Contents -- Preface -- 1. Introduction: Scandal and Offense -- Part I. Historical: Attack and Defense -- 2. Attack -- 3. Defense -- Part II. Theoretical: Four Offenses -- 4. Gesture -- 5. Drama -- 6. Fiction -- 7. Trope -- Part III. Critical: Studies in Antithetical Offense -- 8. Vico and Blake: Poetic Logic as Offense -- 9. Blake and Joyce: Friends in Offense -- 10. Joyce Cary's Antitheticality and His Politics of Experience -- 11. Seamus Heaney's Criticism and the Antithetical -- 12. The Double Offense of Great Bad Poetry -- or, McGonagall Apotheosized -- Epilogue: Reminders Not Quite Gentle -- Index.