Gerald Bruns

Gerald L. Bruns (born April 10, 1938) is an American literary scholar and philosopher and William P. & Hazel B. White Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of ten books and has published nearly a hundred essays.

Bruns received his BA from Marquette University in 1960 and his PhD from the University of Virginia in 1965. He taught at Ohio State University, the University of Iowa, and University of Notre Dame.

Bruns was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship twice (1974, 1985) and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Books Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language, Yale University Press, 1974. 2nd ed. Dalkey Archive Press, 2001. Inventions: Writing, Textuality, and Understanding in Literary History, Yale University Press, 1982. Heidegger's Estrangements: Language, Truth, and Poetry in the Later Writings, Yale University Press, 1989. Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern, Yale University Press, 1992. Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. 2nd ed. 2005. Tragic Thoughts at the End of Philosophy: Language, Literature, and Ethical Theory, Northwestern University Press, 1999. The Material of Poetry: Sketches for a Philosophical Poetics, University of Georgia Press, 2005 On the Anarchy of Poetry and Philosophy: A Guide for the Unruly, Fordham University Press, 2006 On Ceasing to be Human, Stanford University Press, 2010 What Are Poets For? An Anthropology of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, University of Iowa Press, 2012 Interruptions: The Fragmentary Aesthetic in Modern Literature, University of Alabama Press, 2018