The Critical Difference by Barbara Johnson

The Critical Difference by Barbara Johnson

Barbara Johnson investigates the significant and illuminating ways in which both literature and criticism are "critically different" from what they purport to be. Her subtle and provocative studies of Balzac, Mallarme, Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Melville, Poe, Barthes, Lacan, Austin, and Derrida take a refreshing new approach to the fundamental questions of meaning, interpretation, and the relationship between literature and criticism. In each of seven essays, a clear, precise, and detailed reading of the rhetoric of one or more literary or critical works reveals the text's fundamental discrepancies, ambiguities, and contradictions. If rhetoric is seen as language's capacity to differ from literal statement, and if "to differ" can also mean "to disagree, " then the reading of the rhetoric of literature and theory here is an attempt to capture the logic of a text's own disagreement with itself.

When it is done well, deconstructive criticism can be a pleasure to read, as it is in the case of Barbara JohnsonHer discussions of the reading process... are patient, ingenious, and persuasive. -- Robert Scholes Yale Review When it is done well, deconstructive criticism can be a pleasure to read, as it is in the case of Barbara Johnson. Her discussions of the reading process... are patient, ingenious, and persuasive. -- Robert Scholes Yale Review

Barbara Johnson is professor of French and comparative literature at Harvard University. She is author of Défigurations du langage poétique and translator of Jacques Derrida's La Dissémination.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780801827280
ISBN 10	0801827280
Title	The Critical Difference
Author	Barbara Johnson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Johns Hopkins University Press
Year published	1985-04-26
Number of pages	168
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable