Saving the Text cuts through Jacques Derrida's complex blend of philosophy, commentary, and elaborate wordplay to ascertain his place in the history of criticism and the significance of Glas as literary event. Distinguished critic and scholar Geoffrey Hartman explores the usefulness of Derrida's style of close reading for English and American scholarship and establishes its relevance to the division that has arisen between European and Anglo-American critical approaches. In addition, he discusses Derrida's exepesis in relation to theological commentary. Hartman's culminating counterstatement to Derrida is a new theory of literature, both speculative and pragmatic.