Description
The author, Giles Gunn, discusses the idea of "the culture of criticism" and how it has changed over time. He also discusses the idea of "criticism of culture," and how it has changed over time as well. He argues that the pragmatism of the past needs to be revised in light of the challenges posed by post-structuralism and structuralism.
Giles Gunn's important new work is at once a provocative defense of the kind of moral reflection once associated in America with the writings of Lionel Trilling and Edmund Wilson and an acknowledgement that this pragmatic legacy must be reevaluated in the light of challenges posed by structuralist and post-structuralist theory. Including detailed discussions of such thinkers as Kenneth Burke, Clifford Geertz, Mikhail Bakhtin, Richard Rorty, Trilling, and Wilson, Gunn challenges the assumptions of modern criticism with a revised interpretation of pragmatism and its critical legacy. Part critical analysis, part philosophical argument, part literary and cultural history, this work is a carefully delineated vision of what criticism actively engaged in its society can accomplish.
Related Products
