Books by Geoffrey Galt Harpham

Geoffrey Galt Harpham delves not only into Conrad's literary work and reputation but also into the concept of mastery. The text outlines a psychology of composition that embraces Conrad's personal as well as historical circumstances.

Argues that the humanities - the academic disciplines that study the potential of the human - represent a 'dream of America.' This title explores a number of linked problems: the role, at once inspiring and disturbing, played by modern philology in the discipline's formation; and, the reasons behind the humanities' perpetual state of crisis.

This is an accessible guide to the ways in which critical discourses from deconstruction to feminism to linguistics have made use of the scientific and philosophical ideal of 'language itself'.

What place do ethical concerns have in intellectual life today? Why do ethical issues so often intrude in discussions of literature, criticism, and culture? And why are ethical issues so often unresolved? In short, why does ethics seem to be both urgent and problematic? This book deals with these questions.

Argues that the most powerful and effective criticism demands to be read as an expression of a distinctive sensibility, a way of being in the world, it demands, in other words, to be read as a discourse of character. This work unfolds the complex and indirect ways in which human character is expressed in criticism.