The Truth of Uncertainty: Beyond Ideology in Science and Literature FROM THE PUBLISHER
Postmodern critics fail to ask the truth-seeker's essential question, What does the evidence prove? Instead they trust the generalizations and slogans of ideologies to guide their interpretations. Attempting to be up-to-date and profound, these critics lose sight of the literature they are supposed to explore. The Truth of Uncertainty celebrates values commonly associated with modern, not postmodern, criticism, applying them to contemporary works in a series of fresh and unusual inquiries. Galligan finds important implications for criticism in work from the physical sciences that are rarely touched on by American intellectuals, such as Gerald M. Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind and Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics. Likewise, he finds illumination in the works of novelists that American critics have largely ignored - Josef Skvorecky, George V. Higgins, Mary Lee Settle, Robertson Davies.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
Galligan (Professor Emeritus, English, Western Michigan U.-Kalamazoo) argues that contemporary American critics should embrace literary truths with all of their uncertainties rather than cling to make- believe certainties of ideologies. He celebrates values commonly associated with modern, not postmodern, criticism, applying them to contemporary works in a series of fresh and unusual inquiries. He finds implications for criticism in work from the physical sciences and in the works of largely ignored novelists. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
Art & Photography
Book Info
