Abstract
Deconstruction has a reputation for being the most complex and forbidding of contemporary critical approaches to literature, but in fact almost all of us have, at one time, either deconstructed a text or badly wanted to deconstruct one. Sometimes when we hear a lecturer effectively marshal evidence to show that a book means primarily one thing, we long to interrupt and ask what he or she would make of other, conveniently overlooked passages, passages that seem to contradict the lecturer’s thesis. Sometimes, after reading a provocative critical article that almost convinces us that a familiar work means the opposite of what we assume it meant, we may wish to make an equally convincing case of our former reading of the text. We may not think that the poem or novel in question better supports our interpretation, but we may recognize that the text can be used to support both readings. And sometimes we simply want to make that point: texts can be used to support seemingly irreconcilable positions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Deconstruction: A Selected Bibliography
Deconstruction, Poststructuralism, and Structuralism: Introduction, Guides, and Surveys
Arac, Jonathan, Wlad Godzich, and Wallace Martin, eds. The Tale Critics: Deconstruction in America. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983. See especially the essays by Bové, Godzich, Pease, and Corngold.
Berman, Art. From the New Criticism to De construction: The Reception of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988.
Butler, Christopher. Interpretation, Deconstruction, and Ideology: An Introduction to Some Current Issues in Literary Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984.
Cain, William E. “Deconstruction in America: The Recent Literary Criticism of J. Hillis Miller.” College English 41 (1979): 367–82.
Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982.
—. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975. See especially ch. 10.
Esch, Deborah. “Deconstruction.” Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn. New York: MLA, 1992. 374–91.
Gasché, Rodolphe. “Deconstruction as Criticism.” Glyph 6 (1979): 177–215.
Jay, Gregory. America the Scrivener: Deconstruction and the Subject of Literary History. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990.
Jefferson, Ann. “Structuralism and Post Structuralism.” Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction. Ed. Ann Jefferson and David Robey. Totowa, NJ: Barnes, 1982. 84–112.
Leitch, Vincent B. American Literary Criticism from the Thirties to the Eighties. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. See especially ch. 10 (“Deconstructive Criticism”).
—. Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction and Survey. New York: Columbia UP, 1983.
Lentricchia, Frank. After the New Criticism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.
Melville, Stephen W. Philosophy Beside Itself: On Deconstruction and Modernism. Theory and History of Literature 27. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986.
Norris, Christopher. Deconstruction and the Interests of Theory. Oklahoma Project for Discourse and Theory 4. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1989.
—. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. London: Methuen, 1982. Rev. ed. London: Routledge, 1991.
Raval, Suresh. Metacriticism. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1981.
Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. New Haven: Yale UP, 1974.
Sturrock, John. Structuralism and Since. New York: Oxford UP, 1979.
Selected Works by Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man
de Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. See especially ch. 1 (“Semiology and Rhetoric”).
—. Blindness and Insight. New York: Oxford UP, 1971. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983. The 1983 edition contains important essays not included in the original edition.
—. The Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986.
Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Literature. Ed. Derek Attridge. New York: Routledge, 1992. Includes a helpful editor’s introduction on Derrida and literature.
—. Dissemination. 1972. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. See especially the concise, incisive “Translator’s Introduction,” which provides a useful point of entry into this work and others by Derrida.
—. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chi cago P, 1982.
—. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri C. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. Trans. of De la Grammatologie. 1967.
—. The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Trans. with intro. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.
—. Writing and Difference. 1967. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978.
Essays in Deconstruction and Poststructuralism
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill, 1974. In this influential work, Barthes turns from a structuralist to a poststructuralist approach.
Bloom, Harold, et al., eds. Deconstruction and Criticism. New York: Seabury, 1979. Includes essays by Bloom, de Man, Derrida, Miller, and Hartman.
Chase, Cvnthia. Decomposing Figures. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986.
Harari, Josué, ed. Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979.
Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981.
—. A World of Difference. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987.
Krupnick, Mark, ed. Displacement: Derrida and After. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983.
Miller, J. Hillis. Ariadne’s Thread: Story Lines. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. See especially the discussion of “anastomosis” in Joyce, 156–64.
—. The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James, and Benjamin. New York: Columbia UP, 1987.
—. Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1982.
—. Hawthorne and History, Defacing it. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Contains a bibliography of Miller’s work from 1955–1990.
—. “Stevens’ Rock and Criticism as Cure.” Georgia Review 30 (1976): 5–31, 330–48.
Ulmer, Gregorv L. Applied Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985.
Deconstructionist Approaches to Swift and Gulliver’s Travels
Holly, Grant. “Travel and Translation: Textuality in Gulliver’s Travels.” Criticism 21 (1979): 134–52.
Pollak, Ellen. The Poetics of Sexual Myth: Gender and Ideology in the Verse of Swift and Rope. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985.
Probyn, Clive T. “Starting from the Margins: Teaching Swift in the Light of Poststructuralist Theories of Reading and Writing.” Critical Approaches to Teaching Swift. Ed. Peter J. Schakel. New York: AMS P, 1992. 19–35.
Rodino, Richard. “‘Splendide Mendax’: Authors, Characters, and Readers in Gulliver’s Travels.” PMLA 106 (1991): 1054–70.
Wyrick, Deborah Baker. Jonathan Swift and the Vested Word. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1988.
Other Work Referred to in “What Is Deconstruction?”
Abrams, M. H. “Rationality and the Imagination in Cultural History.” Critical Inquiry 2 (1976): 447–64.
Works Cited
Brady, Frank. Introduction. Twentieth-Century Interpretations of “Gulliver’s Travels.” Ed. Brady. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1968. 1–11.
Carnochan, W. B. Lemuel Gulliver’s Mirror for Man. Berkeley: U of California P, 1968.
Case, Arthur E. Four Essays on “Gulliver’s Travels.” Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1958.
Culler, Jonathan. Saussure. Glasgow: Collins, 1976.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.
Ehrenpreis, Irvin. “The Meaning of Gulliver’s Last Voyage.” Review of English Literature3 (1962): 18–38.
Fabricant, Carole. “The Battle of the Ancients and the (Post) Moderns: Rethinking Swift through Contemporary Perspectives.” The Eighteenth Century 32 (1991): 256–73.
Harth, Phillip. Swift and Anglican Rationalism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961.
Kelly, Ann Cline. Swift and the English Language. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1988.
Koon, William. “Swift on Language: An Approach to A Tale of A Tub.” Style 10 (1976): 28–40.
Landa, Louis A. Swift and the Church of Ireland. Oxford: Clarendon, 1954.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques. Trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman. New York: Antheneum, 1974.
Monk, Samuel H. “The Pride of Lemuel Gulliver.” Sewanee Review 63 (1955): 48–71.
Pollak, Ellen. The Poetics of Sexual Myth: Gender and Ldeology in the Verse of Swift and Pope. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985.
Reichert, John F. “Plato, Swift, and the Houyhnhnms.” Philological Quarterly 47 (1968): 179–92.
Swift, Jonathan. A Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue. Ed. Herbert Davis, et al. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939–68. Vol. 4 of The Prose Works. 14 vols.
—. The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift. Ed. Herbert Davis, et al. 14 vols. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939–68.
Wyrick, Deborah Baker. Jonathan Swift and the Vested Word. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1988.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1995 Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Swift, J. (1995). Deconstruction and Gulliver’s Travels. In: Fox, C. (eds) Gulliver’s Travels. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-12357-2_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-12357-2_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-60770-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-12357-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)