Jeffrey Mehlman (born 1944, in New York City) is a literary critic and a historian of ideas.
Over a number of years, he has been writing an implicit history of speculative interpretation in France in the form of a series of readings of canonical literary works.
"[1] Revolution and Repetition was saluted by Paul de Man as "one of the very brilliant and entertaining books of the last years" (back cover) and hailed as a "tour de force" by Gregory Ulmer in his article on the "ten best experimental essays written in English in the category of ‘literary criticism’ in the past half-century".
[3] George Steiner, reviewing Walter Benjamin for Children in the Times Literary Supplement, saluted in the book "a scholastic acuity and wit resembling that of Benjamin himself," hailing the "sparkle" of its "erudition and playful intelligence.
"[4] Finally, Stanley Hoffman wrote in Foreign Affairs of Émigré New York that "previous attempts by literature professors to tackle culture have not always resulted in works as mind-stretching and entertaining as this.