Paul de Man   (1919-1983)
A deconstructive theorist, Paul de Man exerted a powerful influence on a generation of the most
elite students of literature in the United States. Born in Antwerp, de Man studied science and philosophy at the
University of Brussels. In 1947 he moved to New York city and taught at Bard College from 1949 to 1951. Starting in             1952, de Man attended Harvard University, earning a Ph.D. in comparative literature in 1960. From there he went on to teach at Cornell, John Hopkins, and finally Yale.

For a theorist of his stature, de Man published little criticism, all of it in the form of essays: Blindness and Insight: Essays in
the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (1971, revised 1983); Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau,
Nietzche, Rilke, and Proust (1979); The Rhetoric of Romanticism (1984); The Resistance to Theory (1986).

Since his death, de Man's reputation has been tarnished by the revelation that during World War II he wrote anti-Semitic
articles for a publication that sympathized with the Nazi regime.