Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust

by Paul De Man

This important theoretical work by Paul de Man sets forth a mode of reading and interpretation based on exemplary texts by Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. The readings start from unresolved difficulties in the critical traditions engendered by these authors, and they return to the places in the text where those difficulties are most apparent or most incisively reflected upon. The close reading leads to the elaboration of a more general model of textual understanding, in which de Man shows that the thematic aspects of the texts―their assertions of truth or falsehood as well as their assertions of values―are linked to specific modes of figuration that can be identified and described. The description of synchronic figures of substitution leads, by an inner logic embedded in the structure of all tropes, to extended, narrative figures or allegories. De Man poses the question whether such self-generating systems of figuration can account fully for the intricacies of meaning and of signification they produce. Throughout the book, issues in contemporary criticism are addressed analytically rather than polemically. Traditional oppositions are put in question by a rhetorical analysis which demonstrates why literary texts are such powerful sources of meaning yet epistemologically so unreliable. Since the structure which underlies this tension belongs to language in general and is not confined to literary texts, the book, starting out as practical and historical criticism or as the demonstration of a theory of literary reading, leads into larger questions pertaining to the philosophy of language. "Through elaborate and elegant close readings of poems by Rilke, Proust’s Remembrance , Nietzsche’s philosophical writings and the major works of Rousseau, de Man concludes that all writing concerns itself with its own activity as language, and language, he says, is always unreliable, slippery, impossible….Literary narrative, because it must rely on language, tells the story of its own inability to tell a story....De Man demonstrates, beautifully and convincingly, that language turns back on itself, that rhetoric is untrustworthy."―Julia Epstein, Washington Post Book World
"The study follows out of the thinking of Nietzsche and Genette (among others), yet moves in strikingly new directions....De Man’s text, almost certain to be endlessly provocative, is worthy of repeated re-reading."―Ralph Flores, Library Journal "Paul de Man continues his work in the tradition of ‘deconstructionist criticism,’… [which] begins with the observation that all language is constructed; therefore the task of criticism is to deconstruct it and reveal what lies behind. The title of his new work reflects de Man’s preoccupation with the unreliability of language. … The contributions that the book makes, both in the initial theoretical chapters and in the detailed analyses (or deconstructions) of particular texts are undeniable."―Caroline D. Eckhardt, World Literature Today

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Criticism, Writing, Literature

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Paul de Man was a Belgian-born deconstructionist literary critic and theorist.

He began teaching at Bard College. Later, he completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in the late 1950s. He then taught at Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Zurich, before ending up on the faculty in French and Comparative Literature at Yale University, where he was considered part of the Yale School of deconstruction.

At the time of his death from cancer, he was Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale. After his death, the discovery of some two hundred articles he wrote during World War II for collaborationist newspapers, including one explicitly anti-Semitic, caused a scandal and provoked a reconsideration of his life and work. De Man oversaw the dissertations of both Gayatri Spivak and Barbara Johnson.

Reviews

[Jared Colley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul de Man is a master at literary analysis. Next to Derrida, he is the great intellectual figure of 1960s deconstructionism (part of "the Yale School"). However, unlike Derrida, his writing is accessible and unambiguous. Too many people dismiss deconstructive analysis for all the wrong reasons (wrong reasons being its association with a whole Derridean school of obscurantism - A. Ronell, G. Spivak, J. Butler, S. Weber, etc. etc.) Paul de Man, however, makes committments to clear writing and achieves the same desired effect as that of the more frustrating thinkers.

The essay, "Semiology and Rhetoric", is absolutely crucial for any student of literary theory. It contains the famous, humorous "Archie Bunker example" that so aptly illustrates the inherent tensions of grammar & rhetoric - tensions that make the indeterminancy of meaning unavoidable.

The essays on Nietzsche are some of the best and most original I've ever read. He writes an essay covering my favorite piece of Nietzsche's writing: "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense."

His work on Rousseau is very valuable & informative as well.

De Man sets the example of a careful, erudite reader, and few can follow in his footsteps - however, all may appreciate the depth of his thought due to the clarity of his writing.

[Kristi Siegel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is impossible to read with all the blinders off, but deconstructive theory suggests reading skeptically in an attempt not to smooth over the rough and contradictory spots in a text. For those who dislike Paul de Man, deconstructive theory suggests only the melancholic impossibility of any reading as well as the impossibility of ever representing the self in the text.

To the contrary, de Man seeks to problematize and open up a text as fully as possible. If there is a key concept in de Man's methodology it would be in the word rigor. Our penetration into any text may be accomplished only to the degree by which we rigorously deconstruct its rhetoric, and then perhaps our own rhetoric in turn.

The success with which we represent the "self," particularly important in autobiography, operates on the same principle:

Within the epistemological labyrinth of figural structures, the recuperation of selfhood would be accomplished by the rigor with which the discourse deconstructs the very notion of self. The originator of this discourse is then no longer the dupe of his own wishes..." (Allegories of Reading 173).

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paul De Man deploys his deconstructive method in readings of works by Proust, Rilke, Nietzsche and Rousseau. The book appears to be organized such that the farther one progresses in one's reading, the more complex De Man's discussion becomes. In the first section, De Man analyzes a number of passages from Proust's work, and comments on the rhetorical techniques that writer employs in his fiction. Following this, the section on Rilke is a little more complex not only because the works under discussion are poems, but also because Rilke's employment of metaphor is not typical of that of most other poets. Earlier this year I re-read both Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies, so with this section I found De Man helpful in clarifying my own impressions of Rilke's methods.

The third section, on Nietzsche, is yet more complex as, in addition to employing figural substitutions in the representation of some of his philosophical concepts, the German philosopher also commented on the metaphoricity of language, and so represents for De Man a proto-deconstructionist (in fact, my impression is that much the same can be said for the other writers De Man discusses in this book, and that this is one of the arguments De Man is making: thus, there is a meta-conceptual level to De Man's argument as he applies his deconstructive method not only to the figural language, but also to moments of deconstructive thought in Proust, Rilke, Nietzsche and Rousseau). As I am more familiar with Nietzsche's works than I am with works by the other writers De Man discusses, I found this to be the easiest section to read.

I found the fourth section, on Rousseau, to be the most challenging. It takes up about half the book, and part of the reason for the complexity and length of De Man's argument, or so it seems to me, is that Rousseau's work is not primarily in one genre, but ranges from philosophy through political theory, autobiography and fiction, such that Rousseau's employment of figural language differs from one work to another, depending on the genre in which he is writing.

Although I know I read some of the works De Man discusses, I have only the vaguest memories of what Rousseau wrote. If I ever re-read De Man's book, I plan to re-read Rousseau first.

Note: it helps to have some French or some German: particularly in the section on Rousseau, there are a number of passages in the original language that are not accompanied by English translations.

Acquired Sept 10, 1999
Attic Books, London, Ontario

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Defining “rhetoric” as “the study of tropes and figures” (6), de Man considers the indissoluble figurations present in such authors as Rousseau and Nietzsche. He also considers Proust, examining how the reading practices of Swann’s Way’s protagonist intertwine with Proust’s writing and his reader’s reading and arguing that “[n]arrative is the metaphor of the moment, as reading is the metaphor of writing” (68). Reading becomes a process of encountering metaphors and metonymies rather than truth-claims—the indeterminate difference between Proust’s views of reading and those of his protagonist open up an “aporia” that “asserts the impossibility of true understanding” (72). Thus Proust’s “allegory of reading narrates the impossibility of reading” (79), while Nietzsche’s “allegory of error” paradoxically becomes a “model of philosophical rigor” (115). Indeed, Nietzsche deconstructs the identity principle, a central premise of Western philosophy, by claiming its “convincing power … is due to an analogical, metaphorical substitution of the sensation of things for the knowledge of entities” (122). Put in yet more figural terms, “The deconstruction of the metaphor of knowledge into the metonymy of sensation is a surface manifestation of a more inclusive deconstruction that reveals a metaleptic reversal of the categories of anteriority and posteriority” (124). Having thus questioned the nature, stability, and chronology of knowledge, de Man concludes with the trope of irony. Or, rather, he ends by claiming irony is not a trope at all, “but the undoing of the deconstructive allegory of all tropological conditions, the systematic undoing, in other words, of understanding” (301).

[s.]

de Man's take on Nietzsche is worth the read (particularly the rhetoric of persuasion).

[Joey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its interesting ; its also a pain in the ass.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

ugh. i never thought this thing would come back to bite me on the ass. here we go, round 2.

[jtabz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deconstructionist lit crit...
The smartest book I've half understood since my undergrad Western Civ days.

[Marianne Barron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tung tung tung, men lærerik om (det jeg nå ser på som selvfølgeligheter rundt) selvbiografier... The Autobiography as De-facement...

[Egor xS · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sleepless nights, shivering writing, and all egresses blocked.