Blindness and Insight

Blindness and Insight

Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, Second edition, Revised

Paul de Man
Introduction by Wlad Godzich

$22.50 paper
ISBN: 0-8166-1135-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-1135-5

A new edition of a classic work in contemporary criticism.

In Blindness and Insight de Man examines several critics and finds in their writings a gap between their statements about the nature of literature and the results of their practical criticism. Like a classic, this book commands attention as a book that should be reread, and reread carefully. This edition, with its new introduction by Godzich and five additional essays by de Man, is meant to challenge those interested in literature to a new understanding of their chosen task as readers.

"Certainly one of the half dozen volumes that belong on the shelf of anyone interested in post-war critical theory." —Washington Post Book World

"Blindness and Insight is the most subtly argued book of its kind I have ever read: the product of a continuously alive intelligence. I has what Wallace Stevens calls 'The hum of thoughts evaded in the mind'" —Geoffrey Hartman, The American Scholar

"It is a book to be meditated long and late; it will disturb our habits of sleepy reading and careless speaking about literature. I think it's likely to go down as one of the most influential critical books of our time." —Robert Martin Adams, The Hudson Review

"The 24 review essays collected here make a powerfully sustained claim for regarding de Man as a writer of the short critical essay who ranks with Walter Benjamin, Maurice Blanchot, and Jean-Paul Sartre." —Choice

Paul de Man (1919-1983) held appointments at Cornell, Johns Hopkins, the University of Zurich, and Yale. Among his books are Aesthetic Ideology (1996), The Resistance to Theory (1986), Critical Writings, 1953-1978 (1993), and Allegories of Reading (1979).

310 pages | 1983
Theory and History of Literature Series, volume 7



Blindness and Insight Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, Second edition, Revised Paul de Man Introduction by Wlad Godzich		$22.50 paper ISBN: 0-8166-1135-1 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-1135-5
A new edition of a classic work in contemporary criticism. In Blindness and Insight de Man examines several critics and finds in their writings a gap between their statements about the nature of literature and the results of their practical criticism. Like a classic, this book commands attention as a book that should be reread, and reread carefully. This edition, with its new introduction by Godzich and five additional essays by de Man, is meant to challenge those interested in literature to a new understanding of their chosen task as readers. "Certainly one of the half dozen volumes that belong on the shelf of anyone interested in post-war critical theory." —Washington Post Book World "Blindness and Insight is the most subtly argued book of its kind I have ever read: the product of a continuously alive intelligence. I has what Wallace Stevens calls 'The hum of thoughts evaded in the mind'" —Geoffrey Hartman, The American Scholar "It is a book to be meditated long and late; it will disturb our habits of sleepy reading and careless speaking about literature. I think it's likely to go down as one of the most influential critical books of our time." —Robert Martin Adams, The Hudson Review "The 24 review essays collected here make a powerfully sustained claim for regarding de Man as a writer of the short critical essay who ranks with Walter Benjamin, Maurice Blanchot, and Jean-Paul Sartre." —Choice Paul de Man (1919-1983) held appointments at Cornell, Johns Hopkins, the University of Zurich, and Yale. Among his books are Aesthetic Ideology (1996), The Resistance to Theory (1986), Critical Writings, 1953-1978 (1993), and Allegories of Reading (1979). 310 pages \| 1983 Theory and History of Literature Series, volume 7