"No critic, no man of letters in our time, has surpassed the scope, seriousness, verbal virtuosity--truly, he is the Guest of Language--and sheer vivacity of mind of George Steiner. The various, supple, often subtle, essays of this volume do critical honor to Steiner, his fierce poetics of meaning, his shocking deed of semantic trust. And unlike so much contemporary criticism, they all share a tact of the heart."--Ihab Hassan.
Nathan A. Scott Jr. is William R. Kenan Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Virginia. Amobng his many books are Samuel Beckett; The Wild Prayer of Longing; Poetry and the Sacred; The Poetics of Belief; and Visions of Presence in Modern American Poetry. Ronald A. Sharp is John Crowe Ransom Professor of English at Kenyon College and former editor of The Kenyon Review. His books include Keats, Skepticism, and the Religion of Beauty; Friendship and Literature: Spirit and Form; and (with Eudora Welty) The Norton Book of Freindship.