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Book Synopsis
Why must critics unmask and demystify literary works? Why do they believe that language is always withholding some truth, that the critic's task is to reveal the unsaid or repressed? In this book, Rita Felski examines critique, the dominant form of interpretation in literary studies, and situates it as but one method among many, a method with strong allure-but also definite limits. Felski argues that critique is a sensibility best captured by Paul Ricoeur's phrase the hermeneutics of suspicion. She shows how this suspicion toward texts forecloses many potential readings while providing no guarantee of rigorous or radical thought. Instead, she suggests, literary scholars should try what she calls postcritical reading: rather than looking behind a text for hidden causes and motives, literary scholars should place themselves in front of it and reflect on what it suggests and makes possible. By bringing critique down to earth and exploring new modes of interpretation, The Limits of Criti

The Limits of Critique

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    A Hardback by Rita Felski

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      Book details

      Publisher The University of Chicago Press
      Published 20 October 2015
      ISBN-13 9780226293981
      978-0226293981
      ISBN-10 022629398X
      Also in:
      Literature: history and criticism

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Why must critics unmask and demystify literary works? Why do they believe that language is always withholding some truth, that the critic's task is to reveal the unsaid or repressed? In this book, Rita Felski examines critique, the dominant form of interpretation in literary studies, and situates it as but one method among many, a method with strong allure-but also definite limits. Felski argues that critique is a sensibility best captured by Paul Ricoeur's phrase the hermeneutics of suspicion. She shows how this suspicion toward texts forecloses many potential readings while providing no guarantee of rigorous or radical thought. Instead, she suggests, literary scholars should try what she calls postcritical reading: rather than looking behind a text for hidden causes and motives, literary scholars should place themselves in front of it and reflect on what it suggests and makes possible. By bringing critique down to earth and exploring new modes of interpretation, The Limits of Criti

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