What is critical theory, and to what extent can it claim to exist as a free-standing entity independent of the object of enquiry? Is the much-discussed gulf between Anglo-Saxon empiricism and Continental post-structuralism more apparent than real? In The Myth of Theory William Righter explores the nature of thinking about literature and the assumed polarities between the abstract reasonings of philosophy and the concrete exploratory manoeuvres of critical practice. He goes on to examine the role of theory in critical observation, through extended case studies of the work of critics including Barthes. Bloom, Poulet, Eliot, Empson, Kristeva and Derrida. His underlying argument is that criticism uses theory but is never effectively directed or controlled by it: the inherent radicalism built into critical practice fragments and transforms general concepts in the act of applying them.

American Memory in Henry James is about the cultural, historical and moral dislocations at the heart of Henry James' explorations of American identity - between power and love; modernity and history; indeterminate social forms and enduring personal values. The text covers the power, and the limits, of the language of morality and interpretive imagination as James grapples with what America and Europe have in common; and also with what, because their contexts and sense of history are so profoundly different, they cannot have in common. Righter's great theme is the tensions that impelled James ultimately to stretch the novel, his beloved 'prodigious form', almost to breaking point, in search of an ultimately elusive synthesis. The American Scene - his account of an America, revisited after long absence, that was reinventing itself right down to the touchstones of its identity - is its entry point; The Golden Bowl is its primary testing ground. The questions raised transcend the historical moment and the specifically Jamesian sense of dislocation, to go to the heart of modern identity, and the nature of literary endeavour.

What is critical theory, and to what extent can it claim to exist as a free-standing entity independent of the object of enquiry? Is the much-discussed gulf between Anglo-Saxon empiricism and Continental post-structuralism more apparent than real? In The Myth of Theory William Righter explores the nature of thinking about literature and the assumed polarities between the abstract reasonings of philosophy and the concrete exploratory manoeuvres of critical practice. He goes on to examine the role of theory in critical observation, through extended case studies of the work of critics including Barthes. Bloom, Poulet, Eliot, Empson, Kristeva and Derrida. His underlying argument is that criticism uses theory but is never effectively directed or controlled by it: the inherent radicalism built into critical practice fragments and transforms general concepts in the act of applying them.