Books, Arts & Manners: Prodigal Son

Modernist Quartet, by Frank Lentricchia (Cambridge, 320 pp., $54.95)

PROFESSOR Frank Lentricchia has made a drastic mid-career change. He is a denizen of the infamous Duke University English Department, a major center of the brand of literary “theory” allied with ideology that a large and aggressive segment of the professoriate has substituted for literature. Indeed, Mr. Lentricchia has been known as one of the foremost exponents of theory.

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Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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Modernist Quartet, by Frank Lentricchia (Cambridge, 320 pp., $54.95)

PROFESSOR Frank Lentricchia has made a drastic mid-career change. He is a denizen of the infamous Duke University English Department, a major center of the brand of literary “theory” allied with ideology that a large and aggressive segment of the professoriate has substituted for literature. Indeed, Mr. Lentricchia has been known as one of the foremost exponents of theory.