The Rhetoric of Romanticism - by Paul de Man (Paperback)

About the Book

This last work by Paul de Man before his death in 1983 brings together what is essentially his complete work on the study of European Romanticism and post-Romanticism.

Book Synopsis

This last work by Paul de Man before his death in 1983 brings together what is essentially his complete work on the study of European Romanticism and post-Romanticism.

From the Back Cover

The author taught a generation of American critics what critical readings might mean. His philosophic reach, his self-critical scruple, and his inventive verbal precision combined to form an inimitable but deeply influential style. This collection holds special interest for its long, chronological range...The praise that de Man granted Yeats applies equally to his own work: it constantly warns against the danger of unwarranted hopeful solutions.

Review Quotes

DeMan's legacy is an intellectual style of remarkable purity...a style marked by didactic fervour, whose undertow takes us into strange seas of thought, but it remains analytic and prosaic, with a minimum of semiotic play, and no mixing by montage of fiction and criticism.-- "London Review of Books"

[The Rhetoric of Romanticism] shows us how the narrative of a 500-line poem can contain more cliff-hanging suspense, more sudden alternation of vision and concealment, than a thousand pages of commonplace romantic adventures.--Northrop Frye, Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

The late Paul de Man was Sterling Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Yale University.