Romanticism, Pragmatism and Deconstruction

This book is an examination of three major literary, critical and philosophical movements in European and Anglo-American literature. It aims to show their differences (often pointed out) and their similarities (never yet demonstrated) and to make accessible recent post-structuralist theory. In particular, it offers an introductory exposition of American pragmatism whose insights into language and philosophy are discussed in relation both to Coleridge and to Derrida, while Derrida's writings are related both to romanticism and pragmatism. Preface.

Acknowledgements.

Abbreviations.

Part I: Romantic and Germanic Backgrounds:.

1. Shelley and Nietzsche: Reality as Rhetoric.

2. The German Romantic Ironists and Hegel.

3. Johnson, Coleridge and Method.

Part II: Deconstructing Metaphysics:.

4. William James and Early Pragmatist Rejections of Metaphysics.

5. John Dewey's Critique of Traditional Philosophizing.

6. Jacques Derrida: Deconstructing Metaphysics.

7. Coleridge's Attack on Dualism.

Part III: Art as Experience:.

8. John Dewey: Language Reconceptualized.

9. Dewey's 'Romantic' Aesthetic.

10. Derrida, Textuality, and Criticism.

Conclusion: The 'New' Historicism.

Afterword.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index.

Kathleen Wheeler is Lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge. She has published a book on Coleridge's poetry, edited an anthology of German Romantic Criticism, and has recently finished a book on Modernist Women Writers. She is presently working on a study of the literary strategies of certain philosophers, such as Plato, Berkeley and others. This study sets out the literary, critical and philosophical origins of deconstruction. It presents a background of romanticism as formulated by Coleridge, Shelley, and the German Romantic Ironists in which the "tyranny of reason" is rejected in favor of an anti-dualist philosophy. Against this background, the challenges to the philosophy of William James and John Dewey are examined, in an attempt to clarify later post-structuralist deconstructions of metaphysics and traditional literary theory. Dewey's philosophy and his insights into language are discussed in relation to Coleridge and Derrida, while Derrida's writings are related both to romanticism and pragmatism. The reaction against post-structuralism, the "new historicism," is examined as a return to dualistic thinking and a "forgetting" of the liberating critiques of philosophy.