This book is an examination of three major literary, critical and philosophical movements in European and Anglo-American literature. It aims to show their differences (often pointed out) and their similarities (never yet demonstrated) and to make accessible recent post-structuralist theory. In particular, it offers an introductory exposition of American pragmatism whose insights into language and philosophy are discussed in relation both to Coleridge and to Derrida, while Derrida's writings are related both to romanticism and pragmatism.

Preface.

Acknowledgements.

Abbreviations.

Part I: Romantic and Germanic Backgrounds:.

1. Shelley and Nietzsche: Reality as Rhetoric.

2. The German Romantic Ironists and Hegel.

3. Johnson, Coleridge and Method.

Part II: Deconstructing Metaphysics:.

4. William James and Early Pragmatist Rejections of Metaphysics.

5. John Dewey's Critique of Traditional Philosophizing.

6. Jacques Derrida: Deconstructing Metaphysics.

7. Coleridge's Attack on Dualism.

Part III: Art as Experience:.

8. John Dewey: Language Reconceptualized.

9. Dewey's 'Romantic' Aesthetic.

10. Derrida, Textuality, and Criticism.

Conclusion: The 'New' Historicism.

Afterword.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index.