The Romantic Predicament

`De Man's readings of Mallarme, Yeats, and George in the 1950s demonstrate how a reflection on an authentically poetic vocation cannot help but produce a concomitant reflection on what constitutes a genuinely literary criticism and theory. It is fascinating to see how de Man's pushing of a Hegalian phenomenological "method" to its limits engenders what we now call "de Manian" rhetorical or "deconstructive" reading. The Post-Romantic Predicament is essential reading for anyone concerned with the question of "the literary".' Andrzej Warminski, University of California, lrvine

First publication of a collection of critical texts from Paul de Man's Harvard University Years

From 1955-1961 Paul de Man was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University where he wrote a doctoral thesis entitled The Post-Romantic Predicament: a study in the poetry of Mallarme and Yeats'. These texts from this period include de Man's extended considerations of Stephane Mallarme and W. B. Yeats as well as essays on Holderlin, Keats and Stefan George. This writing reflects recognisable concerns for de Man: the figurative dimension of language, the borders between philosophy and literature, the ideological obfuscations of Romanticism, and the difficulties of the North American heritage of New Criticism. These essays, brought together from the Paul de Man papers at the University of California (Irvine), make a significant contribution to the cultural history of deconstruction, and to the present state of literary theory.

Paul de Man (1919-1983) was the Sterling Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Yale University. He is the author of some of the most important works of literary theory and deconstruction including Blindness and Insight, Allegories of Reading, The Rhetoric of Romanticism and Aesthetic Ideology.
Martin McQuillan is Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Analysis and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Kingston University, London. His recent publications include Deconstruction After 9/11 and Roland Barthes, or, The Profession of Cultural Studies.