Listening on All Sides

Richard Deming is a Lecturer for the English Department at Yale University, where he co-ordinates the Whitney Humanities Center Working Seminar on Contemporary Poetry and Poetics.

• Contents Acknowledgmentsxxx Introduction000 Chapter 1On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Reading for Life000 Chapter 2Reading, Agency, and the Question of "Fate"000 Chapter 3Foundling Texts: Originality and Authorship in Melville's "Hawthorne and His Mosses"000 Chapter 4Response and Responsibility: Stevens, Williams, and the Ethics of Modernism000 Notes000 Index000

"Richard Deming's Listening on All Sides: Toward an Emersonian Ethics of Reading is a beautifully written book that approaches recent thinking about Emerson, especially that of Stanley Cavell and Richard Poirier, from the point of view of poetics rather than philosophy or literary theory. Demings study of what he calls 'Emersonian modernism' includes refreshing readings of Dickinson, Melville, Williams, and Stevens. The book is both philosophically engaging and meticulously researched." - Charles Bernstein (University of Pennsylvania) "Overall, the focus of Deming's study is refined and often brilliant, most especially in the freshness it brings to the poetics of Emerson." - The Wallace Stevens Journal "Listening on All Sides is a nuanced and meticulous examination of the philosophical possibilities of and in literature . . . an ambitious book that enjoins the reader to pay careful attention to the slipperiness of texts, to notice how those moments where the possibilities of belief are articulated, and above all to understand how writing remains in continual conversation with itself as the means by which aversive thinking might be maintained." - "Richard Deming's Listening on All Sides will take a serious place in the decades-long revival of writing about Emerson." - Timothy Gould ( Modern Philology) "Richard Deming's book advances a project of sensual reorientation in the spirit of Stanley Cavell's ordinary language philosophy, and his achievements are noteworthy in a few directions, including a sophisticated intertextuality, a knack for aphorisms, and most importantly a contribution to literary ethics where the ear can play a central role." - Philological Quarterly