ABSTRACT

First Published in 2002. It is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and radical social change. New Accents is intended as a positive response to the initiative offered by such a situation. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change; to stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study. Literary criticism, if it is a discipline, is surely that discipline which has been most exclusively concerned with the question of its own function. The main subject within criticism seems always to have been “The Function of Criticism”. Featuring nine authors, the early history of these essays is the attempt to separate criticism off from the art that it deals with, generally with unhappy consequences for criticism.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|16 pages

Jacques Derrida

chapter 2|16 pages

Northrop Frye

chapter 3|29 pages

Harold Bloom

chapter 4|22 pages

Geoffrey Hartman

chapter 5|23 pages

Frank Kermode

chapter 61|26 pages

Edward Said

chapter 7|25 pages

Barbara Johnson

chapter 8|30 pages

Frank Lentricchia

chapter 9|32 pages

J. Hillis Miller