"
PR Miller, Poets of Reality
PRR Bloom, Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to
Stevens
RM Derrida, "The Retrait of Metaphor"
RT de Man, "The Rhetoric of Temporality"
SC The Structuralist Controversy
SI de Man, "Structure intentionelle de Vimage romantique"
ST Hartman, Saving the Text
TP Miller, "Theory and Practice"
WP Hartman, Wordsworth's Poetry, 1787-1814
WSA Miller, "Williams' Spring and All and the Progress of
Poetry"
WWW Hartman, "Words, Wish, Worth: Wordsworth"
Preface
The "Yale Critics"—Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, Paul de Man,
and J. Hillis Miller—are often represented as a group that one should
defend or oppose rather than as individuals whose ideas deserve critical
scrutiny. Our intention in this volume has been to stimulate serious, careful
assessment of their writings in relation to recent American criticism and
to the critical tradition. Thus W. K. Wimsatt, Cleanth Brooks, and M. H.
Abrams form one context of reference for our contributors, while Longinus
on the sublime, Schiller on the aesthetic, and Wordsworth on the poet's
relation to the public all come into play at other points. To achieve this
initial location, we have had to refrain from pursuing other important
current concerns, such as feminism, semiotics, and ethnic and regional
studies.
The largest context that continually concerns us is that of the gap be-
tween Anglo-American and Continental criticism, resulting from a dif-
ference in social experience. This gap has made significant dialogue be-
tween the two extremely difficult, and to the extent that the Yale Critics
are important voices in that dialogue it has made them hard for American
readers to understand. By selecting contributors who, in different ways,
find themselves between these two traditions, we hope that we have made
our volume interesting and accessible to the American reader. The in-
troduction offers a brief history of the Yale Critics and deconstruction.
It is followed by two essays on the relations of deconstruction to the
ix