Abstract: | Giles Gunn's challenging new work is at once a passionately argued defense of the kind of moral reflection once associated in America with the writings of Lionel Trilling and Edmund Wilson, and an acknowledgement that this pragmatic legacy must be reevaluated in the light of challenges posed by structuralist and post-structuralist theory. Including discussions of such thinkers as Burke, Geertz, Bakhtin, Rorty, Trilling, and Wilson, Gunn provides a carefully delineated vision of what criticism actively engaged in its society can accomplish. |
