Paul de Man facts for kids

Paul de Man (born Paul Adolph Michel Deman, December 6, 1919 – December 21, 1983) was a Belgian-born literary critic and literary theorist. He became one of the most important literary critics in the United States. He was known for bringing German and French philosophical ideas into American literary studies.

Paul de Man worked with Jacques Derrida. They were part of a new way of looking at literature. This approach went beyond just understanding stories. It explored how hard it is to truly understand any text. This new way of thinking faced a lot of disagreement. De Man believed this was because understanding literature is a difficult task.

After he passed away, people found out that de Man had written articles during World War II. These articles supported the Nazis and were against Jewish people. This caused a big controversy.

Paul de Man: A Literary Thinker

Paul de Man started teaching French literature at Bard College in the United States. He earned his Ph.D. (a high-level university degree) from Harvard University in 1960. Later, he taught at Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Zurich.

He then joined the faculty at Yale University. There, he was part of a group called the Yale School of Deconstruction. At the time of his death from cancer, he was a very respected professor at Yale. He was the chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature.

Early Life and Challenges

Paul de Man was born into a well-known family in Antwerp, Belgium. His family was part of the new middle class. His great-grandfather was a famous poet named Jan Van Beers. The family spoke French at home.

His uncle, Henri de Man, was a famous socialist thinker and politician. Henri later worked with the Nazis during World War II. This connection played a role in some of Paul de Man's decisions during the war.

Paul de Man's early life was tough. His older brother died in an accident when Paul was 17. The next year, Paul found his mother after she had passed away. Despite these difficulties, Paul was a brilliant student and a good athlete. He studied science and engineering and always got top grades. He also became very interested in literature, philosophy, and religious ideas outside of school.

In 1937, Paul started studying at the Free University of Brussels. He wrote for student magazines. He also continued his science and engineering studies. For support, he looked to his uncle Henri.

Wartime Years and Controversy

When the Nazis took over Belgium in 1940, de Man and his family fled to southern France. His uncle Henri de Man welcomed the Nazis. He saw them as a way to bring about his type of socialism. For about a year, Henri de Man was like a puppet prime minister of Belgium under the Nazis.

Some people believe Henri used his power to help his nephew get a job. Paul de Man became a cultural critic for Le Soir. This was an important Belgian newspaper. After writing an essay called "The Jews in Present-Day Literature" in 1941, de Man became an official book reviewer. He also wrote for another newspaper, Het Vlaamsche Land. Both newspapers were strongly anti-Jewish under Nazi control.

As a cultural critic, de Man wrote many articles and reviews. His writings supported German ideas and Germany winning the war. However, he never directly mentioned Hitler. Despite this, he remained friends with some Jewish people.

De Man earned a lot of money from his jobs. But he lost all of them between 1942 and 1943. After this, de Man went into hiding. The Belgian Resistance (people fighting against the Nazis) had started to target Belgians who worked with the Nazis. His uncle Henri had also gone into hiding.

De Man spent the rest of the war reading American and French literature. He also organized a translation of Moby Dick into Dutch. After the war, he was questioned but not charged with any crimes. His uncle Henri was found guilty of treason in his absence.

Moving to America

In 1948, de Man left Belgium and moved to New York City. He had left to avoid being tried for financial problems. He was later found guilty in his absence and sentenced to prison and fines.

He found a job stocking books at a bookstore in Grand Central Station. There, he met important writers and thinkers. One of them, Mary McCarthy, recommended him for a teaching job at Bard College.

De Man later married Patricia Kelley. They had two children, Michael and Patsy. They stayed together until de Man's death in New Haven, Connecticut.

His Academic Journey

The de Mans moved to Boston. Paul taught French and did translations. He even gave private French lessons to Henry Kissinger, who later became a famous politician.

At Harvard University, de Man met Professor Harry Levin. He was invited to join a literary group. In 1952, he officially began graduate studies in comparative literature at Harvard. While writing his Ph.D. paper, he received a special award.

In 1960, he moved to Cornell University. He was highly valued there.

In 1966, de Man went to a conference where Jacques Derrida gave a famous speech. De Man and Derrida quickly became good friends. Both became known for their work in Deconstruction. De Man used deconstruction to study Romanticism (a style of art and literature). He looked at works by writers like William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Marcel Proust.

In the 1970s, de Man returned to the United States to teach at Yale University. He stayed there for the rest of his career. At the time of his death at age 64, he was a very respected professor and chairman of the comparative literature department at Yale.

Ideas About Literature

Paul de Man's work changed over time, but some ideas remained constant. He believed that literature departments often avoided studying literature itself. Instead, they used other subjects like psychology or history to make texts "mean" something.

A main idea in de Man's work is the difference between rhetoric (how language is used, especially with figures of speech) and meaning. He looked for parts in texts where language became so complex that it stopped easy understanding.

In his book Allegories of Reading, de Man explored these ideas in the works of writers like Nietzsche and Rousseau. He focused on parts where language talked about itself. He showed how figures of speech can make it hard to fully control or understand a text. For de Man, an "Allegory of Reading" happens when a text shows its own ideas about language. This reveals how difficult it is to fully understand a text.

De Man also studied Romanticism. He looked at how Romantic writers used symbols and allegory. He argued that Romanticism tried to connect the reader and the text through symbols. But when this connection broke down, Romantic writers often used allegory to try and regain a sense of completeness.

In his essay "The Resistance to Theory", de Man discussed why people resist literary theory. He said that studying language in literature could explain grammar and logic. But it often ignored the rhetorical parts of texts. These rhetorical parts are the hardest to interpret. He believed that resisting theory is actually a part of theory itself.

His Impact on Literary Studies

Paul de Man had a big impact on literary criticism. Many of his students became important scholars. He brought ideas from German philosophers like Kant and Heidegger into literary studies. He also followed new developments in French literature and theory.

Much of de Man's work was published after he died. His book Resistance to Theory was almost finished when he passed away. Another collection of his essays was published in 1996.

Works

• Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. 1971.
• Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (ISBN: 0-300-02845-8), 1979.
• Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. 2nd ed. (ISBN: 0-8166-1135-1), 1983.
• The Rhetoric of Romanticism (ISBN: 0-231-05527-7), 1984.
• The Resistance to Theory (ISBN: 0-8166-1294-3), 1986.
• Wartime Journalism, 1934–1943 Werner Hamacher, Neil Hertz, Thomas Keenan, editors (ISBN: 0-8032-1684-X), 1988.
• Critical Writings: 1953–1978 Lindsay Waters, editor (ISBN: 0-8166-1695-7), 1989.
• Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism: The Gauss Seminar and Other Papers E. S. Burt, Kevin Newmark, and Andrzej Warminski, editors (ISBN: 0-8166-1695-7), 1993.
• Aesthetic Ideology Andrzej Warminski, editor (ISBN: 0-8166-2204-3), 1996
• The Post-Romantic Predicament, Martin McQuillan, editor (ISBN: 978-0-74864-105-5), 2012.
• The Paul de Man Notebooks, Martin McQuillan, editor (ISBN: 978-0-74864-104-8), 2014.

See also

In Spanish: Paul de Man para niños

• List of deconstructionists