Nadel's book on Ellison is the best reading of Invisible Man (and its place in the American canon) that I have ever encountered…I can safely say that no one has taught me more about Invisible Man than has Nadel. No one." —Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “. . . demonstrates convincingly the extent to which Ellison inserts himself consciously into ... Read morethe texts of Melville, Whitman, Emerson, Twain, and cultural historian Lewis Mumford as a way of disrupting their integrity.” —American Literary History “. . . an important study of a central figure in American literature and of a central critical issue of our time. Mr. Nadel has made a significant contribution in both respects to our understanding of American literature and culture.”—Sacvan Bercovitch “Combining an intelligent use of critical theory with close texual reading, Invisible Criticism provides valuable insights into Ralph Ellison’s relationship to the established canon of 19th-century American literature. . . . Building on a brilliant chapter concerning theories of literary allusion (particularly those of Northrop Frye and Harold Bloom), Nadel demonstrates how Ellison uses allusions to revise received interpretations of the tradition with which he identifies his own work.” —Choice Show Less