Books by Geoffrey Hartman

In The Third Pillar, Geoffrey Hartman, one of the most influential scholars and teachers of English and Comparative Literature of recent decades, has brought together some of the most important and eloquent essays he has written since the 1980s on the major texts of the Jewish tradition.

The drama of consciousness and maturation in the growth of a poet's mind is traced from Wordsworth's earliest poems to The Excursion of 1814. Mr. Hartman follows Wordsworth's growth into self-consciousness, his realization of the autonomy of the spirit, and his turning back to nature. The apocalyptic bias is brought out, perhaps for the first time since Bradley's Oxford Lectures, and without slighting in any way his greatness as a nature poet. Rather, a dialectical relation is established between his visionary temper and the slow and vacillating growth of the humanized or sympathetic imagination. Mr. Hartman presents a phenomenology of the mind with important bearings on the Romantic movement as a whole and as confirmation of Wordsworth's crucial position in the history of English poetry. Mr. Hartman is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Iowa. "e;A most distinguished book, subtle, penetrating, profound."e;-Rene Wellek. "e;If it is the purpose of criticism to illuminate, to evaluate, and to send the reader back to the text for a fresh reading, Hartman has succeeded in establishing the grounds for such a renewal of appreciation of Wordsworth."e;-Donald Weeks, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.

A work of literary theory which explores the wilderness of positions that grew out of the collision between Anglo-American practical criticism and Continental philosophic criticism. This second edition includes a preface by the author as well as a foreword by Hayden White.

One of our most incisive critics asks where the assault against the canons of Western culture has led us. Hartman calls for the restoration of literature to its place as the focus of thinking about culture and for the renewal of aesthetic education to help ensure the balance between art, culture, and politics.

Over the years, Geoffrey Hartman has been a pivotal figure in the humanities. In his first book, in 1954, he helped establish the study of Romanticism as key to the problems of modernity. This title describes his early education, uncanny sense of vocation, and development as a literary scholar and cultural critic.