To the book's original nine essays addressing such topics as professionalism in criticism, the relation between psychoanalysis and hermeneutics, and the contemporary situation of the humanities this new edition adds six essays, one of them previously unpublished. Topics discussed include the future of the university and of the humanities, Kierkegaard's notion of repetition, Josiah Royce's conception of a community of interpretation, and the problematic place of reading in reader-response theory.