Dilemmas of Enlightenment: Studies in the Rhetoric and Logic of Ideology

Oscar Kenshur

University of California Press, 1993 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 258 pages

"A subtly telling blow to the old-timey distinction between philosophy and literature, a distinction that still persists in practice, despite many overly ideological campaigns to revise it. He, too, talks a lot about theory and ideology, but he shows in practice the wonderful complexities of the interplay of rhetoric and philosophy. Furthermore, he shows how this interplay helped to fabricate the many textures of eighteenth-century life. Kenshur's is the first comprehensive 'cultural history' that actually takes pleasure in the rich, interdisciplinary exchanges of the era."--Kevin L. Cope, author of Criteria of Certainty

"This is an important book. It is provocative at many turns regarding the individual texts studied, and sees them in not simply untraditional but counter-traditional, yet quite well-substantiated, ways. The book may be still more important on account of its strong, reasoned, poised challenge to theoretical orthodoxies ranging from Foucault to New Historicism to Stanley Fish's idea of interpretive communities."--Frederick M. Keener, author of The Chain of Becoming

About the author

Oscar Kenshur is Professor of Comparative Literature and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and of English at Indiana University. He is the author of Open Form and the Shape of Ideas (1986).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Dilemmas of Enlightenment: Studies in the Rhetoric and Logic of Ideology; Issue 26 of New historicism; Volume 26 of Studies on China; Volume 26 of The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics Series
• Author: Oscar Kenshur
• Publisher: University of California Press, 1993
• ISBN: 0520081552, 9780520081550
• Length: 258 pages
• Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Rhetoric; Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory; Philosophy / Political