The Baffle of Being

Most of the essays collected here deal with modern or contemporary British poems and stories which defy easy and quick understanding. Each of the chapters tries to find an angle from which a proper understanding may commence. This could be a poetical device such as special imagery or a procedure like unreliable narration or intertextuality. Describing such structural devices must not be mistaken for offering a unified interpretation of a text. But recognizing an important structure can help to avoid a misreading. Thus, possible ways of successfully approaching a given text are presented.