Eliot to Derrida: The Poverty of Interpretation

by John Harwood

'...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.

252 pages, Hardcover

First published May 10, 1995

About the author

John Harwood is the author of two previous novels of Victorian Gothic suspense. Aside from fiction, his published work includes biography, poetry, political journalism and literary history. His acclaimed first novel, The Ghost Writer, won the International Horror Guild's First Novel Award. He lives in Hobart, Australia.

Reviews

[Liam Guilar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Discussing Academic Literary conferences;

'One of the main items of business would appear to be A's objections to B's critique of C's hypothesis about what might happen if D's methodology were applied to E's analysis of F's theory of interpretation, this being the "current state of the question". Some of the participants could no doubt be found talking about poems and novels in familiar way but mostly after hours, in quiet corners, with a slightly furtive air.' p18