Gregory S. Jay is the author of American Literature and the Culture Wars and America the Scrivener: Deconstruction and the Subject of Literary History. David L. Miller is the author of Dreams of the Burning Child: Sacrificial Sons and the Father's Witness and The Poem's Two Bodies: The Poetics of the 1590 ""Faerie Queene""

After Strange Texts is a fine collection of essays that will help to advance discussion about the value and significance of literary theory."" — South Atlantic Modern Language Association

• The role of theory in the study of literature? / Gregory S. Jay and David L. Miller -- Tea and totality / Geoffrey H. Hartmen -- From the piazza to the enchanted isles : Melville's textual rovings / Edgar A. Dryden -- Hawthorne' genres / Peggy Kamuf -- Sexual politics and critical judgment / Elizabeth A. Meese -- Shakespeare and the exorcists / Stephen Greenblatt -- Auerbach's Mimesis / Timothy Bahti -- Between dialectics and deconstruction / Andrew Parker.