Metaphoric transition as a resistance to the literalization of writing

Abstract

[Extract] This paper argues that what Derrida calls "metaphoric transition" in the writings of Freud provides not only a methodological approach to the problem of revisions but also a countervailing force against Zachary Leader's dismissiveness towards "metaphorical revisions," a reference Leader makes in regard to the study of Wordsworth's habits of composition in The Prelude. The cozy alliance between Zachary Leader's position and that of Herschel Parker's, emblematized in the latter's "new scholarship," may be accounted for by the very literalization of writing Derrida cautions us against.