The Geoffrey Hartman Reader

by Geoffrey Hartman, Daniel T. O'Hara (Editor)

Overview

Geoffrey Hartman is a pivotal figure in twentieth-century literary thinking,
especially in literary theory and its transformation into such fields as Holocaust studies, trauma studies, and work on witnessing and testimony. The essays in this reader, preceded by an important autobiographical introduction, present the full range of Hartman’s interests, which cover almost the entire field of contemporary literature and culture—from poetry through psychoanalysis and trauma studies to midrash and the media revolution.

Throughout his career, starting with his earliest books on Romantic literature,
Hartman has interrogated the possibility of a healing culture of vision, one that could travel from one civilization to another and could satisfy safely rather than exacerbate self-destructively the repetitive human drive to reverse time and exact apocalyptic vengeance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823224449
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	12/06/2004
Edition description:	2
Pages:	478
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Geoffrey Hartman was Sterling Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Yale and Project Director of its Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. His many books include The Third Pillar: Essays in Judaic Studies (Penn, 2011), A Scholar’s Tale: Intellectual Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe (Fordham, 2007), The Geoffrey Hartman Reader (Fordham, 2004, winner, Truman Capote Prize for Literary Criticism), Scars of the Spirit: The Struggle Against Inauthenticity (St. Martin’s, 2004), The Fateful Question of Culture (Columbia, 1997) The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust (Indiana, 1996), Criticism in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today (Yale, 1980, 2nd ed, 2007).

Table of Contents

Contents; Authors' Acknowledgments; Publisher's Acknowledgements; Note on the Text; The Culture of Vision; Daniel T. O'Hara; Autobiographical Introduction; 'Life and Learning'; I The Interpretation of Poetry; 1. Christopher Smart's 'Magnificat'; 2. Evening Star and Evening Land; 3. Wordsworth's Magic Mountains; 4. The Use and Abuse of Structural Analysis; 5. Romance and Modernity: Keats's 'Ode to Psyche'; 6. Purification and Danger in American Poetry; II Theory and History; 7. Pure Representation; 8. The New Perseus; 9. The Heroics of Realism; 10. Literature High and Low; 11. Romanticism and Anti-Self-consciousness; 12. Text and Spirit; 13. Midrash as Law and Literature; 14. The Voice of the Shuttle; III Positions; 15. Practical Criticism; 16. The Sacred Jungle; 17. Radical Art and Radical Analysis; 18. The Critical Essay between Theory and Tradition; 19. Literary Commentary as Literature; 20. Words and Wounds; 21. Reading, Trauma, Pedagogy; IV Culture; Literature and Social Text; 22. Defining Culture; 23. The Question of Our Speech; 24. Pastoral Vestiges; 25. Realism and 'America'; 26. The Reinvention of Hate; Film; 27. Jeanne Moreau's Lumiére; 28. Spielberg's Schindler's List; The Psychoanalytic Scandal; 29. The Interpreter's Freud; 30. Lacan, Derrida, and the Specular Name; V Memory; 31. Public Memory and its Discontents; 32. Tele-Suffering and Testimony; 33. Poetics after the Holocaust; VI Coda; 34. Passion and Literary Engagement; Index.

Editorial Reviews

...an unexpected, secret gift...arrives on every page of The Geoffrey Hartman Reader.

The Cambridge Quarterly

The Geoffrey Hartman Reader is long overdue. Geoffrey Hartman has been a major literary/cultural figure since the late 1950s and his energies continue unabated.”

——Stanley Fish, University of Illinois at Chicago

“The Geoffrey Hartman Reader is a triumph.”——Frances Ferguson, University of Chicago

“Geoffrey Hartman seems to me one of the most important literary critics and theorists in the world.He is an exceptionally deep and decent thinker. I believe that his book will be a landmark.”

——Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University

From the Publisher

Geoffrey Hartman seems to me one of the most important literary critics and theorists in the world. He is an exceptionally deep and decent thinker. I believe that his book will be a landmark.

Stephen Greenblatt

“The Geoffrey Hartman Reader is long overdue. Geoffrey Hartman has been a major literary/cultural figure since the late 1950s and his energies continue unabated.”

University of Illinois at Chicago - Stanley Fish

“The Geoffrey Hartman Reader is a triumph.

University of Chicago - Frances Ferguson