Taking its point of initiation from the long-standing dialogue between poetry and philosophy concerning their respective claims to contrasting orders of insight, this book tackles issues relating to the differing conditions of knowledge and insights relating to language and thought imparted by ‘modern’ poets and philosophers, from Kant and Wordsworth to Adorno and Hardy. The book draws on recent debates in literary theory and philosophy in order to outline a new ‘dialogic’ approach for conducting comparative criticism and literary history. The poets and the philosophers appear under configurations of reading that produce considerations that are unexpected, yet strangely fitting.