Papers and Manuscripts

Mark Poster was Professor of History and Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and also taught in the Critical Theory Emphasis. Additionally, he had appointments in the Department of Information and Computer Science and the Department of Comparative Literature. He authored or edited more than 17 books and 90 articles on European intellectual history, the social and cultural theory of electronically mediated information, postmodernism, and critical theory, among other subjects. Many items in the collection are available to researchers electronically through UCIspace @ the Libraries.

This collection comprises research notes and correspondence from Neil Hertz' and Tom Kennan's 1988 research trip to Belgium to gather information for Responses: On Paul de Man's Wartime Journalism (1989). Of particular interest are photocopies of texts that were located by Hertz' Belgium contacts including Galerie des Traitres, denouncing wartime writers for Le Soir; Le Chant Dans les Ruines and Le Massacre des Innocents, poems reviewed by de Man in Le Soir; andExercise du Silence, the introductory essay to the fourth issue of Messages, which de Man helped get published in Brussels after the journal was banned in Paris. Additionally, the collection includes correspondence from Georges Poulet and Jan de Man, son of Henrik de Man.

Paul de Man was a prominent and influential literary critic, scholar, and teacher best known as one of the principle theorists behind an approach to literary texts that became known as deconstruction. This collection contains the personal and professional papers documenting his career as a scholar and literary theorist in the field of comparative literature, and as an academic in the United States. Files primarily contain his manuscripts and typescripts related to literary criticism, rhetoric, and critical theory, and reflect his general interests in Romanticism. In particular, materials document his approach to literary texts that became known as deconstruction. His works focus on writers and philosophers such as Hegel, Hölderlin, Mallarmé, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Wordsworth, and Yeats. The collection also contains published and unpublished writings, student papers, notes, teaching notebooks, and related materials.

René Wellek was an influential literary critic and theorist known for his pioneering work in the field of comparative literature. He taught at numerous institutions throughout his career, including Yale and the University of Iowa. Best known for his works Theory of Literature (1949) and A History of Modern Criticism (1955), he was an advocate of the “intrinsic” literary critical method, which rejects the political and social influences on works of literature and stresses the content of the work itself. This collection primarily documents Wellek’s academic career as a specialist in Slavic and English literature, as well as a historian of literary criticism. This collection contains manuscripts, correspondence, lecture notes, notebooks, reprints, reviews, clippings, and family materials. Since 1981, the Critical Theory Institute at UC Irvine has sponsored an annual Wellek Library Lecture Series named in his honor.

Renée Riese Hubert was Professor Emerita of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. This collection consists of his publications and other papers. The collection includes artists' books, publications about artists' books, including art exhibition and artists' catalogs, journals, books, and publishers' catalogs, correspondence, and clippings. Materials are in English and French.