Material Inscriptions (Rhetorical Reading in Practice and Theory)

This monograph provides readings of literary and philosophical texts that work through the rhetoric of tropes to the material inscription at the origin of these texts. The book focuses on the practice and pedagogical value of rhetorical reading. Its readings follow an itinerary from poetic texts (such as those by Wordsworth and Keats) through theoretical or philosophical texts (by Descartes and Nietzsche) to narrative fiction (by Henry James). The book also contains two essays on Paul de Man and literary theory and an interview on the topic of "Deconstruction at Yale." All three of these latter texts are explicitly about the inescapable function and importance of the rhetoric of tropes for any critical reading or literary study worthy of the name.
As Andrzej Warminski demonstrates, ‘rhetorical reading’ is a species of ‘deconstructive reading’—in the full ‘de Manian’ sense—but one that, rather than harkening back to a past over and done with, would open the texts to a different future.