The Paul de Man Notebooks: (The Frontiers of Theory)

This anthology collects texts and papers from the Paul de Man archive, including essays on art, translations, critical fragments, research plans, interviews, and reports on the state of comparative literature. These texts offer a fascinating insight into the work of one of the twentieth century's most important literary theorists. The volume engages with Paul de Man's institutional life, gathering together pedagogical and critical material to investigate his profound influence on the American academy and theory today. It also contains a number of substantial, previously unpublished and untranslated texts by de Man from the span of his writing career. As a new collection of primary sources this volume further stimulates the growing reappraisal of de Man's work.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements; Series Editor’s Preface; Introduction: ‘The Unimaginable Touch of Time’: the public and private in the Paul de Man notebooks, Martin McQuillan; Texts; 1. The Drawings of Paul Valery (1948); 2. Jacques Villon (1952); 3. Graduate essay on Keats (1954); 4. Post-doctoral essay on Symbolism (c1960); 5. Introduction to Madame Bovary (1965); 6. Introduction to The Portable Rousseau (1973); 7. On Reading Rousseau (1977); 8. Translator’s introduction to ‘Rousseau and English Romanticism’; 9. Rousseau and English Romanticism (1978); 10. Introduction to Studies in Romanticism (1979); 11. Homage à Georges Poulet (1982); 12. A Letter from Paul de Man (1982); 13. Reply to Raymond Geuss (1983); 14. Interview with Robert Moynihan (1984); Translations; 1. Martin Heidegger, ‘Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry’ (1959); 2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘Essay on the Origin of Languages’ (c1973); Teaching; 1. Field of Comparative Literature: Analysis of Needs (1967); 2. The Comparative Program at Rutgers: a report; 3. Comparative Literature 816a Reading List (1981); 4. Comparative Literature 816a Schedule (1981); 5. Comparative Literature 817a (1982); 6. Curriculum for Lit Z proposal; 7. Literature Z Exercise 2; 8. Rhetorical Readings (1980); 9. Director’s Report on Rhetorical Readings (1982); 10. Seminar on ‘Aesthetic Theory from Kant to Hegel’ (1982); Research; 1. The Unimaginable Touch of Time; 2. Modernism in Literature: Background and Essay Selection; 3. Modernism in Literature Contents Revised; 4. Table of Contents The Portable Rousseau; 5. Principles of Selection The Portable Rousseau; 6. Outline for a monograph on Nietzsche; 7. From Nietzsche to Rousseau; 8. Allegories of Reading; 9. Aesthetics, Rhetoric, Ideology; 10. 11/3/82; Appendix: The Notebooks of Paul de Man 1963-1983; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author :
Paul de Man (1919-83) was the Sterling Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Yale University. He is the author of some of the most important works of literary theory and deconstruction including Blindness and Insight, Allegories of Reading, The Rhetoric of Romanticism, and Aesthetic Ideology. Martin McQuillan is a multi-award-winning filmmaker, journalist and writer. He is the editor of several texts by Paul de Man, including The Post-Romantic Predicament and The Paul de Man Notebooks. He teaches in the Sound/Image Cinema Lab at Falmouth University.