Interesting, unexpected, and an exceptionally pleasant read for a book of literary criticism. Which situation is actually a big part of what this book is addressing: the idea of literary criticism at the present time as a walkover by the theorists, who adapted the social-sciance vocabulary mid-20th century as part of the professionalization of criticism, and in the process drove out the impressionistic critics, let them be exemplified by Woolf and Wilde and Dr. Johnson, and replaced them with the theorists. I don't need to throw any of the same dreary names at you as examples here - we all know what we're talking about (although it is a particular pleasure to see Edmundson put the book to Paul de Man). Edmundson presents a version of the Foucauldian "theory/the academy as effort to discipline through explanation" argument, and suggests that it's actually hate for poetry's undisciplinable nature that fuels much criticism - and that the Woolf, etc., kind that's been hunted nearly to extinction can tell us more.

What really charms about this book is its devotion. You could counter his point with sour grapes ("but YOU're using Foucault - that's theory!" Yeah, but like, not to push lit around; more to push THEORY around, and give lit some breathing room. The idea of theory as essentially aggressive, not to say totalitarian, is a new one here and really resonates.) And it's like, okay Derrida, differance, that's a lot less actively totalitarian or whatevs, but then you're attacking, in the end, the notion that literature can say ANYthing, as opposed to the pedestrian ("it says what I want" of de Man's blindness/insight bit. Even Harold Bloom comes in for his bit of the wagging finger, with his "scraps at the feast" ever-fading conception of the poetic tradition.

And lest this all sound too austere, that's when Edmundson turns around and says "but Bloom's a lover, even if 'The Anxiety of Influence' catches him on a bad day." And gives Derrida his credit for anti-fascist action. And is not too hard on the New Historicists, really: "good-hearted but incomplete." Actually, he doesn't have much new to say about them, but it was 1995 so I guess he felt he had to make the effort.

And sticks it to de Man, woo! And advocates tirelessly for the power of poetry to help you achieve that old "examined life" and better know who you are. And fights the good fight. ( )