Twenty-five essays and reviews not previously collected, most of which were written before 1970, and eight of which are appearing in English for the first time. Valuable for the insights they afford into his development as a critic the essays are also significant in addressing de Man’s consistent views of romanticism, modernism and the dilemmas central to literature in recent centuries.

Paul de Man was Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, where he taught in the French and comparative literature departments. Two of his earlier collections are on Minnesota’s list: Blindness and Insight (revised edition, 1983) and The Resistance to Theory (1986). Lindsay Waters is General Editor at Harvard University Press.