Geoffrey Hartman

`The critic explicitly acknowledges his dependence on prior words that make his word a kind of answer. He calls to other texts "that they might answer him."''Geoffrey Hartman is the first book devoted to an exploration of the `intellectual poetry'' of the critic who, whether or not he `represents the future of the profession'', is a unique and major voice in twentieth-century criticism.Professor Atkins explains clearly Hartman''s key ideas and places his work in the contexts of Romanticism and Judaism on which he has written extensively. In Geoffrey Hartman he provides a valuable introduction to a major critical voice who has called into question our assumptions about the distinction between commentary and imaginative literature.