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What subjects did Paul de Man study in Allegories of Reading?
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In his 1979 work Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust, the American literary critic Paul de Man explores the complexities of language and rhetoric through the analysis of specific authors.12
As indicated by the book's full title, the subjects of his study are the works of four major writers:
* Jean-Jacques Rousseau
* Friedrich Nietzsche
* Rainer Maria Rilke
* Marcel Proust
In this text, de Man applies his deconstructionist approach to examine how figural language functions within these literary and philosophical texts, focusing on the inherent contradictions and the "slippery" nature of meaning in language.12