There is a very harsh review of History of Madness in the Times Literary
Supplement:
http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25347-2626687,00.html
It mainly attacks Foucault for his deliberate use of antiquated and unreliable sources--concluding that, as a historian, Foucault is a charlatan.
It has also heightened my fears about the quality of the translation, which I don't think I've heard anyone say anything good about. On a purely formal level, from the passage the review provides comparing the new translation to Howard's, it looks like the new one has imported the kind of syntactic ambiguities which, at least for me, make the English translations of Birth of the Clinic and The Order of Things difficult to read.
Matthew
http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25347-2626687,00.html
It mainly attacks Foucault for his deliberate use of antiquated and unreliable sources--concluding that, as a historian, Foucault is a charlatan.
It has also heightened my fears about the quality of the translation, which I don't think I've heard anyone say anything good about. On a purely formal level, from the passage the review provides comparing the new translation to Howard's, it looks like the new one has imported the kind of syntactic ambiguities which, at least for me, make the English translations of Birth of the Clinic and The Order of Things difficult to read.
Matthew