Literary theory Books

Book SynopsisAda Smailbegović shows how twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers have intermingled scientific methodologies with poetic form to reveal unfolding processes of change. Poetics of Liveliness moves across scales to explore the realms of molecules, fibers, tissues, and clouds.Trade ReviewIn a remarkable feat of interdisciplinary scholarship, this book plumbs the depths and scans the horizons of what it means to write on, in, of, and with “life” through a poetry and poetics of experimentation. Science meets poetry meets the ongoing unknown in a redefinition of environmental poetics—bravo! -- Cary Wolfe, author of Ecological Poetics; or, Wallace Stevens’s BirdsSmailbegović addresses the entwined relations between contemporary North American poetry and developments in philosophy, art, and science. She argues that each of these fields or practices address the same kinds of complexity in the world, both enabling language to emerge from the world (whether in human or animal form) and materiality to complexify and elaborate itself chemically and evolutionarily. -- Elizabeth Grosz, author of The Incorporeal: Ontology, Ethics, and the Limits of MaterialismWriting as a poet versed in biology, physics, and meteorology, Smailbegović explains minute and slow-moving material phenomena as acutely as she does poetic nuance. Rather than unveil worlds normally imperceptible at human scale, her “edge work” tracks partial contact between actants moving past and through one another at different speeds. Offering a feminist account of the pliability or softness of matter, Poetics of Liveliness reads as an incipient, emergent organism in its own right, slowly and recursively proceeding by multiplying surfaces of responsiveness. -- Anne-Lise François, author of Open Secrets: The Literature of Uncounted ExperiencePoetics of Liveliness has two muses. One, Gertrude Stein, is named; the other, William Blake, is the “unnamed form” animating this book of wonders. Meshing handwork to brainwork, Blake’s multimedia inventions release from “the merely natural” a body of knowledge—and knowledge of bodies—that is larger, more minutely organized, and more alive than our philosophy had dreamt of. Smailbegović proves herself a member of Blake’s tribe, not just its ethnographer. Her study addresses poetry and poetics, new and old ontology, science, technology, and media studies, and ecopoetics. -- Marjorie Levinson, author of Thinking Through Poetry: Field Reports on Romantic LyricSmailbegovic’s book serves as connective tissue between a scientific treatment of literature and a deeper consideration of what it means to think with the nonhuman in all scales and on all levels of sentience. * ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment *Poetics of Liveliness is an essential read for anyone who’s interested in the connections between science and literature, and in the tremendous potential they hold for the future of critical theory and for its immediate present. * Textual Practice *[A] valuable and original contribution to interdisciplinary studies . . . it will be appealing not only to literary scholars, but also to a broader audience of philosophers, ecologists, new materialists, and possibly even to the scientific community, from entomologists to physicists. Because of its strong theoretical foundations, Poetics of Liveliness will surely act as a catalyst for future inquiries into the study of material ecologies. * H-Environment, H-Net Reviews *Poetics of Liveliness operates . . . scalarly, moves fluidly between the realms of the very small and the very large, revealing relationships between multifaceted, nonhuman material assemblages, while Smailbegović’s expertise in a variety of scientific fields buttresses the author’s ability to build the necessary information networks as she moves through the diverse levels of those relationships. * Jacket2 *For readers intrigued by the material turn (and its discontents), and no less for readers curious about what lies at the forefront of materialist-poetic experimentation today, Poetics of Liveliness should not be missed. * American Literary History *[Smailbegović's] project is to break down reified discourses of materiality by means of a poetics as lively as the nonhuman things it describes, or decorates. It is a significant, serious, yet playful account of how, in the hands of these poet-naturalists, metaphor can be used strategically to liberate readers and their reading matter alike. * Modernism/modernity *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPart I: Textures of Change Introduction: Poetic Cosmologies1. Soft Matter2. Poetry and SciencePart II: Poetic Laboratories of Matter 3. Molecules: From Code to Shape4. Fibers: Edge Textures and Nonhuman Scales of Sense5. Tissues: Histological Landscapes and the Substances of Character6. Clouds: Cloud-Writing and the Movement of QualitiesCoda: Toward a Haptic PoeticsNotesWorks CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisAda Smailbegović shows how twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers have intermingled scientific methodologies with poetic form to reveal unfolding processes of change. Poetics of Liveliness moves across scales to explore the realms of molecules, fibers, tissues, and clouds.Trade ReviewIn a remarkable feat of interdisciplinary scholarship, this book plumbs the depths and scans the horizons of what it means to write on, in, of, and with “life” through a poetry and poetics of experimentation. Science meets poetry meets the ongoing unknown in a redefinition of environmental poetics—bravo! -- Cary Wolfe, author of Ecological Poetics; or, Wallace Stevens’s BirdsSmailbegović addresses the entwined relations between contemporary North American poetry and developments in philosophy, art, and science. She argues that each of these fields or practices address the same kinds of complexity in the world, both enabling language to emerge from the world (whether in human or animal form) and materiality to complexify and elaborate itself chemically and evolutionarily. -- Elizabeth Grosz, author of The Incorporeal: Ontology, Ethics, and the Limits of MaterialismWriting as a poet versed in biology, physics, and meteorology, Smailbegović explains minute and slow-moving material phenomena as acutely as she does poetic nuance. Rather than unveil worlds normally imperceptible at human scale, her “edge work” tracks partial contact between actants moving past and through one another at different speeds. Offering a feminist account of the pliability or softness of matter, Poetics of Liveliness reads as an incipient, emergent organism in its own right, slowly and recursively proceeding by multiplying surfaces of responsiveness. -- Anne-Lise François, author of Open Secrets: The Literature of Uncounted ExperiencePoetics of Liveliness has two muses. One, Gertrude Stein, is named; the other, William Blake, is the “unnamed form” animating this book of wonders. Meshing handwork to brainwork, Blake’s multimedia inventions release from “the merely natural” a body of knowledge—and knowledge of bodies—that is larger, more minutely organized, and more alive than our philosophy had dreamt of. Smailbegović proves herself a member of Blake’s tribe, not just its ethnographer. Her study addresses poetry and poetics, new and old ontology, science, technology, and media studies, and ecopoetics. -- Marjorie Levinson, author of Thinking Through Poetry: Field Reports on Romantic LyricSmailbegovic’s book serves as connective tissue between a scientific treatment of literature and a deeper consideration of what it means to think with the nonhuman in all scales and on all levels of sentience. * ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment *Poetics of Liveliness is an essential read for anyone who’s interested in the connections between science and literature, and in the tremendous potential they hold for the future of critical theory and for its immediate present. * Textual Practice *[A] valuable and original contribution to interdisciplinary studies . . . it will be appealing not only to literary scholars, but also to a broader audience of philosophers, ecologists, new materialists, and possibly even to the scientific community, from entomologists to physicists. Because of its strong theoretical foundations, Poetics of Liveliness will surely act as a catalyst for future inquiries into the study of material ecologies. * H-Environment, H-Net Reviews *Poetics of Liveliness operates . . . scalarly, moves fluidly between the realms of the very small and the very large, revealing relationships between multifaceted, nonhuman material assemblages, while Smailbegović’s expertise in a variety of scientific fields buttresses the author’s ability to build the necessary information networks as she moves through the diverse levels of those relationships. * Jacket2 *For readers intrigued by the material turn (and its discontents), and no less for readers curious about what lies at the forefront of materialist-poetic experimentation today, Poetics of Liveliness should not be missed. * American Literary History *[Smailbegović's] project is to break down reified discourses of materiality by means of a poetics as lively as the nonhuman things it describes, or decorates. It is a significant, serious, yet playful account of how, in the hands of these poet-naturalists, metaphor can be used strategically to liberate readers and their reading matter alike. * Modernism/modernity *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPart I: Textures of Change Introduction: Poetic Cosmologies1. Soft Matter2. Poetry and SciencePart II: Poetic Laboratories of Matter 3. Molecules: From Code to Shape4. Fibers: Edge Textures and Nonhuman Scales of Sense5. Tissues: Histological Landscapes and the Substances of Character6. Clouds: Cloud-Writing and the Movement of QualitiesCoda: Toward a Haptic PoeticsNotesWorks CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisThis book explains how and why our brains think in stories. Angus Fletcher, an expert in neuroscientific approaches to narrative, identifies this capacity as “storythinking.”Trade ReviewFletcher’s done it again. His polymathic erudition and word-wizardry elegance pull off the equivalent of a Copernican revolution in our understanding of storytelling—in all its resplendent iterations. With Storythinking he invites us on an extraordinary odyssey that enriches understanding of our deep, instinctive impulse to create stories as makers and transformers of our world. Storythinking is nothing less than a cosmological paradigm shift that puts story making and thinking at the center of all that we do. -- Frederick Luis Aldama, award-winning author and Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, UT AustinAngus Fletcher explains why effective narrative prioritizes the unique, shifts viewpoints, and encourages conflict. Not for their own sake. It makes a writer create and clarify more thoughtful ideas and leads readers to intuit and retain the message. Both revelatory and pragmatic, and so gracefully explained. -- Shane Greenstein, author of How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New NetworkStorythinking is absolutely excellent: a much-needed reminder of and expansion on the transformative power of story, story as an enriched form of learning and as a valid epistemology. The book is a lovely, readable addition to academic and public life. I am eager to see the use of story resurrected! -- Lisa Miller, Ph.D., Professor & Founder, Spirituality Mind Body Institute, Teachers College, Columbia UniversityStory is a basic mental operation. Most of our experience, knowledge, and thinking is formed and organized by story: prediction, evaluation, planning, explanation, agents and actors, processes, goals. Story is an indispensable element of creativity. Human beings project from story to story and blend stories to create new concepts, new proposals, new science. How can we push the cognitive science of story forward? Fletcher, in this captivating and inspiring new book, leads the way. -- Mark Turner, author of The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and LanguageThe quickest way to elicit a scoff from 'serious thinkers' is to mention 'story'. But as someone who has built a career as a science communicator, who consistently straddles the line between art and science, and whose work is grounded in neuroscience, I know intuitively that storytelling is fundamental to how we think. Finally, Angus Fletcher brings his deep understanding of narrative together with his keen scientific mind to explain why we think in stories, why embracing story structure is the way forward, and how stories provide an architecture to thought as powerful and important as logic. Read this book. -- Indre Viskontas, Cognitive Neuroscientist, University of San Francisco[Storythinking] is a most unusual book, plumbing the depths of history to find where philosophy went off the rails, examining neurobiology for insight into creativity, and festooned with stories about great characters all the way through. I can honestly report I’ve never read anything like it. And that’s a good thing. * The Straight Dope *Table of Contents1. Story2. Story and Thinking3. The Origin of Story4. Why Our Schools Teach Logic, Not Story5. The Limits of Logic—or Why We Still Need Storythinking6. The Brain Machinery of Storythinking7. Improving Storythinking8. Storythinking for Personal Growth9. Storythinking for Social Growth10. Story’s Answer to the Meaning of LifeCoda: Conversations with a StorythinkerNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisTone is a collaborative study of literary tone, exploring its implications for community, politics, and ecology.Trade ReviewA "Most Anticipated" Book of 2023 * The Millions *Just as the world laments the apparent lack of insightful literary criticism as well as the dwindling number of venues that support it, here comes the dazzling Committee to Investigate Atmosphere with a piece of criticism like no other. Writing collaboratively and in luscious, piercing dialogue with students and peers, Kate Zambreno and Sofia Samatar set out to interrogate the question of tone from every angle imaginable: what it is or might be, how it wraps around the human and non-human, how it affects work and space, rooting readers in territories through specific prepositions; why it has proclivity for windows and community. Reading thickly and in context a to-die-for selection of contemporary creative and theoretical works—including, lo and behold, texts in translation—the Committee reminds us that often we read books less for plot, character or setting, and more for the quality of atmosphere, seeking—quite simply and quite momentously—to “breathe that air again.” -- Cristina Rivera Garza, author of Grieving and The Taiga SyndromeThis book is a gorgeous inventory of baroque intensities, spooked consciousnesses, vibrational affectivities, and shifting moods—written in and through precarity’s duration. The Committee has convened to remind us, in shimmering and intricate prose, that all thinking is collective thinking. In the doorway of thought: a ‘we’ steps into the weather of literature. -- Jackie Wang, author of Carceral Capitalism and The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the VoidIn this subtle, haunting study, "the Committee" investigates what it means to write both of and on the cloud. Sofia Samatar and Kate Zambreno gave themselves over to the nebulous space of a collective reading and writing practice, seeking neither plot nor character, but rather that most indefinable of literary qualities: tone. Joining them there is eerily calming: "Someone else has entered the chat. And so here we are." After three years of constant, anxious reminders that we are breathing each other's air, try as we might to remain particular, there is something immensely gratifying about surrendering to this pronoun of our plural, historical intimacy. -- Barbara Browning, author of The Gift and The MiniaturistsA lyrical, erudite meditation. * Kirkus Reviews *An insightful, playful, and unique book of creative criticism . . . Tone is a beautiful book of conjecture: a fine, long essay in the tradition of William Gass's On Being Blue. -- Nick Ripatrazone * Image Journal *[This] book will be a vital resource for imagining the future of creative work in the 21st century. -- Safa Khatib * The Markaz Review *In book reviews, a translation’s tone is as frequently complimented as it is criticized, and most often, little more about the translation is said. We all know what we mean by tone, right? This is why the Committee’s intervention is so vital: they are starting from scratch; and they are starting by scratching, rubbing, relating, touching, tending. They are reading and repeating: the blue you see is not the same blue that I see; I hear you differently than you want to be heard; my nose, my room, my furniture, my language is not the same as yours. -- Claire Foster * ARCADE *[This] book is a paradigm for how theory gets written now: in merged voices, as if courting disorientation, through unpredictable leaps of subject matter, and with a constant reference to ambient collective experience, all fusing into an anti-mastery with a nostalgia for impossible mastery. The tone of our moment, let’s say. And tones, Samatar and Zambreno demonstrate, have moments. -- Nicholas Dames * Public Books *Table of Contents1. Front Matter, or The Zone of Our Mutual Sensitivity2. Fog, or A Gradual Accumulation3. The Wasteland, or Our Own Colorless Patch of Sky4. Hoard, or An Unaired Room5. Aviary, or Animal6. Guest Lecture, or Reports to an Academy7. Lighted Window, or Studies in AtmosphereAcknowledgmentsNotes

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Book SynopsisTone is a collaborative study of literary tone, exploring its implications for community, politics, and ecology.Trade ReviewA "Most Anticipated" Book of 2023 * The Millions *Just as the world laments the apparent lack of insightful literary criticism as well as the dwindling number of venues that support it, here comes the dazzling Committee to Investigate Atmosphere with a piece of criticism like no other. Writing collaboratively and in luscious, piercing dialogue with students and peers, Kate Zambreno and Sofia Samatar set out to interrogate the question of tone from every angle imaginable: what it is or might be, how it wraps around the human and non-human, how it affects work and space, rooting readers in territories through specific prepositions; why it has proclivity for windows and community. Reading thickly and in context a to-die-for selection of contemporary creative and theoretical works—including, lo and behold, texts in translation—the Committee reminds us that often we read books less for plot, character or setting, and more for the quality of atmosphere, seeking—quite simply and quite momentously—to “breathe that air again.” -- Cristina Rivera Garza, author of Grieving and The Taiga SyndromeThis book is a gorgeous inventory of baroque intensities, spooked consciousnesses, vibrational affectivities, and shifting moods—written in and through precarity’s duration. The Committee has convened to remind us, in shimmering and intricate prose, that all thinking is collective thinking. In the doorway of thought: a ‘we’ steps into the weather of literature. -- Jackie Wang, author of Carceral Capitalism and The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the VoidIn this subtle, haunting study, "the Committee" investigates what it means to write both of and on the cloud. Sofia Samatar and Kate Zambreno gave themselves over to the nebulous space of a collective reading and writing practice, seeking neither plot nor character, but rather that most indefinable of literary qualities: tone. Joining them there is eerily calming: "Someone else has entered the chat. And so here we are." After three years of constant, anxious reminders that we are breathing each other's air, try as we might to remain particular, there is something immensely gratifying about surrendering to this pronoun of our plural, historical intimacy. -- Barbara Browning, author of The Gift and The MiniaturistsA lyrical, erudite meditation. * Kirkus Reviews *An insightful, playful, and unique book of creative criticism . . . Tone is a beautiful book of conjecture: a fine, long essay in the tradition of William Gass's On Being Blue. -- Nick Ripatrazone * Image Journal *[This] book will be a vital resource for imagining the future of creative work in the 21st century. -- Safa Khatib * The Markaz Review *In book reviews, a translation’s tone is as frequently complimented as it is criticized, and most often, little more about the translation is said. We all know what we mean by tone, right? This is why the Committee’s intervention is so vital: they are starting from scratch; and they are starting by scratching, rubbing, relating, touching, tending. They are reading and repeating: the blue you see is not the same blue that I see; I hear you differently than you want to be heard; my nose, my room, my furniture, my language is not the same as yours. -- Claire Foster * ARCADE *[This] book is a paradigm for how theory gets written now: in merged voices, as if courting disorientation, through unpredictable leaps of subject matter, and with a constant reference to ambient collective experience, all fusing into an anti-mastery with a nostalgia for impossible mastery. The tone of our moment, let’s say. And tones, Samatar and Zambreno demonstrate, have moments. -- Nicholas Dames * Public Books *Table of Contents1. Front Matter, or The Zone of Our Mutual Sensitivity2. Fog, or A Gradual Accumulation3. The Wasteland, or Our Own Colorless Patch of Sky4. Hoard, or An Unaired Room5. Aviary, or Animal6. Guest Lecture, or Reports to an Academy7. Lighted Window, or Studies in AtmosphereAcknowledgmentsNotes

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Book SynopsisProbes the relationship between language, meaning, context, intention and action, and produces a treatise on the nature of the literary act, and a meditation on the responsibility or ethical imperative of literature itself. This book is the English translation of "Les Fleurs de Tarbes, ou la terreur dans les lettres".

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Book SynopsisDraws on current philosophy, literary history, and political events to confront the grim fact that divested boys become terrifying men.Trade Review "The area of literature, politics and economics is a growing interdisciplinary field of study. Avital Ronell's new book is an important contribution to this newly evolving aspect of literary theory...Ronell has written a beautiful and timely book in support of the highly underrated and immeasurable zero position."--Political Studies Review "Important contribution ... a beautiful and timely book."--Political Theory"In addition to its importance for the ongoing readers of Ronell's work, this book will be automatically a requirement in the field of study of authority. A beautifully written and composed study that sets new highest standards."--Laurence A. Rickels, author of Aberrations of Mourning: Writings on German Crypts"Loser Sons will endear and fascinate the theoretically curious and will speak to intellectually and politically adventurous audiences. A welcome intervention in the art of political physiognomy and progressive seismography, both redeemed from their most violent and delusional of expectations."--Hent de Vries, editor of Religion: Beyond a Concept "Important contribution. . . . a beautiful and timely book."--Political Theory

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Book SynopsisLanguage is understood as a key path in the formation of all social and political relationsTrade ReviewThe scope and depth of Bleich's work in The Materiality of Language are impressive. This book offers intriguing views of historical developments in language philosophies, the ways in which rigid views of language have supported institutional hegemony and androcentrism, and the positive implications of acknowledging language's materiality. The systematic links he draws among language, gender, institutions, and politics offer generative insights that will certainly be of interest to scholars in rhetoric and composition. * Rhetoric Review *[The author's] thesis is interesting and provocative. He argues forcefully for the relevance of language, construed as a material entity, across a wide range of disciplines (and to life in general), and challenges the focus on treating language as a cognitive phenomenon and studying it in abstract terms.11/7/13 * New Books in Language *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Contested SubjectPart One: The Materiality of LanguageChapter 1: Premises and Backgrounds Chapter 2: Received Standards in the Study of Language Chapter 3: Materiality and Genre Chapter 4: The Unity of Language and Thought Chapter 5: Materiality and the Contemporary Study of Language Chapter 6: Recognizing Politics in the Study of Language Part Two: Language in the UniversityChapter 7: Frustrations of Academic Language Chapter 8: The Protected Institution Chapter 9: The Sacred Language Chapter 10: Language Uses in Science, the Heir of Latin Chapter 11: Language and Human Survival Chapter 12: The Materiality of Literature and the Contested Subject Works Cited and ConsultedIndex

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Book SynopsisHow can literature, which consists of nothing more than the description of imaginary events and situations, offer any insight into the workings of "human reality" or "the human condition"? Can mere words illuminate something that we call "reality"? This book answers these questions.Trade ReviewWhat Is Fiction For? Literary Humanism Restored brings the disciplines of literature and philosophy to bear on a single subject: the necessity of humane letters in education, the capacity of literature to transform and elevate the mind. * Academic Questions *The book is wide ranging and deeply engaged with a broad range of theoretical perspectives. . . . Recommended. * Choice *This book is not an easy read, but the effort is rewarding since its argument may very well represent a cornerstone in the history of ideas. It can certainly be a cornerstone of one's career: if one is a student in the humanities and has not yet developed needed certainties, this book can provide the grounding needed to develop them. The book's ideas are stoically, logically, and brilliantly defended. . . . Harrison's account ultimately defines itself as mandatory reading for anyone concerned with literature and literary humanism. * Partial Answers *One great virtue of the book is that Harrison's marriage of philosophy and literary criticism does genuine and novel work. It takes someone of Harrison's philosophical training to articulate the theoretical basis for his defense of literary humanism, and it takes his gifts as a critic to show what this humanism looks like in practice. * Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *All those who care about literature, including admirers of the New Criticism, are indebted to Bernard Harrison for demonstrating, at length and in painstaking theoretical detail, the philosophical validity for the twenty-first century of 'merely what every common reader has always taken to be involved in ''talking about books.''' * The Weekly Standard *In What Is Fiction For? Harrison makes a strong case for the ongoing relevance of the study of iterature as a serious and worthwhile intellectual pursuit. * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *[A] hugely original and rich defence of literary humanism. . . . I think this book, and Harrison's library cognitivism more broadly, deserves more attention . . . . * British Journal of Aesthetics *Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionPART I: Getting Real1. Humanism and its Discontents2. The Mirror of Nature3. Truth, Meaning and Reality4. Leavis and Wittgenstein (I): A Living Language5. Leavis and Wittgenstein (II): The "Third Realm"PART II: Character, Language and Human Worlds6. Nature and Artifice7. Virginia Woolf and "The True Reality"8. Aharon Appelfeld and the Problem of Holocaust Fiction9. The Limits of Authorial License in Our Mutual FriendPART III: Against "The Meaning of the Work"10. Reactive versus Interpretive Criticism11. Houyhnhnm Virtue12. Sterne and SentimentalismPART IV: The Skeptic Side13. Reanimating the Author14. Persons and Narratives15. Reading and Reading-In16. Meaning It Literally: Derrida and his Critics RevisitedEpilogue: Telling the Great from the GoodNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisHow can literature, which consists of nothing more than the description of imaginary events and situations, offer any insight into the workings of "human reality" or "the human condition"? Can mere words illuminate something that we call "reality"? This book answers these questions.Trade ReviewWhat Is Fiction For? Literary Humanism Restored brings the disciplines of literature and philosophy to bear on a single subject: the necessity of humane letters in education, the capacity of literature to transform and elevate the mind. * Academic Questions *The book is wide ranging and deeply engaged with a broad range of theoretical perspectives. . . . Recommended. * Choice *This book is not an easy read, but the effort is rewarding since its argument may very well represent a cornerstone in the history of ideas. It can certainly be a cornerstone of one's career: if one is a student in the humanities and has not yet developed needed certainties, this book can provide the grounding needed to develop them. The book's ideas are stoically, logically, and brilliantly defended. . . . Harrison's account ultimately defines itself as mandatory reading for anyone concerned with literature and literary humanism. * Partial Answers *One great virtue of the book is that Harrison's marriage of philosophy and literary criticism does genuine and novel work. It takes someone of Harrison's philosophical training to articulate the theoretical basis for his defense of literary humanism, and it takes his gifts as a critic to show what this humanism looks like in practice. * Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *All those who care about literature, including admirers of the New Criticism, are indebted to Bernard Harrison for demonstrating, at length and in painstaking theoretical detail, the philosophical validity for the twenty-first century of 'merely what every common reader has always taken to be involved in ''talking about books.''' * The Weekly Standard *In What Is Fiction For? Harrison makes a strong case for the ongoing relevance of the study of iterature as a serious and worthwhile intellectual pursuit. * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *[A] hugely original and rich defence of literary humanism. . . . I think this book, and Harrison's library cognitivism more broadly, deserves more attention . . . . * British Journal of Aesthetics *Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionPART I: Getting Real1. Humanism and its Discontents2. The Mirror of Nature3. Truth, Meaning and Reality4. Leavis and Wittgenstein (I): A Living Language5. Leavis and Wittgenstein (II): The "Third Realm"PART II: Character, Language and Human Worlds6. Nature and Artifice7. Virginia Woolf and "The True Reality"8. Aharon Appelfeld and the Problem of Holocaust Fiction9. The Limits of Authorial License in Our Mutual FriendPART III: Against "The Meaning of the Work"10. Reactive versus Interpretive Criticism11. Houyhnhnm Virtue12. Sterne and SentimentalismPART IV: The Skeptic Side13. Reanimating the Author14. Persons and Narratives15. Reading and Reading-In16. Meaning It Literally: Derrida and his Critics RevisitedEpilogue: Telling the Great from the GoodNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"It will likely be the indispensable touchstone for any future work in these areas with respect to Australian cultural studies." -Robert T. Tally, Texas State University "Definitely original in its approach, since it combines a conceptual approach with a more applied one. The book is a serious contribution to the field of mapping spatial narratives and to a better understanding of the production and spatial structure of fictional places." -Sebastien Caquard, Concordia UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Geocriticism's Disciplinary BoundariesAcknowledgments1. Remediating Space: Adaptation and Narrative Geography2. Cultural Topography and Mythic Space: Australia's North as Gothic Space3. Spatial History: Mapping Narrative Perceptions of Place over Time4. Mobility and Travel Narratives: Geovisualizing the Cultural Politics of Belonging to the Land5. Terra Incognita: Mapping the Uncertain and the UnknownBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA cultural history of macho criticismTrade ReviewExhaustively researched and meticulously detailed, James Penner's [book] cuts an insightful swath through fifty years of 20th century macho literary criticism . . . Scholars, historians, and culture critics will have much to chew on here. May 2011 * Reno Tahoe Tonight *With a literary fluid style and a pleasant wit, Penner steers the reader through five decades of fluctuating visions of masculinity, not only in novels and criticism, but also in various artistic endeavors and in 'cultured society' as a whole. ...[A]n invaluable book.8/22/11 * GRAAT *A nice addition to the steadily lengthening shelf of literary gender studies, this perceptive, well-researched volume ... surveys a vast landscape of eclectic literary achievement: from hypermasculine warrior myths, anticommunist crusades, and the New Critics to Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer, and William S. Burroughs ... [this] study merits a long look. Summing Up: Highly recommendedJuly 2011 * Choice *Pinks, Pansies, and Punks offers an indispensable text that compellingly theorizes the significance of masculinity's role in literary culture and the twentieth-century social contexts that shaped—and were shaped by—it. * Twentieth Century Literature *All in all it [Pinks, Pansies, and Punks] is a recommendable, as informative introduction to the American culture and Gendergeschichte [gender studies] of the middle twentieth century. * Orbis Litterarum *Penner's study is an ambitious and provocative look at mid-century delineations of masculinity in American literary culture. . . . [It] asks readers to reconsider and expand the horizons of their understanding of twentieth-century male identity, and to reflect on their critical efforts to fit writers, artists, and other critics into specific categories and definitions. In many ways, this is what makes it such a rich and potentially valuable a contribution not only to masculinity and gender studies, but to American literary and cultural studies as well. * College Literature *In compelling ways, Penner navigates through layered textual materials to show how multiple configurations of masculinity can and do co-exist . . . This book proves a very interesting study for those interested in Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, or Literary Criticism. Vol. 40:6 * Women's Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: A Short History of Macho Criticism1. "Healthy Nerves and Sturdy Physiques": Remaking the Male Body of Literary Culture in the 1930s2. Doughfaces, Eggheads, and Softies: Gendered Epithets and American Literary Culture in the 1940s3. Highbrows and Lowbrows: Squares, Beats, Hipsters, White Negroes, New Critics, and American Literary Culture in the 1950s4. Reforming the Hard Body: The Old Left, the Counterculture, and the Masculine Kulturkampf of the 1960s5. The Gender Upheavals of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s: The Black Panthers, Gay Liberation, and Radical FeminismEpilogue: The End of InnuendoNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisIf music is a universal language, is language a universal music?Trade ReviewDavid Lidov's new book is highly recommended. . . Not only has Lidov's collection of essays established a secure base in the imposing terrain associated with the study of musical signification, but it also has laid some vital programmatic depots over that terrain that will aid future treks across the rugged musico-semiotic landscape. 31.2 Fall 2009 * Music Theory Spectrum *Table of Contents Foreword 1. Prelude-Is Language a Music?Part I. Structuralist Pespectives-Introduction 2. Structure and Function in Repetition. 3. The Allegretto of Beethoven's Seventh. 4. Mediation as a Formal Principle in Music: Three Examples.Part II. Semiotic Polemics-Introduction 5. Nattiez's Fondements. 6. Our Time with Druids. 7. Why We Still Need Peirce.Part III. From Gestures to Discourses-Introduction 8. Mind and Body in Music. 9. Opera Operta: Realism and Rehabilitation in La Traviata 10. A Monument in Song: Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee by Beverley (Buffy) St. Marie.Part IV. The Messages of Methods-Introduction 11. Bartok the Progessive.12. The Art of Music Theory and the Aesthetic Category of the Possible13. Technique and Signification in the Twelve-Tone Method14. The Project of Abstraction in Painting and Music.Part V. Resisting Representation-Introduction 15. Replaying my Voice MailNotesReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisA study of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert by an award-winning author.Trade Review"Robert Hatten's new book is a worthy successor to his Musical Meaning in Beethoven, which established him as a front-rank scholar ... in questions of musical meaning... Both how he approaches musical works and what he says about them are timely and to the point. Musical scholars in both musicology and theory will find much of value here, and will find their notions of musical meaning challenged and expanded." oPatrick McCrelessTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I. Markedness, Topics, and Tropes1. Semiotic Grounding in Markedness and Style: Interpreting a Style Type in the Opening of Beethoven's Ghost Trio, Op. 70, no. 12. Expressive Doubling, Topics, Tropes, and Shifts in Level of Discourse: Interpreting the Third Movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 1303. From Topic to Premise and Mode: The Pastoral in Schubert's Piano Sonata in G Major, D. 8944. The Troping of Topics, Genres, and Forms: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner, MahlerPart II. Musical GestureIntroduction to Part II5. Foundational Principles of Human Gesture6. Toward a Theory of Musical Gesture7. Stylistic Types and Strategic Functions of Gestures8. Thematic Gesture in Schubert: The Piano Sonatas in A Major, D. 959, and A Minor, D. 7849. Thematic Gesture in Beethoven: Sonata for Piano and Cello in C Major, Op. 102, no. 110. Gestural Troping and AgencyConclusion to Part IIPart III. Continuity and DiscontinuityIntroduction to Part III11. From Gestural Continuity to Continuity as Premise12. Discontinuity and BeyondConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex of Names and WorksIndex of Concepts

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Book SynopsisThe Neighboring Text uses recent work in psychoanalysis and political philosophy to examine the figure of Troilus in three major works of medieval literature.Trade Review"George Edmondson has authored a major intervention into medieval cultural studies. A brilliant work of criticism, The Neighboring Text reconfigures how to think about textual relations, opening a space where meanings unfold through contiguity rather than filiation of influence. The book deploys a historically sensitive psychoanalytic mode of analysis that foregrounds the place of the ethical within literary analysis." —Jeffrey J. Cohen, George Washington University"George Edmondson's book marks an innovative and promising approach to the Chaucerian tradition of Trojan historical fiction. This is an incredibly smart and compelling book. Its central idea about reconfiguring genealogical relations between texts into 'neighbor' relations that can complicate the normally linear ideas of cause-effect-revision extends our historical understanding of medieval texts and invigorates a field that threatens to become a rigid and stultified scene of reading." —Elizabeth Scala, University of Texas, Austin"This is the most important recent reconfiguration of medieval English literary history. Edmondson’s book reanimates both a rigorous psychoanalytic method and the question of what Chaucer did to Il Filostrato. It demonstrates not only that Boccaccio, Chaucer, Henryson, C. S. Lewis, David Wallace, and Aranye Fradenburg belong in the same neighborhood but that its smart and urgent thinking about what it means to be a neighbor could open valuable new real estate in medieval literary studies generally." —D. Vance Smith, Princeton University“Edmondson (Dartmouth) has written an exemplary study of literary relations of the late Middle Ages. . . . The book is well grounded in psychoanalytic theory, yet Edmondson’s prose is conversational and clear, which is refreshing. The book also acts as a literary history of sorts . . . which is both useful and necessary. . . . This reviewer has not read such a masterful study of Henryson’s text in some time.” —Choice“The connections between Henryson and Chaucer, and then Chaucer and Boccaccio, are hard to overlook. George Edmondson’s book takes a new vantage on this well-known situation, specifically on each poet’s telling of the doomed love affair between Troilus and Criseyde.” —Renaissance Quarterly“Over thirty years ago, Richard Rorty said that ‘we are in for another few hundred years of getting adjusted to the availability of the psychoanalytic vocabulary.’ The appearance of George Edmondson’s The Neighboring Text is surely an eloquent demonstration of just how fast such adjustment is happening and how developed critical uses of this psychoanalytic vocabulary has become. In the same spirit, it is also true to say that this is surely a book ahead of its time.” —Review of English Studies“The Neighboring Text in many ways proceeds from the ground-shifting studies of historicists who work with psychoanalytic concepts, like Ingham and Aranye Fradenburg. But, making full critical use of a specialized psychoanalytic vocabulary, it also offers a new model for assessing the relations between texts in a culture in which the imperative to neighbor love was taken seriously and potentially influenced a medieval reader’s response to a text.” —Comitatus“This is a valuable contribution to the field and a book that well repays deep engagement, critique, and debate, for there is a level of erudition here that is not easy to put to one side, and which calls out for further discussion.” —Parergon“The Neighboring Text: Chaucer, Boccaccio, Henryson establishes a new way of looking at the relationship between texts, particularly the Troilus text of the three authors mentioned in the title. Moving beyond simple ideas of genealogy, Edmondson introduces the concept of neighboring and thus offers a fresh perspective on the interaction between the texts that deal with the story of Troilus and Criseyde.” —Sixteenth Century Journal“This book breaks new ground in the field of literary history. . . . [Its] originality lies in its argument that literary inventiveness is spurred not by an Oedipal relation but by ‘identification, aggression, love, charity, and the possibility of a community organized around something other than sacrifice and exchange.’ This has large implications for textual relations.” —Medium Aevum

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Book SynopsisThe Genius to Improve an Invention derives its title from John Dryden's phrase for the British tendency to take up literary masterpieces from the past and perfect them. Distinguished literary scholar Piero Boitani adopts Dryden's notion as a framework for exploring ways in which classical and medieval texts, scenes, and themes have been rewritten by modern authors. Boitani focuses on a concept of literary transition that takes into account both T.S. Eliot's idea of tradition and individual talent and Harold Bloom's anxiety of influence. In five elegant essays he examines a wide range of authors and texts, including Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Voltaire, Goethe, Sartre, Dante, and Keats. Appearing for the first time in an English translation, The Genius to Improve an Invention will appeal to anyone interested in the Western literary tradition.Trade Review“The book’s linguistic vicissitudes are intriguingly appropriate to its topic, which is the (mostly) translingual commerce between literary texts in which the difference evident in imitation can be understood as an inspired improvement." -- American Journal of Philology“Boitani’s slim book more than lives up to its unique production history in the extraordinary range of its subjects and insights. It is the kind of book that great men of letters once wrote.... [The Genius to Improve an Invention], once opened, it is a book almost impossible to put down.” -- Medium Aevum“This book deserves the attention of all who are interested in the processes of literary continuity and change.” -- Frank Kermode, King’s College, Cambridge University“The Genius to Improve an Invention is both substantial and graceful–a fascinating journey through some of the greatest works of Western literature, with a guide who is at once learned and entertaining, impassioned and moving.” -- Jill Mann“The Genius to Improve an Invention is supported with a thorough theoretical awareness and a flexible intelligence enabling Boitani to move comfortably within a vast array of texts and thus take the reader on a fascinating literary journey. Through his pressing and detailed argumentations, the author suggests original approaches to some of the great works of European literature—each of them is considered as a solution to a specific problem and, at the same time, as a probative argument in favor of applied rationality. Reading these essays calls to mind what Henry James once said, ‘all the pieces of the game [are] on the table together and each unconfusedly and contributively placed, as triumphantly scientific.’” -- Mario Lavagetto, University of Bologna

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Book SynopsisIn Recursive Origins: Writing at the Transition to Modernity, William Kuskin asks us to reconsider the relationship between literary form and historical period. As Kuskin observes, most current literary histories of medieval and early modern English literature hew to period, presenting the Middle Ages and modernity as discrete, separated by a heterodox and unstable fifteenth century. In contrast, the major writers of the sixteenth centuryPhilip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, the Holinshed Syndicate, and their editorswere intense readers of the fifteenth century and consciously looked back to its history and poetry as they shaped their own. Kuskin examines their work in light of the writings they knewthat of Thomas Hoccleve, John Lydgate, William Caxton, and the anonymous London Chroniclesto demonstrate that fifteenth-century textual forms exist within the most significant statements of literary modernity. In short, by reconsidering the relationship betweeTrade Review"Brilliant and provocative, William Kuskin's Recursive Origins: Writing at the Transition to Modernity is original in its combination of literary and book history, compelling in its vision of a model of recursion, and inspiring in its ambitiousness. It is the kind of book that literary studies needs right now." —Kent Cartwright, University of Maryland"In this pioneering work, William Kuskin turns a keen eye on the literary production of early modernity and discovers there the traces of recursivity: instances in which ostensible breaks with the past turn out always to embed the past. As a mode of composition, recursivity challenges the very tenets of literary history and thus requires its own method of literary criticism. Instead of reading works through the lens of periodization, Kuskin argues, we would do better to read them with their own pasts in view: that is, as they appear in the physical books in which they first appeared, whose codicological semiotics often recur to an earlier period—in the case of the works Kuskin considers, to the Middle Ages." —Martha Rust, New York University“Kuskin has written a timely, important book. . . . As one of the leading authorities on the English printer, editor, and translator William Caxton, Kuskin clearly establishes the need for those in English studies to look at the texts of the fifteeenth century. There one will find the origins of the so-called early modern period and the canonical authors who wrote them.” —Choice“Recursive Origins is exceptionally strong in its detail, and will be of value to anybody interested in the reception of late medieval culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or in the relationship between manuscript and print technologies.” —SHARP News“This study thus importantly contributes to current conversations that seek to emphasize literary history’s formal properties. Although Kuskin does not press the point, he also usefully spells out how familiar versions of medieval and early modern periodization take their cue from sixteenth-century writers themselves, who repeatedly claim to depart from the past even as their works recur upon its material texts and tropes.” —Renaissance Quarterly“Overall, Recursive Origins makes a brilliant argument, all the more so for its seeming simplicity. Kuskin’s theory of textual formalism already underlies some of the best scholarly work being done in the field and it promises fruitful re-contextualizations of canonical works for years to come. Indeed, like the best academic studies, Recursive Origins presents an overwhelmingly elegant solution to a pervasive and hotly debated problem.” —The Sixteenth Century Journal“Recursive Origins tells a compelling story with a clear antagonist: the literary period. William Kuskin’s mighty ambition in this book is to ‘provide an alternative model for conceiving of literary history,’ resisting the totalizing temporal categories of modernity and the logic of revolution or rupture . . . that defines and legitimizes them.” —Modern Language Quarterly“Kuskin is an attentive reader of literary texts, a sharp critic of contacts and overlaps between texts from different centuries, and an effective synthesizer of a complex and vast body of evidence and arguments about print, bibliography, and textual history of literary texts which he analyzes with great skill in this timely book.” —Renaissance and Reformation

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Book SynopsisVincent P. Pecora discovers an alternative history of the twentieth-century Western novel that explains the resurgence of Christian theological ideas in the supposedly secularized genre.Trade Review"Secularization without End is a well-argued and provocative exploration of the modern novel grounded in a compelling set of theological reflections. Vincent P. Pecora discusses primarily Samuel Beckett's trilogy (1950), Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus (1947), and various novels by J. M. Coetzee from the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. This is not just a set of three individual-author essays; it is about an alternative history of the novel that challenges the paradigms that have prevailed from Watt to Moretti." —Russell Berman, Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University"A must read. After Vincent P. Pecora’s Secularization without End, modernism won’t be the same. On the back of his innovative understanding of secularization as interminable, Pecora shows that his authors—Beckett, Mann, and Coetzee—are saturated in a bleak Christianity that they can’t overcome. I can think of few recent books of literary criticism from which I have learnt more." —Simon During, University of Queensland"Vincent P. Pecora's new study offers a most welcome corrective to the still widely accepted notion that the European novel had 'come to supplant the history of religion as the basis of our moral sensibility.' Compact, accessible, and full of engaging and trenchant commentary, Secularization without End provides a valuable resource not just for specialists but for undergraduates studying the modern novel and trying to develop a nuanced and capacious understanding of the complex relationship between literature and religion." —Thomas Pfau, author of Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge“In Secularization without End, Pecora continues the provocative exploration of the secularization phenomenon that he began in Secularization and Cultural Criticism (2006). His subject is modernism’s tendency to replace religious categories of thought and experience with those of a secular philosophical ethics and epistemology.” —Choice "This is one of the finest exercises in literature and theology that I have encountered for a long time. Its challenge to the reader lies in its profound grasp of theology and its philosophical implications, while at the same time pursuing complex literary discussions of the nature of writing and narrative after Roland Barthes' Writing Degree Zero." —Literature and Theology"Pecora is at his best when revising the big picture and moving through a complex philosophical and literary-critical heritage. . . . Secularization without End is a book that is designed to alter paradigms, and whether or not Pecora’s readers come away convinced of all of his claims, he has written an important and even necessary study that should continue to alter the way we read modern fiction for years to come." —Modern Language Review“Among the most provocative of the questions Pecora explores is this: In what ways has secularization promoted a return to supposedly discarded theologies? While Pecora is interested in the broader and more commonly studied issue of the demise of the secularization thesis, he moves beyond explanations of how religious (primarily Christian) commitments persist in supposedly secular societies to the question of how secularization might have actually served as a causal factor in the renewal of religious thoughts and sentiment.” —Fides et Historia

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Incomprehensible Certainty promises to be one of the most comprehensive accounts of the image and image theory to date. With an extraordinary command of art-historical, philosophical, and theological sources, Pfau proposes a highly ambitious treatment of the image that will push contemporary understanding to a new level of sophistication.” —Mark McInroy, co-editor of The Christian Theological Tradition, 4th Edition**“Thomas Pfau approaches the philosophical question of images and their significance not abstractly but via forms of textual engagement with images. Incomprehensible Certainty amounts to a full appraisal of our culture’s life with images.” —Judith Wolfe, co-editor of The Oxford History of Modern German Theology"There has perhaps never been written a more definitive rebuttal to the heresy of iconoclasm, which constantly recurs in novel forms, than Incomprehensible Certainty. With his nearly incomparable breadth and depth of learning, Pfau is uniquely positioned to fashion a response that is at once historical, literary, cultural, philosophical, and theological. This is a breakthrough book, not just because of its brilliant content but also because of the boldness of its approach, which quite evidently bears valuable fruit. It is not possible to read this book without coming to see the world with new eyes." —D. C. Schindler, author of Freedom from Reality“Incomprehensible Certainty might . . . be understood as the positive response to the necessarily critical project of Minding the Modern. Like a good architect, Pfau cleared the ground before constructing his cathedral.” —The Hedgehog Review"By examining the role of images in ordinary life, Pfau is able to show how his book’s genealogy of modernity is true, as compared to other books in this genre. Happily, the book is lavishly illustrated so that the reader can directly see the changes in ways that Western people have seen the world. It is a marvelous history of Western visual culture, packed with fascinating analyses of artworks, and of philosophical texts about them, from Plato and Plotinus to Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso." —Law and Liberty"A new and refreshing reading of the tradition-rich debate about the relationship between appearance and being." —The Review of Metaphysics"A very impressive work . . . . Written with lucidity and attentiveness, being both extensive in its range over a great field, while never lacking mindfulness of particulars encountered in the whole undertaking." —Modern TheologyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Images & Permissions Abbreviations Introduction: Writing the Image: Reading – Reflection – Argument PART I – Image-Theory as Metaphysics and Theology: the Emergence of a Tradition 1. A Brief Metaphysics of the Image: Plato – Plotinus 2. Theology and Phenomenology of the Byzantine Icon 3. The Eschatological Image: Augustine – Bonaventure – Julian of Norwich 4. The Speculative Image: Platonism and Mysticism in Nicholas of Cusa PART II – The Image in the Era of Naturalism and the Persistence of Metaphysics 5. The Symbolic Image: Visualizing the Metamorphosis of Being in Goethe 6. The Forensic Image: Paradoxes of Realism in Lyell, Darwin, and Ruskin 7. The Sacramental Image: G. M. Hopkins 8. The Epiphanic Image: Husserl – Cézanne – Rilke Epilogue & Conclusions

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Book SynopsisIn this pioneering work, William Kuskin turns a keen eye on the literary production of early modernity and discovers there the traces of recursivity.Trade Review"Brilliant and provocative, William Kuskin's Recursive Origins: Writing at the Transition to Modernity is original in its combination of literary and book history, compelling in its vision of a model of recursion, and inspiring in its ambitiousness. It is the kind of book that literary studies needs right now." —Kent Cartwright, University of Maryland"In this pioneering work, William Kuskin turns a keen eye on the literary production of early modernity and discovers there the traces of recursivity: instances in which ostensible breaks with the past turn out always to embed the past. As a mode of composition, recursivity challenges the very tenets of literary history and thus requires its own method of literary criticism. Instead of reading works through the lens of periodization, Kuskin argues, we would do better to read them with their own pasts in view: that is, as they appear in the physical books in which they first appeared, whose codicological semiotics often recur to an earlier period—in the case of the works Kuskin considers, to the Middle Ages." —Martha Rust, New York University“Kuskin has written a timely, important book. . . . As one of the leading authorities on the English printer, editor, and translator William Caxton, Kuskin clearly establishes the need for those in English studies to look at the texts of the fifteeenth century. There one will find the origins of the so-called early modern period and the canonical authors who wrote them.” —Choice“Recursive Origins is exceptionally strong in its detail, and will be of value to anybody interested in the reception of late medieval culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or in the relationship between manuscript and print technologies.” —SHARP News“This study thus importantly contributes to current conversations that seek to emphasize literary history’s formal properties. Although Kuskin does not press the point, he also usefully spells out how familiar versions of medieval and early modern periodization take their cue from sixteenth-century writers themselves, who repeatedly claim to depart from the past even as their works recur upon its material texts and tropes.” —Renaissance Quarterly“Overall, Recursive Origins makes a brilliant argument, all the more so for its seeming simplicity. Kuskin’s theory of textual formalism already underlies some of the best scholarly work being done in the field and it promises fruitful re-contextualizations of canonical works for years to come. Indeed, like the best academic studies, Recursive Origins presents an overwhelmingly elegant solution to a pervasive and hotly debated problem.” —The Sixteenth Century Journal“Recursive Origins tells a compelling story with a clear antagonist: the literary period. William Kuskin’s mighty ambition in this book is to ‘provide an alternative model for conceiving of literary history,’ resisting the totalizing temporal categories of modernity and the logic of revolution or rupture . . . that defines and legitimizes them.” —Modern Language Quarterly“Kuskin is an attentive reader of literary texts, a sharp critic of contacts and overlaps between texts from different centuries, and an effective synthesizer of a complex and vast body of evidence and arguments about print, bibliography, and textual history of literary texts which he analyzes with great skill in this timely book.” —Renaissance and Reformation

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Book SynopsisConsiders the implications of the Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch in which a human signature appears in the lithostratigraphic record, for literary history and critical method. Explores the status of reading in the history of geology, and of geohistory in literature.Trade Review“Anthropocene Reading demonstrates why the era of what some are also calling the ‘Great Acceleration’ reaches into and affects so many fields, sciences, and disciplines.”—Jonathan Hahn Sierra“Though responding to a single challenge, the essays vary immensely, but it is pleasant to see all contributors thinking creatively and tentatively, sometimes driven to the esoteric extremes from which only critical neologisms can rescue them. The experiment is interesting and obviously relevant for critical theory in a changing world.”—G. D. MacDonald Choice“A rich collection of essays, their span befitting the scale and diversity of an Earth being transformed. Ranging as it does from the crowded present into deep time, where the most immediate and personal of human stories intermesh with planetary narrative, Anthropocene Reading is a deeply thought-provoking volume.”—Jan A. Zalasiewicz,author of The Goldilocks Planet: The Four Billion Year Story of Earth’s Climate“An ambitious and exhilarating collection. It takes the Anthropocene debates well beyond their familiar terrain. The book will appeal to readers from a host of disciplines, from geology to history, geography, and literary studies.”—Rob Nixon,author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor“The hypothesis of the Anthropocene as forwarded by earth scientists registers a moment of ecological crisis and an unavoidable challenge to critical and historical practice in literary studies. This collection of experimental forays meets that challenge with radical—and welcome—new approaches to the archives of the human age. Both erudite and engaged, the contributors offer essential scholarship for the years to come.”—Eric Gidal,author of Ossianic Unconformities: Bardic Poetry in the Industrial Age“Elaborating on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s linking of human and earth history in the Anthropocene, the editors frame this scintillating volume by asserting that we humans now read our ‘transformative presence in the Earth’s strata,’ that is, paradoxically both changing and interpreting the Earth’s structures. Skills for textual analysis are thus crucial. With ecocritical voices debating the possibilities—and horrors—of the Anthropocene, Anthropocene Reading is a major contribution to ecocriticism and a delight to read.”—Heather I. Sullivan,Trinity University“All told, the 13 contributions offer varied and stimulating studies displaying how literary methods can effectively interrogate, reframe, and explicate the multi-faceted qualities and character of the Anthropocene.”—Justin Westgate AntipodesTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction - Tobias Menely and Jesse Oak Taylor1 Anarky - Jeffrey Jerome Cohen2 Enter Anthropocene, Circa 1610 - Steve Mentz3 The Anthropocene Reads Buffon; or, Reading Like Geology - Noah Heringman4 Punctuating History Circa 1800: The Air of Jane Eyre - Thomas H. Ford5 Romancing the Trace: Edward Hitchcock’s Speculative Ichnology - Dana Luciano6 Partial Readings: Thoreau’s Studies as Natural History’s Casualties - Juliana Chow7 Scale as Form: Thomas Hardy’s Rocks and Stars - Benjamin Morgan8 Anthropocene Interruptions: Energy Recognition Scenes and the Myth of Global Cooling - Justin Neuman9 Stratigraphy and Empire: Waiting for the Barbarians, Reading Under Duress - Jennifer Wenzel10 Reading Vulnerably: Indigeneity and the Scale of Harm - Matt Hooley11 Accelerated Reading: Fossil Fuels, Infowhelm, and Archival Life - Derek Woods12 Climate Change and the Struggle for Genre - Stephanie LeMenager13 Ungiving Time: Reading Lyric by the Light of the Anthropocene - Anne-Lise FrançoisList of ContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisReveals the historical impact of dream rhetoric on Chinese modernity and nation-buildingRealism and the rhetoric of dreams intersected in modern Chinese literature from the May Fourth Era in the early twentieth century through the period just following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. The Edge of Knowing investigates this relationship, showing how writers' attention to dreams demonstrates the multiple influences of Western psychology, utopian desire for revolutionary change, and the enduring legacy of traditional Chinese philosophy. At the same time, modern Chinese writers used their work to represent social reality for the purpose of nation building. Recent political usage of dream rhetoric in the People's Republic of China attests to the continuing influence of dreams on the imagination of Chinese modernity. By employing a number of critical perspectives, The Edge of Knowing will appeal to readers seeking to understand the complicated relationship between literary form aTrade Review"Chan presents us with a reckoning of Chinese realism that should be of interest to scholars of mimesis, psychoanalysis, socialism, socialist realism, and affect well outside of Asian Studies. . . . . An enjoyable and compelling read." * Modern Chinese Literature and Culture *"Contributes significantly to the discourse of the dream, which . . . is becoming increasingly relevant in the context of permeation and saturation of the slogan of the Chinese Dream in China." * Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews *"A fascinating study that makes significant contributions to how we understand the relationship between time, dreaming, and materiality in modern literature." * New Books in East Asian Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Sleeping through Catastrophe: Dreams, Cataclysmic Modernity, and the Promises of Literary Realism 2. Dreaming as Representation: Lu Xun’s Wild Grass and Realism’s Social Address 3. Realism’s Hysterical Bodies: Narrative and Oneiric Counternarrative in Mao Dun’s Fiction 4. Sleepless Nights in Fast Socialism: Dream Rhetoric and Fiction in the Mao Era 5. Dream Fugue: Jiang Qing, the End of the Cultural Revolution, and Zong Pu’s Fiction Conclusion: Lu Xun and the Dreams of Politics and Literature Glossary of Chinese Characters Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisArgues that the activity of reading, in its broadest sense, defines our species. This title explores the crafts of reading and writing, the identity granted to us by literature, the far-reaching shadow of Jorge Luis Borges, to whom the author read as a young man, and the links between politics and books and between books and our bodies.Trade Review"'Books jump out of their jackets when Manguel opens them and dance in delight as they make contact with his ingenious, voluminous brain.' (Peter Conrad, The Observer) 'Manguel is a true polymath, and A Reader on Reading is a kind of a primer, or perhaps a masterclass. It's like listening to Barenboim on Beethoven... The range and complexity of Manguel's sympathies and readings is extensive and baroque.' (Ian Sansom, The Guardian) 'In reading, he realises that there are a thousand and one stories to be told about books, each narrative or anecodote leading to and from another, in an infinite progression... A Reader on Reading is an invitation to readers to enter into a world of wonders.' (Iain Finlayson, The Times) "'There are", writes Manguel, "certain books that, in themselves, are an ideal library." This book might be one of them.' (Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times) 'Manguel weaves his recollections into literary musings... his overall argument is compelling.' (Edward King, Sunday Times)"

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Book SynopsisA renowned literary theorist reconsiders previous stances and offers his latest thinking on the nature of literature and literary studyTrade Review“Written with his characteristic wit, verve and insight, The Event of Literature marks a new chapter in the developing thought of our pre-eminent literary theorist.”—London Review of Books * London Review of Books *“In this book Eagleton offers a shrewd historical synthesis of the interaction between literature and the common culture.”—Iain Finlayson, The Times -- Iain Finlayson * The Times *"In wry, thrifty prose, [Eagleton] surveys a range of theoretical positions in order to ponder a larger question about 'whether there really are such things as common natures in the world.' . . . A fascinating and often compelling expansion of Eagleton's oeuvre."—Publishers Weekly * Publishers Weekly *“Throughout the book, Eagleton writes with his customary felicity (his aphorism, for example, on significant affinities in Wittgenstein’s theory of family resemblances, ‘a tortoise resembles orthopaedic surgery in that neither can ride a bicycle’, is a delight).”—Stuart Kelly, The Guardian -- Stuart Kelly * The Guardian *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“This is a fascinating and impressive piece of work, which makes animportant contribution to queer, post-colonial, and diaspora studies.” - William Marshall, University of Stirling

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Book SynopsisBy investigating an array of cultural artifacts, ranging from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to the Oracle at Delphi to Luther’s challenge to the Church, this book demonstrates how the apparently benign emergence of writing made possible far-ranging systems of organised domination and unprecedented levels of violence.Trade ReviewThe Violence of the Letter is exceptionally well written, and the style is original and enjoyable. It engages insightfully with domination, offers a reframing of the Oedipus complex, returns on the separation of soul and body, dissects the violence of alphabetization, and observes the interaction of writing, colonialism, and capitalism: a must read." - Lorenzo Veracini, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne"This book is a provocative, innovative, and engaging work . . . will prove an important and novel contribution to ‘theory’ in general and to ‘theory of writing’ in particular." - Ron Scapp, College of Mount Saint Vincent"McMahon activates a range of scholarship from neuroscience, literary theories, and cultural histories.The Violence of the Letter explores diverse sets of relations which about how the alphabet works as a particular kind of phenomena for writing. Its significance is a theory of literacy about the governing of social life in Western modernities." - Thomas S. Popkewitz, University of Wisconsin-MadisonTable of Contents Prelude Introduction Chapter 1. A Brief Technical Detour Chapter 2. The Trauma of Literacy Chapter 3. The Alphabet and Reproduction Chapter 4. Plato and the Forms of Alphabetic Writing Chapter 5. The Alphabet and Money Interlude Chapter 6. Letters of Fire and Blood Chapter 7. The Subject Is Always Alphabetized Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFeaturing contemporary feminist theory, this book argues for a feminism that transcends national borders and ethnic identities. It analysis the novels and short stories of three Chicana writers - Gloria Anzaldua, Sandra Cisneros, and Helena Maria Viramontes and a range of Chicana feminist writing from several disciplines.Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGMENTS I Reading Tejana, Reading Chicana 2 Chicana Feminisms: From Ethnic Identity to Global Solidarity 3 Mestiza Consciousness and Politics: Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands I La Frontera 4 Mujeres en Lucha I Mujeres de Fuerza: Women in Struggle I Women of Strength in Sandra Cisneros's Border Narratives 5 "I Hear the Women's Wails and I Know Them to Be My Own": From Mujer to Collective Identities in Helena Maria Viramontes's U.S. Third World Epilogue: "Refugees of a World on Fire": Geopolitical Feminisms NOTES REFERENCES INDEX

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Book SynopsisA manifesto against systematic thinking, this text on literary theory, first published 70 years ago in 1928, is a difficult book by a famously difficult writer.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments A Note on the Text Creating Criticism: An Introduction to Anarchism Is Not Enough Laura Riding: A Chronology THE MYTH LANGUAGE AND LAZINESS THIS PHILOSOPHY WHAT IS A POEM? A COMPLICATED PROBLEM ALL LITERATURE MR. DOODLE-DOODLE-DOO AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION THE CORPUS POETRY AND MUSIC POETRY AND PAINTING POETRY AND DREAMS JOCASTA HOW CAME IT ABOUT? HUNGRY TO HEAR IN A CAFE FRAGMENT OF AN UNFINISHED NOVEL WILLIAM AND DAISY: FRAGMENT OF A FINISHED NOVEL AN ANONYMOUS BOOK THE DAMNED THING LETTER OF ABDICATION Notes on the Text Appendix I. Three Commentaries on Anarchism Is Not Enough Appendix II. Author to Critic: Laura (Riding) Jackson on 'Jlnarchism Is Not Enough" Selected Bibliography of Works by Laura Riding Selected Critical Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThis collection of essays showcases the work of some of the most influential theorists of the late-20th century as they grapple with the question of how literature should be treated in contemporary theory.Table of ContentsContributors: Hazard Adams Ernst Behler David Carroll Jacques Derrida Denis Donoghue Stanley Fish Wolfgang Iser Murray Krieger J. Hillis Miller Wesley Morris Stephen G. Nichols

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Book SynopsisWhat, exactly, is knowledge of music? And what does it tell us about humanistic knowledge in general? This book grapples directly with these fundamental questions - questions especially compelling at a time when humanistic knowledge is enmeshed in debates about its character and future.Trade Review"The volume is essential; the issues under study here remain vital, and the author enunciates them clearly ... Summing up: recommended." CHOICE "Kramer has been hugely successful in creating a community of formalist and hermeneutic analytical discourse that has inspired a new generation of thinkers to question music's inherent meaning and value in contemporary society... a hugely important and timely work that should no doubt become the focus of much future work and pedagogy." NotesTable of ContentsPreface: The Thought of Music Acknowledgments 1 * Music and the Forms of Thought 2 * Speaking of Music: In Search of an Idiom 3 * The Ineffable and How (Not) to Say It 4 * Pleasure and Valuation 5 * The Cultural Field: Beyond Context 6 * Virtuosity, Reading, Authorship: A Genealogy 7 * The Newer Musicology? Context, Performance, and the Musical Work Postscript: Imagining the Score Notes Index of Names Index of Concepts

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Book SynopsisDrawing on Korean and Japanese texts ranging from critical essays to short stories produced in the colonial and post-colonial periods, this book analyzes the ways in which Japanese colonial and Korean nationalist discourse pivoted on such concepts as language, literature, and culture.Trade Review"A strong study." -- Edward Mack Pacific Affairs "Marvelously rich, thought-provoking ... The argument is exemplary in its clarity and sophistication and in its ability to smoothly meld complex political philosophy and close textual analysis-a tour de force." Monumenta Nipponica

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisThe political force of feminism cannot be separated from the theories which give it that force. an effective feminist literary criticism must negotiate its relationship to the dominant male voice of traditional practices. Can it change that voice for new ends, or is it robbed of purpose by the inevitably partiarchal nature of traditional discourse? The essays in this book address this question in a complex set of exploratory dialogues between men and women. They open with interchanges on the philosophical foundations of feminist criticisms and questions about the mechanisms of representation. A second group of essays focus on the gendered body in the act of writing and on individual identity and experience in critical theory. Does theory elide questions of gender, race and class? Or does it help illuminate those differences by historicizing and politicizing the body? The further dialogues initiated here probe the network of relations between author, reader, critic and societyTable of ContentsPart 1: Representing Philosophy ; 1. Timothy J. Reiss, Revolution in Bounds: Wollstonecraft, Women and Reason ; 2. Frances Ferguson, Wollstonecraft our Contemporary ; 3. Ellen Messer-Davidow, The Philosophical Bases of Feminist Literary Criticisms ; 4. David R. Shumway, Solidarity or Perspectivity? ; Part 2: The Body Writing/Writing the Body ; 5. Jane Tompkins, Me and My Shadow ; 6. Gerald McLean, Citing the Subject ; 7. Joseph Allen Boone, Me(n) and Feminism: Who(se) is the Sex that Writes? ; 8. Toril Moi, Men Against Patriarchy ; Part 3: Transforming Texts and Subjects ; 9. Patricia Yaegar, Toward a Female Sublime ; 10. Lee Edelman, At Risk in the Sublime: The Politics of Gender and Theory ; 11. Barbara Christian, The Race for Theory ; 12. Michael Awkward, Appropriate Gestures: Theory and Afro-American Literary Criticism

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Book SynopsisTerry Eagleton's work has had a powerful influence in debates about the politics of literature and culture. This book reflects the breadth of his interests. It offers a view of his career to date, raising a number of central issues in literature, culture and politics.Table of ContentsIntroduction, Michael Payne and M.A.R.Habib; The significance of theory, Terry Eagleton; art after Auschwitz - Adorno's political aesthetics Terry Eagleton; criticism, ideology, and fiction, Terry Eagleton and Michael Payne.

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive , ambitious, and demanding critique of eighteenth-century English and French fiction, Story and History rereads the major works of the period as components in a systematic exploration of how the ordering of experience by individuals might relate to larger orders of authority. Interpreting the evolving thematic pattern of fiction in both countries as a plot in its own right, William Ray argues that the novel''s rise in the eighteenth century coincided with a growing conviction - which the genre both reflected and fostered - that selfhood, social identity, public authority, and ultimately even historical truth and cultural values, all hinge on narrative representation. From the early novels of individualism, which emphasize the relating of personal experience as a means of altering social hierarchies and securing privileges for the exceptional individual, to the later metanovels, whose complex dialectical models of history both invite and exclude manipulaTable of ContentsPrivate lives and public stories; personal ordering and providential order; negotiating reality; individualism and authority; the seduction of the self; from private narration to public narrative; textualizing the self; the necessary other - the dialogical structure of the self; self-ish narration and the authorial self; the emergence of literary authority; exemplification and the authoring of utopia; ironizing history; the great scroll of history; self emplotment and the implication of the reader.

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Book SynopsisS/Z is the linguistic distillation of Barthes''s system of semiology, a science of signs and symbols, in which Balzac''s novella, Sarrasine, is dissected semantically to uncover layers of hidden meaning.Trade Review"Taken together, The Pleasure of the Text and S/Z force us to notice how much of the most interesting thought today is being carried forward in what we used to call 'literary criticism', and how important Barthes's own contribution to redefinition of the field has been." (The New York Times Book Review)Table of ContentsPreface. S/Z Appendices. 1. Sarrasine, by Honoré de Balzac. 2. Sequence of Actions. 3. Summary of Contents. 4. Key.

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Book SynopsisMarxist Literary Theory: A Reader is designed to give both students and lecturers a sense of the historical formation of a Marxist literary tradition. A unique compilation of principal texts in that tradition, it offers the reader new ways of reading Marxism, literature, theory, and the social possibilities of writing.Table of ContentsIntroduction. Part I: Terry Eagleton:. Introduction. Part II: Drew Milne. 1. Marx and Engels. 2. Leo Tolstoy and His Epoch (1911): V. I. Lenin. 3. The Formalist School of Peotry and Marxism: Leon Trotsky. 4. Corcerning the Relationship of the Basis and Superstructures: V. N. Volosinov. 5. Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia (1929). Addendum to 'The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire' (1938): Walter Benjamin. 6. Marxism and Poetry (1935): Ernst Bloch. 7. English Poets: The Period of Primitive Accumulation (1937): Christopher Caudwell. 8. The Relativity of Literary Value (1937): Alick West. 9. A Short Organum for the Theatre (1949): Bertolt Brecht. 10. The Tasks of Brechtian Criticism (1956): Roland Barthes. 11. The Ideology of Modernism (1957): Georg Lukacs. 12. The Semantic Dialectic (1960): Galvano Della Volpe. 13. Commitment (1962) T. W. Adorno. 14. Introduction to the Problems of a Sociology of the Novel (1963): Lucien Goldmann. 15. The Objective Spirit (1972): Jean-Paul Sartre. 16. Tragedy and Revolution (1966), Literature (1977): Raymond Williams. 17. A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre (1966): Louis Althusser. 18. On Literature as an Ideological Form (1974): Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey. 19. Towards a Science of the Text (1960): Terry Eagleton. 20. Women's Writing: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Aurora Leigh (1978): The Marxist-Feminist Collective. 21. On Interpretation (1981): Fredric Jameson. 22. Jameson's Rhetoric of Otherness and the 'National Allegory' (1987): Aijaz Ahmad. 23. Can the Subaltern Speak?(1988): Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. 24. The Materialism of Cultural Nationalism: Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God (1989): Chida Amuta. 25. The Jargon of Postmodernity (1989): Alex Callinicos. Index.

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Book SynopsisThis book is an examination of three major literary, critical and philosophical movements in European and Anglo--American literature. It aims to show their differences (often pointed out) and their similarities (never yet demonstrated) and to make accessible recent post--structuralist theory.Table of ContentsPreface. Acknowledgements. Abbreviations. Part I: Romantic and Germanic Backgrounds:. 1. Shelley and Nietzsche: Reality as Rhetoric. 2. The German Romantic Ironists and Hegel. 3. Johnson, Coleridge and Method. Part II: Deconstructing Metaphysics:. 4. William James and Early Pragmatist Rejections of Metaphysics. 5. John Dewey's Critique of Traditional Philosophizing. 6. Jacques Derrida: Deconstructing Metaphysics. 7. Coleridge's Attack on Dualism. Part III: Art as Experience:. 8. John Dewey: Language Reconceptualized. 9. Dewey's 'Romantic' Aesthetic. 10. Derrida, Textuality, and Criticism. Conclusion: The 'New' Historicism. Afterword. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

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Book Synopsisaeo Peter Brooks is highly regarded in the field, particularly in the USA. aeo Relationship between psychoanalysis and literature is attracting increasingly sophisticated attention, and Brooks is a leading figure in this.Table of ContentsPreface vi Introduction 1 John S. Rickard and Harold Schweizer The Idea of Psychoanalytic Criticism 20 Changes in Margins: Construction, Transference, and Narrative 46 The Storyteller 76 Constructing Narrative: An Interview with Peter Brooks 104 Peter Brooks: A Bibliography, 1963-1993 132 Mary E. Schoonover Index 142

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Book Synopsisaeo Offers an overview of how linguistic theory can be applied to the oral and written literatures of the world. aeo Illustrated with examples from around 100 different literary traditions, quoting texts in the original languages, fully translated and explained.Trade Review"A consistent theoretical perspective, broad empirical coverage, and a lucid and engaging exposition make this not just a fine textbook but fascinating reading for anyone interested in language and verbal art. The detailed analyses of texts from oral literatures across the world are a unique and welcome feature. Fabb's book is an impressive demonstration of how the various strands of research in literary linguistics add up to a coherent field of inquiry." Paul Kiparksy, Stanford University "Fabb applies linguistic theory to mostly oral literature from around a hundred different languages and literary traditions."Moderna Sprak, Spring 1999 "In common with other books in Blackwell's Textbooks in Linguistics series, it provides exercises at the end of each chapter. Most of these are highly instructive (and challenging) both from the point of view of reinforcing discussion in the body of the text and in terms of extending that discussion, looking at new but related material....( Linguistics and Literature) should be of interest to anyone interested in language and literature. It should be of particular interest to those with a theoretical interest in questions of literary form. It provides an excellent overview of current thinking in literary linguistics as well as making its own contribution to that thinking."Adrian Pilkington, Royal Holloway University of LondonTable of ContentsAcknowledgements. A Note on Texts. 1. Literary Linguistics and Verbal Art. 2. Meter and Linguistic Theory. 3. Kinds of Meter. 4. Issues in Metrical Theory: Metrical Constituents, and Music and Meter. 5. Para-metrical Rules: Word-boundary Rules and Sound-patterning Rules. 6. Parallelism. 7. Narrative: The Storyline. 8. Narrative Episodes. 9. Performance. 10. Communication. 11. Literary Linguistics: Summary and Prospects. References. Index of Languages. General Index.

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Book SynopsisMichael Payne introduces the principal writings of Roland Barthes, Michael Foucault and Louis Althusser by means of a detailed focus on their common interest in the forms and conditions of knowledge.Trade Review“The attention given to what I think is essential in my research-the semiotic and symbolic, rejection, negativity, practice, in particular their close connection with Husserl, Hagel, and Freud- is unique among works which have previously dealt with my books.” Julia Kristeva “For this reader’s money. Payne’s discussion is the best non-polemical introduction to Lacan he has come across.” Jesse W. Nash, History of European Ideas “I have never read a more lucid explanation of Derrida’s ideas.” James R. Bennett, Style “Reading Theory is an enormously study and, given its complexity, remarkably accessible.” John Schad, Review of English StudiesTable of ContentsPreface. Acknowledgements. Abbreviations. 1. Barthes: From Work to Text. 2. Foucault: Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. 3. Althusser: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. 4. Foucault: The Order of Things. 5. Barthes: S/Z. . 6. Althusser: Reading Capital. 7. Signs, Images, and the Real: Barthes, Althusser, and Foucault on Photography and Painting. 8. Deleuze: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Capitalism. Index.

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Book Synopsisaeo Offers an elegant introduction to Bataille. aeo Contains major essays by eminent theorists. aeo Reveals Batailles pivotal position for theorists including Baudrillard, Blanchot, Derrida, Foucault, and Habermas.Trade Review"Bataille: A Critical Reader is a careful selection of some of the best and most interesting critical work on this elusive and often obscure thinker." University of Sussex Table of ContentsAcknowledgements. Introduction: Fred Botting and Scott Wilson. 1. Preface to Transgression: Michel Foucault. 2. Affirmation and the Passion of Negative Thought: Maurice Blanchot. 3. The Dualist Materialism of George Bataille: Denis Hollier. 4. The Roof: Essay in Systematic Reading: Philippe Sollers. 5. From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism Without Reserve: Jacques Derrida. 6. Death in Bataille: Jean Baudrillard. 7. The Laughter of Being: Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen. 8. The French Path to Postmodernity: Bataille between Eroticism and General Economics: Jürgen Habermas. 9. When Bataille Attacked the Metaphysical Principle of Economy: Jean Baudrillard. 10. General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism: Jean-Joseph Goux. Bibliography. Index.

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Book Synopsis* Provides an unparalleled insight into the influence of one of the centurya s exemplary public intellectuals. * Includes a detailed historical and theoretical introduction. * Incorporates extracts from key works as well as less well--known texts and seminal essays. .Table of ContentsPreface. Acknowledgements. Part I: Culture Wars (1954-1961):. Introduction. 1. Culture is Ordinary (1958). 2. Film and The Dramatic Tradition (1954). 3. The Masses (1958). 4. Individuals and Societies (1961):. Part II: Countering The Canon (1962-71):. Introduction. 5. Tragedy and Revolution (1966). 6. Literature and Rural Society (1967). 7. Thomas Hardy and The English Novel (1970). 8. Orwell (1971). Part III: Theory and Representation (1972-80):. Introduction. 9. Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory (1973). 10. Television and Representation (1974). 11. Language as Sociality (1977). 12. The Writer: Commitment and Alignment (1980). Part IV: Cultural Materialism in Action (1978-1988):. Introduction. 13. The Bloomsbury Fraction (1978). 14. Crisis in English Studies (1981). 15. Writing, Speech and The "Classical" (1984). 16. Language and The Avant-Garde (1986). Works Cited. Index.

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