Notoriety struck the Belgian-born literary critic Paul de Man more than once. First came his fame as one of the principal and most controversial theorists of deconstruction in the 1970s and early 1980s. After his death in 1983, notoriety struck a second time. In 1987, a Belgian scholar discovered that de Man had written in the early 1940s for several journals that collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of Belgium. The revelations precipitated debates that have yet to subside.The scholar who set loose this furor was Ortwin de Graef, who has since embarked on a comprehensive...

A polymath well versed in European literature and philosophy, one of the founders of deconstruction, and a widely respected teacher, Paul de Man brought unprecedented attention and acclaim to the so-called Yale Critics. His fame was at a zenith when he died suddenly in 1983. A few years later, Ortwin de Graef found the de Man had written for the collaborationist press during the Nazi occupation, a discovery that ignited an international reassessment of de Man's work.

Serenity in Crisis is the first sustained account of the complex, intertextual tradition in which de Man wrote and of...