The Critical Situation

“Robert T. Tally Jr’s new book contains important critical essays engaging with the major developments in ‘postmodern literary studies,’ with a visionary conclusion ‘An Anagogic Education.’ Tally proposes here how a Frye and Jameson can work together. Among recent books, there is no rival to Tally’s, in terms of wide coverage, in-depth analysis, and imaginative lucidity. To those new in the field and jaded veterans alike, I highly recommend The Critical Situation”— Daniel T. O’Hara, Professor of English and Inaugural Mellon, Professor of Humanities, Temple University.

“The Critical Situation could be titled ‘Prolegomena to a Critical Education.’ Under a bold initial reference to Sartre, it demonstrates how being aware of the situatedness of our readings liberates our subjectivity to embrace the long-term perspective of a radical, cosmopolitan humanism, unbound from the vagaries of one’s ‘national’ culture”— Didier Coste, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Bordeaux Montaigne University.

“Taking vexation seriously as a generative mood for critique, this study offers probing and imaginative forays into our unsettled postmodern situation. In the face of the university’s depoliticization and commodification, Robert T. Tally Jr. reclaims literary criticism’s purchase on the world and its vocation to transform it” —Nicole Simek, Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature, Whitman College.

Robert T. Tally, Jr.’s 2023 book The Critical Situation: Vexed Perspectives in Postmodern Literary Studies, a collection of previously published essays, offers a remarkably coherent picture of post-Americanist critical agency with theoretical sophistication, political savvy, and humanist good humor. Tally characteristically brings together erudition, thoughtfulness, political wisdom, and clear writing, making him an excellent critic for our present time. — Journal of Modern Literature

In a humanities literature increasingly flooded with (self-)advertisements about their applied uses, and when it is becoming impossible to distinguish ‘academic positioning systems’ from the worst forms of marketing-speak, The Critical Situation reminds us of a discipline that, yes, has its micropractices, but has probably made its more lasting contributions to the difficult labour of truth through an insistent macro-synthesis of criticism, history, and theory. —The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory