Geoffrey Hartman (Critics of the Twentieth Century) Book

Though his position resists easy formulation, Geoffrey Hartman has been developing a sophisticated philosophical criticism that at once parallels and differs from New Criticism, hermeneutics, reader-response, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis, and may best be described as reader-responsibility.G. Douglas Atkins considers the entire range of Hartman's work, from his seminal studies of Wordsworth to his provocative arguments for a "negative hermeneutics" and a "creative criticism," from his continuing efforts to reinvigorate literary history to his "easy pieces" on Alfred Hitchcock, Ross MacDonald, and others.By elucidating key ideas, this book provides a valuable introduction to a major critical voice of the twentieth century, who, more than any other writer, has called into question our assumptions about the distinction between commentary and imaginative literature.Read More