Blindness and Insight
Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism
A new edition of a classic work in contemporary criticism.
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
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.
“Blindness and Insight is the most subtly argued book of its kind I have ever read: the product of a continuously alive intelligence. It has what Wallace Stevens calls ‘The hum of thoughts evaded in the mind’” Geoffrey Hartman, The American Scholar
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
Certainly one of the half dozen volumes that belong on the shelf of anyone interested in post-war critical theory.
The 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. It 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
