Eliot to Derrida: The Poverty of Interpretation

by John Harwood

Overview

'...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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333641804
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	05/10/1995
Series:	Poverty of Interpretation
Edition description:	1995
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

A lucid and trenchant polemical history of interpretive criticism in the academy, built around a hierarchy of related topics: the interpretation of Eliot's poetry, and in particular The Waste Land; the problems caused by the reification of "modernism"; the conflicts between New Critical theory and interpretive practice; the emergence of poststructuralist "theory" as a network of personality cults; and the role of institutional and professional imperatives in determining some of the key trends in mainstream interpretive criticism since the 1930s. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews