Geoffrey Hartman : Criticism as Answerable Style (Critics of the Twentieth Century)

`The critic explicitly acknowledges his dependence on prior words that make his word a kind of answer. He calls to other texts "that they might answer him."' Geoffrey Hartman is the first book devoted to an exploration of the `intellectual poetry' of the critic who, whether or not he `represents the future of the profession', is a unique and major voice in twentieth-century criticism. Professor Atkins explains clearly Hartman's key ideas and places his work in the contexts of Romanticism and Judaism on which he has written extensively. In Geoffrey Hartman he provides a valuable introduction to a major critical voice who has called into question our assumptions about the distinction between commentary and imaginative literature.