Literary theory Books
John Wiley & Sons The Migrant Text Making and Marketing a Global
Book SynopsisA wide-ranging analysis of French literature and immigration, inventing a new category for migrant texts.Trade Review"What makes this book amazingly convincing are the insightful analyses of key literary works, which help illuminate the concept of the "migrant text," and provide in themselves superb examples of contemporary critical readings. The Migrant Text is an original and excellent contribution that should have an extensive readership." - Francois Pare, University of Waterloo
£26.59
Cornell University Press Russian Formalism A Metapoetics
Book SynopsisRussian Formalism, one of the twentieth century's most important movements in literary criticism, has received far less attention than most of its rivals. Examining Formalism in light of more recent developments in literary theory, Peter Steiner here offers the most comprehensive critique of Formalism to date. Steiner studies the work of the...Trade Review"One of the most advanced, sophisticated, and consistently self-reflective works in literary (meta)theory to date-in some respects akin to Hayden White's influential Metahistory, written with comparable verve and panache."-Review in World Literature Today "We must be grateful to Peter Steiner for having written such a lucid, critical exposition based on a firsthand knowledge of the texts and the commentary on them."-Rene Wellek, Poetics Today "Peter Steiner conducts a crisp, metapoetical analysis of the diverse phenomenon of Russian Formalism in an attempt to identify what united, and unites, the work of scholars such as Viktor Shklovsky, Yury Tynyanov, Roman Jakobson, Boris Eykhenbaum, and Boris Tomashevsky."-Times Literary SupplementTable of Contents1. Who Is Formalism, What Is She?2. The Three Metaphors3. A Synecdoche4. The Developmental Significance of Russian Formalism
£40.50
MB - Cornell University Press Epic Singers and Oral Tradition
Book SynopsisDrawing on his extensive fieldwork in living oral traditions, Albert Bates Lord here concentrates on the epic singers and their art as manifested in texts or performance.Trade ReviewA welcome publication.... The book contains eleven of his most important previously published articles and two studies which have not been published before.... There is something to be learned from every one of these studies. * Classical Journal *
£97.20
Cornell University Press Theories of the Theatre A Historical and Critical
Book SynopsisBeginning with Aristotle and the Greeks and ending with semiotics and post-structuralism, Theories of the Theatre is the first comprehensive survey of Western dramatic theory. In this expanded edition the author has updated the book and added a new...Trade ReviewA comprehensive and readable guide that will be the standard work for many years to come. * Times Literary Supplement *Carlson has taken on the monumental task of abstracting the major theoretical statements on the theater from the Greeks to the present. He cogently summarizes the texts, drawing comparisons freely while avoiding evaluation. The book's organization is historical, with national divisions until the 20th century, at which time all countries are considered together within much more finely defined time limits. This is a much needed book. * Choice *The coverage in Theories of the Theatre is remarkable. It is already difficult to imagine seriously undertaking theatre studies without this volume in a prominent place on one's shelf. * Theatre Survey *
£97.20
Cornell University Press Reading with Feeling
Book SynopsisFeagin develops a psychological model for understanding how one becomes emotionally engaged with something one knows is fictional.Trade ReviewSusan Feagan's closely and carefully argued book... represents a distinctive and significant contribution.... Valuable, thoughtful, and closely argued,... Reading with Feeling is a work that no one who is interested in the roles played by affective response in out understanding and appreciation of works of art can afford to ignore. -- Alex Neill * Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *Rewarding.... There is much that is worthwile to ponder in this provocative book. * Philosophical Review *This important book will be a benchmark for future discussions of the topic.... The clarity of its presentation, its agreeable lightness of tone, and the carefulness and detail of its arguments make the book a model for philosophical theorizing, whether about emotions or about literature.... The importance to aesthetics of Reading with Feeling lies... in the thorough grounding it provides for the very idea of emotional response. That is no mean achievement. Philosophers of mind, as well as aestheticians, could learn much from it. -- Peter Lamarque * Mind *
£72.00
Cornell University Press Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning
Book SynopsisWhat is it for a sentence to have a certain meaning? This is the question that William P. Alston addresses in this major contribution to the philosophy of language.Trade Review"Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning makes a significant contribution to both speech-act theory and to speech-act semantics. It is exceptionally well organized and the level of discussion and argumentation is high. Part I contains some of the best and most detailed analyses of illocutionary acts since Austin, and Part II fills a large lacuna in the theory of meaning." —Robert M. Harnish, University of ArizonaJ. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words was seen by many as a landmark in analytical philosophy... This lucid and comprehensive study provides a valuable starting point for anyone wishing to build on Austin's legacy. * International Philosophical Quarterly *This book deserves all the attention it is bound to get.... It will stimulate a lot of discussion and should be read by any serious philosopher of language. * Philosophical Quarterly *"This is an impressive book. It is clear, vigorously argued, admirably structured, with conclusions about the nature of meaning, which have retained their freshness, interest and relevance for present researchers, not only those working in speech-act theory but for those devoted to the broader topic of meaning-theory." —Mind
£73.80
Cornell University Press The Limits of Autobiography
Book SynopsisMemoirs in which trauma takes a major—or the major—role challenge the limits of autobiography. Leigh Gilmore presents a series of "limit-cases"—texts that combine elements of autobiography, fiction, biography, history, and theory while representing...Trade ReviewLeigh Gilmore's The Limits of Autobiography is a fine addition to the body of excellent recent work in trauma studies, and is highly recommended for all working in the mental health disciplines.... The writing is extremely fine throughout, and the book is a rich cornucopia of literary and psychological analyses, theoretical sophistication, and interdisciplinary connectedness; these treasures can only be suggested here. * Metapsychology Online Review *Through theoretically nuanced, lucid, and insightful readings, Gilmore demonstrates the ability of narrative to transform trauma, to speak to a certain truth about the relationship between trauma and identity that goes beyond the exigencies of accuracy and objectivity that pertain to a juridical contect.... Any reader interested in the myriad interpenetrations of violence, the law, identity, family, and life writing will find much to admire in this impressive study. * Biography *Gilmore offers astute and compelling commentaries in relation to the social and psychic forms within which selected autobiographers told their personal stories in literate and unconventional ways.... Informative, thought-provoking chapters comprise this unique and highly recommended contribution to the literary study of the autobiography. * The Bookwatch *Table of ContentsIntroduction - the limits of autobiography; represent yourself; bastard testimony - incest and illegitimacy in Dorothy Allison's "Bastard Out of Carolina"; there will always be a father - transference and the auto/biographical demand in Mikal Gilmore's "Shot in the Heart"; there will always be a mother - serial autobiography and Jamaica Kincaid; without names - an anatomy of absence in Jeanette Winterson's "Written on the Body"; conclusion - the knowing subject and an alternative jurisprudence of trauma.
£77.25
Cornell University Press The Senses of Modernism
Book SynopsisIn The Senses of Modernism, Sara Danius develops a radically new theoretical and historical understanding of high modernism. The author closely analyzes Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, and James Joyce's...Trade ReviewDanius's historical analysis of the complex relationship of technology to literary/aesthetic modernism (emphasizing the years 1880-1930) provides a new and challenging view of high classical modernism.... Danius bases her observations and conclusions on a solid survey of past critical thought; 37 pages of detailed notes and a 13-page index make the study especially useful for advanced scholars. Summing Up: Recommended. * Choice *In this book, Sara Danius examines the ways that new technologies influenced the arts of classic modernism from 1880 to 1930, with a concentration on high modernism, in the 1920s.... I found the book intriguing and fascinating. It is certainly an important contribution to our understanding of the intersection of perception and technology, and provides important insights about the role that technology can play in the arts. -- George K. Shortess, Lehigh University * Leonardo *The central aim of this accomplished and lucid study is to dispel the notion that perception in modernist texts can be seen as a flight from the world of modernity and technology into subjectivity and particularity.... Danius's assertion that the senses become technologically mediated in modernity is supported by discussions of visual theory as it is implicit in various optical devices, in Sander's photo-archive, Marey's work, and the conceptualization of cinema in Vertov and others. -- Tim Armstrong, University of London * Modernism/modernity *In her persuasive, well-written exploration of technology's essential yet underestimated role in high modernism, Danius establishes a vivid picture of the modernist landscape as one where technologically enhanced means of perception became a prominent component of the aesthetic discourse.... Danius's ability to utilize a wide body of theory and to draw adeptly on examples from film, painting, and photography to support her close readings of three pioneering modernist novels makes this a provocative, rewarding study from a variety of vantage points. -- Tim Harte, Bryn Mawr College * Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature *Overall, this is a challenging and rewarding analysis by a literary scholar who is deeply immersed in the aesthetic categories of High Modernism. It may be well to note that she is interested in technologies such as X-rays not as artifacts but insofar as they affect the perceptual apparatus of the modern subject. -- Barry Katz, California College of the Arts * Technology and Culture *
£97.20
Cornell University Press Inconsequence
Book SynopsisThe field of lesbian studies is often framed in terms of the relation between lesbianism and invisibility. Annamarie Jagose here takes a radical new approach, suggesting that the focus on invisibility and visibility is perhaps not the most productive way of looking at lesbian representability. Jagose argues that the theoretical preoccupation with metaphors of visibility is part of the problem it attempts to remedy. In her account, the regulatory difference between heterosexuality and homosexuality relies less on codes of visual recognition than on a cultural adherence to the force of first order, second order sexual sequence. As Jagose points out, sequence does not simply specify what comes before and what comes after; it also implies precedence: what comes first and what comes second.Jagose reads canonical novels by Charles Dickens, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and Daphne du Maurier, drawing upon their elaboration of sexual sequence. In these innovative readings, tropes suchTrade ReviewJagose draws on Foucault and Barthes to comment on the diffusion of sexual knowledge through the scientific/pornographic with the imperative to represent as uncoded that which is accessible through the photographic lens. By stripping the effects of sequence back to its licensing mechanics, Inconsequence reveals how lesbianism comes to figure as the derivation by which all sexuality is generated.... Jagose's incisive deconstruction, and exquisitely detailed footnotes, are invaluable to learn from—to witness how she does what she does—and make Inconsequence an important tool for any contemporary theorist. -- Peta Mayer * Gender Forum *
£81.00
Cornell University Press Cruising Modernism
Book SynopsisModern society, Michael Trask argues in this incisive and original book, chose to couch class difference in terms of illicit sexuality. Trask demonstrates how sexual science''s concept of erotic perversion mediated the writing of both literary figures and social theorists when it came to the innovative and unsettling social arrangements of the early twentieth century. Trask focuses on the James brothers in a critique of pragmatism and anti-immigrant sentiment, shows the influence of behavioral psychology on Gertrude Stein''s work, uncovers a sustained reflection on casual labor in Hart Crane''s lyric poetry, and traces the identification of working-class Catholics with deviant passions in Willa Cather''s fiction. Finally, Trask examines how literary leftists borrowed the antiprostitution rhetoric of Progressive-era reformers to protest the ascendance of consumerism in the 1920s.Viewing class as a restless and unstable category, Trask contends, American modernist writers appropriatedTrade ReviewTrask argues that queer studies and Marxist studies should not be marginalized because for major writers of the era neither sexuality nor class was special to a coterie, that to 'belong to mass society is always to enter the sphere of the illicit, the perverse, the dirty'—i.e., 'in mass culture everyone is queer.'... Recommended. Graduate and research collections. * Choice *
£49.50
Cornell University Press Allegoresis
Book SynopsisWhy is it that a text, particularly a canonical text, is often said to contain a meaning different from what it literally says? How did allegorical readings arise and develop? By looking at such examples as Jewish and Christian interpretations of the...Trade Review"Is it possible to understand other cultures or are we always condemned to misunderstand? In this pioneering book that ranges from the biblical Song of Songs to the Confucian Book of Poetry and beyond, Zhang Longxi makes a persuasive case for an allegorical reading, stressing the tension between texts and interpreted meanings. On the basis of this tension he concludes by showing the troubling political connotations of every interpretation." -- Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame"This is a wonderful book. Deeply learned and bracingly pointed in its analyses, Allegoresis is a wide-ranging discussion of allegorical readings that makes a major contribution to comparative literary study and comparative poetics. It will interest many readers engaged in questions of literary theory as well as in biblical studies and comparative studies generally, in addition to becoming a must-read for everyone in the field of Chinese literature and poetics." -- David Damrosch, Columbia University"Zhang Longxi's Allegoresis is a major contribution to the project of moving beyond the usual East/West divide with its predictable polarities. By re-placing the question of allegory in relation to its political, social, and ethical implications, and moving effortlessly between early Christian, classical Chinese, and contemporary theory, Zhang compels his reader into recognizing the profound commonalities and difficult differences between Western and Chinese literary culture. The scope and intelligence of this book are breathtaking, even inspiring." -- David Stern, University of Pennsylvania
£48.60
Cornell University Press Hiding from History
Book SynopsisIn Hiding from History, Meili Steele challenges an assumption at the heart of current debates in political, literary, historical, and cultural theory: that it is impossible to reason through history. Steele believes that two influential schools of...Trade Review"Hiding from History is an excellent book on a very important issue. It concerns the nature of practical reason, how we deliberate about good and bad, right and wrong. Of course, we deliberate as individuals too, but the issue here is how we deliberate in common. Meili Steele addresses the nature of public reason, highlighting the way in which literature can contribute to rational debate, sometimes in ways that philosophical argument cannot match." -- Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, McGill University"Meili Steele has written a great book, tightly argued, but expansive in scope. He shows how contemporary political thought and action have been handcuffed by the persistent attempt to transcend historical and cultural specificity. His compelling alternative of 'public imagination' avoids multiculturalism's identity fetishism by understanding culture as a process through which selves can reflect upon, reason about, and revise their lives with others." -- John McGowan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Democracy's Children
£44.10
Cornell University Press Glamour in Six Dimensions
Book SynopsisGlamour is an alluring but elusive concept. We most readily associate it with fashion, industrial design, and Hollywood of the Golden Age, and yet it also shaped the language and interests of high modernism. In Glamour in Six Dimensions, Judith Brown...Trade Review"Glamour in Six Dimensions is a fascinating and unforgettable book about a bewitchingly negative, even deathly, aesthetic. Judith Brown's provocative arguments about glamour's roots in modernist literary form and complicated status as both a sign of the degradation and persistence of aesthetic 'aura,' are sure to recharge the debate about modernist literature's relationship to mass culture. This book is a must-read for anyone working on modernism and twentieth-century aesthetics." -- Sianne Ngai, UCLA"In this very appealing, readable, and erudite book, Judith Brown shows that there is something cruel about glamour, and therefore something cruel about modernism, but she shows too that modernism's cruelty can allow us to appreciate the sensuality of modern culture. Instead of limiting glamour to a pernicious effect of commodification, as it is often understood by Frankfurt School critiques of the culture industry, Glamour in Six Dimensions approaches it as a spur to imagination, feeling, and invention. Brown's elegant readings convince us that glamour is modernism's invention—and its legacy." -- Rebecca L. Walkowitz, Rutgers University"This sophisticated, informed, and visually stunning book makes a significant and original contribution to the New Modernist Studies. Judith Brown's premise that glamour inheres in the very problem of modernist form is entirely original and manages to sustain a line of argument extending from Greta Garbo to Conrad to cellophane. Glamour in Six Dimensions is marked by Brown's sheer innovative genius." -- Jane Garrity, University of Colorado"Weaving her neat hexagonal spiderweb, Judith Brown exhibits scintillating jewels caught in a series of dialectical images. She throws fresh light on canonical modernist writers: Chanel No. 5 next to Wallace Stevens's abstraction and Eliot's impersonality; celebrity photographs in Fitzgerald and Woolf; cigarette publicity for the jazz age; translucent plastic and shimmering cellophane wrapping Larsen, Stein, and Barnes. No longer striving for the great acorn of light or the gemlike flame of an earlier generation, Brown's modernism sparkles and shimmers on flat surfaces like glossy photographic paper. The vanishing aura of modernity still glitters through modernist glamour, now quasi-eternal: glamour toujours!" -- Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania
£33.15
Cornell University Press Paradigms for a Metaphorology
Book SynopsisWhat role do metaphors play in philosophical language? Are they impediments to clear thinking that should be eradicated in the interests of terminological exactness? Or can they be used by philosophers to indicate the attitudes that regulate an epoch?Trade ReviewParadigms for a Metaphorology is a model of scholarly translation. Savage's handling of citations and sources is scrupulous and thorough.... And he provides judicious explanatory notes that work in conjunction with the afterword and Blumenberg's own notes to guide readers through Blumenberg's own reading and career. Finally, and most importantly, his English rendering is consistently accurate while also being, in the context of translations of German philosophy, remarkably readable.... In short, readers approaching Blumenberg's reflections on metaphor through the English language could not ask for a more reliable and helpful guide than this volume. -- David Adams * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *Table of ContentsHans Blumenberg: An Introduction Part I: History, Secularization, and Reality 1. The Linguistic Reality of Philosophy (1946/1947) 2. World Pictures and World Models (1961) 3. "Secularization": Critique of a Category of Hisotrical Illegitimacy (1964) 4. The Concept of Reality and the Theory of the State (1968/1969) 5. Preliminary Remarks on the Concept of Reality (1974) Part II: Metaphors, Rhetoric, and Nonconceptuality 6. Light as a Metaphor for Truth: At the Preliminary Stage of Philosophical Concept Formation (1957) 7. Introduction to Paradigms for a Metaphorology (1960) 8. An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Significance of Rhetoric (1971) 9. Observations Drawn from Metaphors (1971) 10. Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality (1979) 11. Theory of Nonconceptuality (circa 1975, excerpt) Part III: Nature, Technology, and Asthetics 12. The Relationship between Nature and Technology as a Philosophical Problem (1951) 13. "Imitation of Nature": Toward a Prehistory of the Idea of the Creative Being (1957) 14. Phenomenological Aspects on Life-World and Technization (1963) 15. Socrates and the objet ambigu: Paul Valery's Discussion of the Ontology of the Aesthetic Object and Its Tradition (1964) 16. The Essential Ambiguity of the Aesthetic Object (1966) 17. Speech Situation and Immanent Poetics (1966) Part IV: Fables, Anecdotes, and the Novel 18. The Absolute Father (1952/1953) 19. The Mythos and Ethos of America in the Work of William Faulkner (1958) 20. The Concept of Reality and the Possibility of the Novel (1964) 21. Pensiveness (1980) 22. Moments of Goethe (1982) 23. Beyond the Edge of Reality: Three Short Essays (1983) 24. Of Nonunderstanding: Glosses on Three Fables (1984) 25. Unknown Aesopica: From Newly Found Fables (1985) 26. Advancing into Eternal Silence: A Century after the Sailing of the Fram (1993)
£32.30
Cornell University Press Wallace Stevens and the Demands of Modernity
Book SynopsisCharles Altieri, one of our foremost analysts of modernism, has in his recent work argued for the importance of the affects, which philosophy has too long subordinated to cognition and ethics. In Wallace Stevens and the Demands of Modernity, Altieri focuses his attention on modernist poetry, especially that of Wallace Stevens. He argues that critics have failed to appreciate the degree to which modernist poetry, like modernist art, breaks from the epistemology that arose from cultures of empiricism. If we recognize the limits of that authority we can also recognize the close positive affinities between how we feel and how we value.Nineteenth-century writing wanted to build values out of ways of looking at what could be established as fact. Early modernist poetry, particularly that of Stevens and Pound, labors to adapt Nietzschean attitudes toward poetry. Then Stevens embarked on an imaginative journey to find in linguistic activity itself a sufficient model for how we Trade ReviewAltieri provides the most authoritative treatment of Stevens in more than a decade.... He combines aesthetics and philosophy in a rigorous manner that is nonetheless resolutely literary. Wisely eschewing a commentary on all of Stevens's poems, Altieri extracts original interpretive insights from close reading, as seen in his discernment, in 'Farewell to Florida,' of a flight from the female that is as much wishful thinking as renunciation, and a reading of 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' in which he emphasizes how the different perspectives ‘fuse’ over the disjunction emphasized by critics such as Harold Bloom. Altieri's detailed explication... reveals him as a dazzling reader of this difficult poet. Summing Up: Highly recommended. * Choice *Table of Contents1. Philosophical Poetry and the Demands of Modernity2. Harmonium as a Modernist Text3. "Ghostlier Demarcations, Keener Sounds": The Parts Negation Played in Developing a New Poetic4. How Stevens Uses the Grammar of As5. Aspectual Thinking6. Stevens's Tragic Mode: Why the Angel Must Disappear in “Angel Surrounded by Paysans”7. Aspect- Seeing and Its Implications in The RockNotesBibliographyIndex
£97.20
MB - Cornell University Press Presence Philosophy History and Cultural Theory
Book SynopsisThis book brings together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to explore the possibilities and limitations of presence from a variety of perspectivesTrade Review"Presence offers a timely constellation of essays addressing the recent turn toward presence in various disciplines, notably aesthetics, literary criticism, philosophy, and history. The interacting essays in this volume provide an informed, thought-provoking, sometimes contestable, and at points uncannily defamiliarizing guide to the sinuous, many-sided turn to presence." -- Dominick LaCapra, Cornell University, author of History, Literature, Critical Theory"This book can be compared to a river: starting from the central notion of presence its chapters cover a whole delta of theoretical issues. In truly impressive fashion, the authors convince readers of the importance of the notion of presence. There is a certain ground to their argument, namely a 'return to the real.' The stakes could not possibly be higher and it cannot be doubted that with the notion of presence a new paradigm in the humanities announces itself." -- Frank Ankersmit, University of Groningen, author of Meaning, Truth, and Reference in Historical RepresentationTable of ContentsPrologue Ethan Kleinberg 1. Presence in absentia Ethan Kleinberg 2. Be Here Now: Mimesis and the History of Representation Vincent P. Pecora 3. Meaning, Truth, and Phenomenology Mark Bevir 4. Of Photographs, Puns and Presence Susan Crane 5. The Public Rendition of Images Médusées: Exhibiting Souvenir Photographs taken at Lynchings in America Roger I. Simon 6. The Presence of Immigrants, or Why Mexicans and Arabs Look Alike John Michael 7. Transcultural Presence Bill Ashcroft 8. It Disturbs Me With a Presence: Hindu History and What Meaning Cannot Convey Ranjan Ghosh 9. The Presence and Conceptualization of Contemporary Protesting Crowds Suman Gupta Epilogue: Presence Continuous
£52.20
Cornell University Press On Deconstruction
Book SynopsisWith an emphasis on readers and reading, Jonathan Culler considered deconstruction in terms of the questions raised by psychoanalytic, feminist, and reader-response criticism. On Deconstruction is both an authoritative synthesis of Derrida's thought and an analysis of the often-problematic relation between his philosophical writings and the...Trade ReviewAcademic literary criticism continues to be dominated by 'theory' and the struggle between deconstructionist and humanist approaches to the business of reading. Jonathan Culler's On Deconstruction is a typically patient, thoughtful, illuminating exposition of the ideas of Jacques Derrida and their application to literary studies. -- David Lodge * Commonweal *As a practicing critic, Culler has always been a deconstructor, and he approaches this topic with special immediacy and force. In On Deconstruction, he offers generous summaries of numerous representative articles and a fine annotated bibliography.... His magisterial way of tracing particular topics and techniques through our diaspora of critical texts, and his provocative analyses, cannot fail to focus any critic's thinking about deconstruction. * Modern Language Quarterly *Culler is lucid and thorough, can move into and out of other people's arguments without losing the sense of his own voice and argument, and can manage to seem equally at home with Freudianism, feminism, and traditional literary criticism. * Times Literary Supplement *Gifted with grace and clarity, Culler provides us with a stimulating survey of contemporary literary criticism. * Antioch Review *Table of ContentsPreface to the 25th Anniversary EditionPreface to the First EditionIntroductionChapter One. Readers and Reading1. New Fortunes2. Reading as a Woman3. Stories of ReadingChapter Two. Deconstruction1. Writing and Logocentrism2. Meaning and Iterability3. Grafts and Graft4. Institutions and Inversions5. Critical ConsequencesChapter Three. Deconstructive CriticismBibliographyTranslations BibliographyBibliography for the 25th Anniversary EditionIndex
£24.69
Cornell University Press Living Autobiographically
Book SynopsisAutobiography is naturally regarded as an art of retrospect, but making autobiography is equally part of the fabric of our ongoing experience. We tell the stories of our lives piecemeal, and these stories are not merely about our selves but also an integral part of them. In this way we live autobiographically; we have narrative identities.In this book, noted life-writing scholar Paul John Eakin explores the intimate, dynamic connection between our selves and our stories, between narrative and identity in everyday life. He draws on a wide range of autobiographical writings from work by Jonathan Franzen, Mary Karr, and André Aciman to the New York Times series Portraits of Grief memorializing the victims of 9/11, as well as the latest insights into identity formation from the fields of developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, and neurobiology. In his account, the self-fashioning in which we routinely, even automatically, engage is largely conditioned by social norms andTrade Review"In this fascinating, lucid, and deeply humanistic extension of his earlier work on autobiography, Paul John Eakin illuminates the acts by which we become players in a dynamic narrative identity system that is fundamental to our sense of self. Eakin energetically pursues the broadest questions, deftly incorporating insights from neurobiology and anthropology to help us see the ways that autobiography is an integral, adaptive part of our experience as we live it, and of our creation of a future." -- Jeffrey Wallen, Hampshire College, author of Closed Encounters: Literary Politics and Public Culture"Living Autobiographically is a wide-ranging and compelling meditation on the grounds for believing that various registers of narrative are essential to our sense of who we are. As ever, Paul John Eakin is leading reflection on life writing into new places." -- David Parker, Chinese University of Hong Kong, author of The Self in Moral Space: Life Narrative and the GoodTable of Contents1. Talking about Ourselves: The Rules of the Game Jolting Events The Case against Narrative Identity Truth or Consequences on Oprah The Narrative Identity System Narrative Rules, Identity Rules "My Father's Brain"2. Autobiographical Consciousness: Body, Brain, Self, and Narrative Antonio Damasio and the "Movie-in-the-Brain" Doing Consciousness3. Identity Work: People Making Stories Looking at Vermeer: "Inner" Lives and "Outer" Forces Everyday Lives "'My Father... "' The Pressure of Circumstances, the Power of Story4. Living Autobiographically The Homeostatic Machine "Arbitrage": Andre Adman and "Remembering Remembering"Works Cited Index
£20.89
Cornell University Press History and Its Limits
Book SynopsisDominick LaCapra''s History and Its Limits articulates the relations among intellectual history, cultural history, and critical theory, examining the recent rise of Practice Theory and probing the limitations of prevalent forms of humanism. LaCapra focuses on the problem of understanding extreme cases, specifically events and experiences involving violence and victimization. He asks how historians treat and are simultaneously implicated in the traumatic processes they attempt to represent. In addressing these questions, he also investigates violence''s impact on various types of writing and establishes a distinctive role for critical theory in the face of an insufficiently discriminating aesthetic of the sublime (often unreflectively amalgamated with the uncanny).In History and Its Limits, LaCapra inquires into the related phenomenon of a turn to the postsecular, even the messianic or the miraculous, in recent theoretical discussions of extreme events by such prominent figureTrade ReviewIn his most recent collection of essays, the eminent intellectual historian Dominick LaCapra reconfirms his place as one of the most incisive and theoretically sophisticated scholars in the humanities today. All of the essays in one way or another address a general problem that has preoccupied LaCapra for many years, namely, how can the discipline of history open itself with greater effect toward a more expansive and theoretically informed awareness of its own methods, its present limits, and its future possibilities? In our ongoing and collective explorations of what the call to intensified criticism might mean, the historical profession has no better guide than LaCapra. -- Peter E. Gordon * Journal of Modern History *Table of ContentsIntroduction1. Articulating Intellectual History, Cultural History, and Critical Theory2. Vicissitudes of Practice and Theory3. " Traumatropisms": From Trauma via Witnessing to the Sublime?\4. Toward a Critique of Violence5. Heidegger, Violence, and the Origin of the Work of Art6. Reopening the Question of the Human and the Animal7. Tropisms of Intellectual HistoryIndex
£23.74
Cornell University Press Global Matters
Book SynopsisAs the pace of cultural globalization accelerates, the discipline of literary studies is undergoing dramatic transformation. Scholars and critics focus increasingly on theorizing difference and complicating the geographical framework defining their approaches. At the same time, Anglophone literature is being created by a remarkably transnational, multicultural group of writers exploring many of the same concerns, including the intersecting effects of colonialism, decolonization, migration, and globalization. Paul Jay surveys these developments, highlighting key debates within literary and cultural studies about the impact of globalization over the past two decades. Global Matters provides a concise, informative overview of theoretical, critical, and curricular issues driving the transnational turn in literary studies and how these issues have come to dominate contemporary global fiction as well. Through close, imaginative readings Jay analyzes the intersecting histories of coTrade ReviewPaul Jay offers an interesting study of a popular theme of the international nature. -- Dr. Zulfiqar Ali * The Midwest Book Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Transnational Turn in Literary StudiesPart One: Globalization and the Study of Literature 1. Difference, Multiculturalism, and the Globalizing of Literary Studies 2. What Is Globalization? 3. Economies, Cultures, and the Politics of Globalization 4. Border Studies: Remapping the Locations of Literary StudyPart Two: Globalization in Contemporary Literature 5. Post–Postcolonial Writing in the Age of Globalization: The God of Small Things, Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Moth Smoke 6. Globalization and Nationalism in Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss 7. The Cultural Politics of Development in Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness 8. Multiculturalism and Identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth 9. Transnational Masculinities in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoConclusionNotes Works Cited Index
£20.89
MB - Cornell University Press The Copywrights Intellectual Property and the
Book SynopsisThey borrow from published works without attribution. They remake literary creation in the image of consumption. They celebrate the art of scissors and paste. Who are these outlaws? Postmodern culture-jammers or file-sharing teens? No, they are the...Trade ReviewPaul K. Saint-Amour's superb book is a sustained meditation on... the shaping pressures exerted by intellectual-property regimes upon the modern literary imagination.... We know that our cultural lifeblood is something we might as well call fair use—not a doctrine codified by lawmakers and construed by judges, but the homely good sense that can spread calm and tolerance in a crowded world of born imitators. Paul Saint-Amour's book helps us to become better citizens of our imitative culture. -- Robert Spoo * James Joyce Literary Supplement *Paul Saint-Amour's new book is a rich consideration of Western intellectual property law's relation to creative works and how several literary works are self-consciously engaged with contested copyright ideas.... Saint-Amour works to combine his interests in western intellectual property laws, and the directions those laws might have gone and might still go, with his interest in 'the literary property metadiscourse of late modernity.' The combination fruitfully registers the dangerous effects of increased copyright protections on creative freedoms, a danger Saint-Amour laments. -- Lisa Samuels * Symploke *
£23.39
Cornell University Press High Romantic Argument
Book SynopsisM. H. Abrams''s writings on the Romantics have had an incalculable influence on the literary history of his time. High Romantic Argument, treating as it does various aspects of Abrams''s work, is in a sense an appraisal of that history. Arising from a conference held in his honor at Cornell University in the spring of 1978, it is made up of essays by six distinguished contributors who explore important critical questions related directly or indirectly to Abrams''s work and its broader implications. The essays deal with Wordsworth as a prophet (Geoffrey Hartman) and as a poet of silence (Jonathan Wordsworth); history as metaphor (Wayne C. Booth); the nature of the critical canon (Thomas McFarland); the personal element in literary history (Lawrence Lipking); and the relation of Abrams''s work to current developments in literary criticism (Jonathan Culler).Two central themes run throughout: the radically metaphorical nature of Romantic thought and the tendency of today''
£26.59
Cornell University Press Dreaming and Storytelling
Book SynopsisAre dreams merely odd things that happen to us at night, sometimes pleasant, sometimes terrifying, but not to be taken too seriously? Is there any reason to think about them at all, other than in terms of questions such as ''Why should Aunt Sarah turn into a bird and invite us all to dinner in her sycamore tree?In this witty and eminently readable book, Bert O. States rethinks both the meaning of dreams and the relationship between dreaming and the telling of stories. Dreams constitute a private literature of the self, he says, thatdespite their seeming lack of order or structurecan help us to understand the very nature of shared literature.Observers have often pointed out narrative elements that are common to dreams and storiesincluding cinematic visual techniques and such plot devices as reversals of fortune and paired villains and antagonists. Drawing on current work in such fields as neurobiology, cognitive psychology, literary theory, and dream theory, States asksTrade ReviewDreaming and Storytelling is both intriguing and complex. We are not only art-making animals but also dream-producing animals, compelled to interpret and re-create our life through imaginative forays and retrievals, even while asleep, and this book explores the complex and ambiguous relationship between dreaming and storytelling. * Modern Language Review *Bert O. States's Dreaming and Storytelling aims at a kind of phenomenological flattening. It seeks to remove from our descriptions of dreaming the idea of hidden intentions and unconscious motivations, the seductions of the buried archetype, of the occulted or repressed meaning. It questions commonplace pictures of surface and depth. Dreaming and Storytelling is a very personal book; it offers pieces of the author's conversation with himself, a report about his own dreams, an attempt to put into dialogue a number of writers he has read and struggled over, an assessment of doubts and suspicions. * Comparative Literature Studies *States' comparison of dreams to the structures and archetypes of waking narratives makes excellent use of narrative theory and is laden with provocative insights. * Psychoanalytic Books: A Quarterly Journal of Reviews *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Problem of Bizarreness 2. Beginnings, Middles, and Endings 3. The Master Forms 4. Scripts and Archetypes 5. Meaning in Dreams and Fictions ConclusionReferences Index
£23.74
Cornell University Press The Topography of Modernity
Book SynopsisElliott Schreiber explores Karl Philipp Moritz's many contributions to the intellectual evolution of the Enlightenment and positions the German thinker as an incisive early observer and theorist of modernity.Trade ReviewSchreiber makes a compelling case that spatial metaphors inform Moritz's understanding of a series of institutions that are each caught up in processes of transformation in the late eighteenth century, and he makes an eloquent case for the modernity of Moritz's thought in these areas. This will prove to be an indispensable book, not just to students of Moritz, but more generally to students of the German eighteenth century, the Age of Goethe, and the European Enlightenment. * The German Quarterly *Karl Philipp Mortiz's peculiar life story, his writing's apparent lack of systematicity, as well as the difficulty to categorize his work all contributed to the relative neglect (especially in the U.S.) of this important eighteenth-century thinker who made major contributions to the eighteenth-century knowledge base. Elliot Schreiber['s] erudite study offers the long-needed response to this neglect. It establishes Moritz as a central voice of Enlightenment who offers a distinctive (and skeptical) perspective on major tenets of his era and across various fields: aesthetics, pedagogy, pyschology, and political theory. * Lessing Yearbook *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Shifting PerspectivesPart I. The Spaces of Art and Myth1. Toward an Aesthetics of the Sublime Augenblick: Moritz Reading Die Leiden des jungen Werthers2. Beyond an Aesthetics of Containment: Trajectories of the Imagination in Moritz and GoethePart II. The Spaces of Cognition and Education3. Laying the Foundation for Independent Thought: Enlightenment Epistemology and Pedagogy4. Thinking inside the Box: Moritz contra PhilanthropismPart III. The Spaces of the Political and the Individual5. Raising (and Razing) the Common House: Moritz and the Ideology of Commonality6. Pressing Matters: Moritz's Models of the Self in the Magazin zur ErfahrungsseelenkundeConclusion: Moritz's Inner-Worldly Critique of ModernityBibliography Index
£16.14
MB - Cornell University Press Inconceivable Effects
Book SynopsisIn Inconceivable Effects, Martin Blumenthal-Barby reads theoretical, literary and cinematic works that appear noteworthy for the ethical questions they raise. Via critical analysis of writers and filmmakers whose projects have changed our ways of viewing the modern worldincluding Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, the directors of Germany in Autumn, and Heiner Müllerthese essays furnish a cultural base for contemporary discussions of totalitarian domination, lying and politics, the relation between law and body, the relation between law and justice, the question of violence, and our ways of conceptualizing the human. A consideration of ethics is central to the book, but ethics in a general, philosophical sense is not the primary subject here; instead, Blumenthal-Barby suggests that whatever understanding of the ethical one has is always contingent upon a particular mode of presentation (Darstellung), on particular aesthetic qualities and features of media. WhTrade Review"Blumenthal-Barby (Rice Univ.) explores literary and scholarly discussions of overtly negative topics such as doubt, lying, death (by torture), paradoxical justice, violence, terrorism, and enmity in 20th-century German texts (including one film), all in the context of an ethics of literary representation…. The author provides footnotes and helpful, on occasion critically reflective, English translations of quotations throughout…. Specialists familiar with the texts will be able to absorb the layered analysis. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and faculty." — Choice (January 2014)"Inconceivable Effects is a valuable and suggestive book that advances our understanding of the ways in which ethical questions become visible as aesthetically mediated phenomena of presentation. Martin Blumenthal-Barby's wager is that questions of ethics are not merely negotiated in particular works on the level of their thematic content but rather are brought into focus when the critic considers their formal modes of presentation, that is, their singular, idiomatic, and performative qualities. In short, Blumenthal-Barby demonstrates that the idiomatic and aesthetic dimensions of the literary texts, theoretical works, and cinematic events that he treats pose structural questions of ethicality. This ethicality is to be understood not as a set of normative problems to be negotiated on the level of the concept alone but rather in terms of the very logic in which these questions are formulated by the works’ presentational specificity. Blumenthal-Barby does a shrewd job bringing into fruitful constellation a number of seminal works from the German tradition that contribute to our understanding of the conjunction between the aesthetic and the ethical thus understood. The result is a most engaging piece of scholarship."—Gerhard Richter, Brown University"This smart, ambitious book traces the relationship between ethics and poetics. Discussing the work of Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Heiner Müller, and a group of German film directors, Martin Blumenthal-Barby argues that the styles of these theorists, authors, and filmmakers produce not a particular ethical position but ethics effects, not an ethical stance but an (aesthetic) practice of ethics. The ways in which authors engage with their genres amount to a staging of the ethical dilemmas that are addressed thematically in the texts. Ultimately, this ethics effect—or ethics as aesthetic practice—is the ethics of the singular, always tied to a specific text and its form. Inconceivable Effects brillantly demonstrates the value of dismantling the barriers between aesthetic practice and political theory."—Julia Hell, University of MichiganTable of ContentsPrologue: Ethics and Poetics: An Uneasy AffairIntroduction1 "The Odium of Doubtfulness," Or the Vicissitudes of Hannah Arendt's Metaphorical Thinking2 Why Does Hannah Arendt Lie?, Or the Vicissitudes of Imagination3 "A peculiar apparatus": Kafka's Thanatopoetics4 A Strike of Rhetoric: Benjamin’s Paradox of Justice5 Pernicious Bastardizations: Benjamin’s Ethics of Pure Violence6 Germany in Autumn: The Return of the Human7 A Politics of Enmity: Heiner Müller’s Germania Death in BerlinIndex
£27.90
Cornell University Press Rhetoric Romance and Technology Studies in the
Book SynopsisThis is not a book on rhetoric in any narrow sense, but rather concerns its general ambiance and also some of its quite specific manifestations. The thirteen chapters that comprise the book move chronologically from the Renaissance up to the present time.
£28.49
Cornell University Press History Literature Critical Theory
Book SynopsisIn this book, Dominick LaCapra continues his exploration of the complex relations between history and literature, considering history as both process and representation.Trade ReviewHistory, Literature, Critical Theory is a worthy addition to the LaCapra corpus, creating dialogues among history and other fields to enhance the possibilities for desirable change. * American Historical Review *As is true of much of LaCapra's workthis book defies easy disciplinary classification and will be welcomed by readers in a variety of disciplinesincluding Holocaust studies.... LaCapra stands as one of the most important critical theorists in the US todayand this work belongs in extensive collections of theory. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction1. The Mutual Interrogation of History and Literature2. The Quest! The Quest! Conrad and Flaubert3. Coetzee, Sebald, and the Narrative of Trauma4. Historical and Literary Approaches to the "Final Solution": Saul Friedländer and Jonathan Littell5. The Literary, the Historical, and the Sacred: The Question of NazismEpilogue: Recent Figurations of Trauma and Violence: Tarrying with ZizekNotes Index
£22.49
Cornell University Press Wallace Stevens and the Demands of Modernity
Book SynopsisCharles Altieri, one of our foremost analysts of modernism, has in his recent work argued for the importance of the affects, which philosophy has too long subordinated to cognition and ethics. In Wallace Stevens and the Demands of Modernity, Altieri focuses his attention on modernist poetry, especially that of Wallace Stevens. He argues that critics have failed to appreciate the degree to which modernist poetry, like modernist art, breaks from the epistemology that arose from cultures of empiricism. If we recognize the limits of that authority we can also recognize the close positive affinities between how we feel and how we value.Nineteenth-century writing wanted to build values out of ways of looking at what could be established as fact. Early modernist poetry, particularly that of Stevens and Pound, labors to adapt Nietzschean attitudes toward poetry. Then Stevens embarked on an imaginative journey to find in linguistic activity itself a sufficient model for how we Trade ReviewAltieri provides the most authoritative treatment of Stevens in more than a decade.... He combines aesthetics and philosophy in a rigorous manner that is nonetheless resolutely literary. Wisely eschewing a commentary on all of Stevens's poems, Altieri extracts original interpretive insights from close reading, as seen in his discernment, in 'Farewell to Florida,' of a flight from the female that is as much wishful thinking as renunciation, and a reading of 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' in which he emphasizes how the different perspectives ‘fuse’ over the disjunction emphasized by critics such as Harold Bloom. Altieri's detailed explication... reveals him as a dazzling reader of this difficult poet. Summing Up: Highly recommended. * Choice *Table of Contents1. Philosophical Poetry and the Demands of Modernity2. Harmonium as a Modernist Text3. "Ghostlier Demarcations, Keener Sounds": The Parts Negation Played in Developing a New Poetic4. How Stevens Uses the Grammar of As5. Aspectual Thinking6. Stevens's Tragic Mode: Why the Angel Must Disappear in “Angel Surrounded by Paysans”7. Aspect- Seeing and Its Implications in The RockNotesBibliographyIndex
£30.40
Cornell University Press Fiction and Diction
Book Synopsis'
£26.59
Cornell University Press Theories of the Theatre
Book SynopsisBeginning with Aristotle and the Greeks and ending with semiotics and post-structuralism, Theories of the Theatre is the first comprehensive survey of Western dramatic theory. In this expanded edition the author has updated the book and added a new...Trade ReviewA comprehensive and readable guide that will be the standard work for many years to come. * Times Literary Supplement *Carlson has taken on the monumental task of abstracting the major theoretical statements on the theater from the Greeks to the present. He cogently summarizes the texts, drawing comparisons freely while avoiding evaluation. The book's organization is historical, with national divisions until the 20th century, at which time all countries are considered together within much more finely defined time limits. This is a much needed book. * Choice *The coverage in Theories of the Theatre is remarkable. It is already difficult to imagine seriously undertaking theatre studies without this volume in a prominent place on one's shelf. * Theatre Survey *
£21.24
Cornell University Press Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History
Book SynopsisThis book is the first to consider the presence of history and the question of historical practice in Walter Benjamin's work.Trade Review"The essays offer an important range of views from an international array of historians and literary and cultural critics. These essays investigate Benjamin's engagement with the 'materiality of the past and the epistemology and ethics of its recuperation' the world made available 'in language but also beyond language.'"—Len Findlay, The Structuralist, 1997/1998"The focus on Benjamin and the question of history is extremely welcome. Because Benjamin has been and remains so influential in a variety of academic disciplines, this important scholarly counterweight to the outpouring of more specialized monographic studies is a highly useful contribution."—Richard Wolin, Rice University
£29.45
Cornell University Press Beyond Consolation Death Sexuality and the
Book SynopsisUsing as her starting point the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, Melissa F. Zeiger examines modern transformations of poetic elegy, particularly as they reflect historical changes in the politics of gender and sexuality. Although her focus is primarily...Trade ReviewAn engaged and engaging study of the complex, late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century interactions between death, sexuality, and the changing shapes of elegy. -- Sandra M. Gilbert * Victorian Studies *Melissa Zeiger's well-written book on the modern elegy engages a series of related yet distinct thematic concerns... By helping to break up the standard critical paradigm for elegy and for mourning, by finding a language to embrace poems that lie outside it, and by tracing the gender dynamics of elegy, Melissa Zeiger's Beyond Consolation opens us to varieties of grief within poetry and beyond. -- Jahan Ramazani, University of Virginia * Modern Philology *
£29.45
Cornell University Press The Eyes Mind
Book SynopsisThe Eye's Mind significantly alters our understanding of modernist literature by showing how changing visual discourses, techniques, and technologies affected the novels of that period. In readings that bring philosophies of vision into dialogue with...Trade ReviewA highly nuanced picture of the racial and sexual frames of the modernists eye's mind. * American Literature *The Eye's Mind offers a richly synthetic account of modernism's visual subjects. Indeed, Jacobs is among the first to situate literary modernism within a systematic analysis of visual culture, one that draws on the work of Martin Jay, Luce Irigaray, Susan Bordo, and Robyn Wiegman (among others).... Jacob's strength as a critic lies in her ability to offer fresh, complex readings of theoretical and literary texts and to juxtapose them in surprising and productive ways. * MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, *Jacobs presents a truly fresh analysis of the impact of visual culture on modernist literature.... A consistent, synthetic study that does not disintegrate into theoretical chaos; rather, the integration of all these perspectives into a clear, focused argument is impressive and refreshing. * Choice *This is a lucid, well-researched and documented book that successfully contributes to the critical reimagining of the field of Modernism that has been taking place for the past 20+ years. * Woolf Studies Annual *The Eye's Mind is a study of literary modernism that we have needed for a long while. Our post-structuralist obsession with visuality is everywhere apparent; but it has taken a scholar with Karen Jacobs's deep learning and range of knowledge to help us understand.... She is able to do this, and to do this so well, because her study is genuinely interdisciplinary; its primary strength lies precisely in its synthetic and comparativist aims. * Modernism/modernity *
£33.25
Cornell University Press The Limits of Autobiography
Book SynopsisMemoirs in which trauma takes a major—or the major—role challenge the limits of autobiography. Leigh Gilmore presents a series of "limit-cases"—texts that combine elements of autobiography, fiction, biography, history, and theory while representing...Trade ReviewLeigh Gilmore's The Limits of Autobiography is a fine addition to the body of excellent recent work in trauma studies, and is highly recommended for all working in the mental health disciplines.... The writing is extremely fine throughout, and the book is a rich cornucopia of literary and psychological analyses, theoretical sophistication, and interdisciplinary connectedness; these treasures can only be suggested here. * Metapsychology Online Review *Through theoretically nuanced, lucid, and insightful readings, Gilmore demonstrates the ability of narrative to transform trauma, to speak to a certain truth about the relationship between trauma and identity that goes beyond the exigencies of accuracy and objectivity that pertain to a juridical contect.... Any reader interested in the myriad interpenetrations of violence, the law, identity, family, and life writing will find much to admire in this impressive study. * Biography *Gilmore offers astute and compelling commentaries in relation to the social and psychic forms within which selected autobiographers told their personal stories in literate and unconventional ways.... Informative, thought-provoking chapters comprise this unique and highly recommended contribution to the literary study of the autobiography. * The Bookwatch *Table of ContentsIntroduction - the limits of autobiography; represent yourself; bastard testimony - incest and illegitimacy in Dorothy Allison's "Bastard Out of Carolina"; there will always be a father - transference and the auto/biographical demand in Mikal Gilmore's "Shot in the Heart"; there will always be a mother - serial autobiography and Jamaica Kincaid; without names - an anatomy of absence in Jeanette Winterson's "Written on the Body"; conclusion - the knowing subject and an alternative jurisprudence of trauma.
£19.99
Cornell University Press Russian Formalism
Book SynopsisRussian Formalism, one of the twentieth century's most important movements in literary criticism, has received far less attention than most of its rivals. Examining Formalism in light of more recent developments in literary theory, Peter Steiner here offers the most comprehensive critique of Formalism to date. Steiner studies the work of the...
£15.99
Cornell University Press Symbolism and Interpretation
Book SynopsisIn Symbolism and Interpretation, Tzvetan Todorov examines two aspects of discourse: its production, which has traditionally been the domain of rhetoric, and its reception, which has always been the object of hermeneutics.Trade Review"With his habitual clarity of exposition and grasp of ideas, Todorov here reviews rhetorical theories of linguistic symbolism and the various models proposed for its interpretation from Aristotle to Hirsch. His conclusions not only are judicious but also promise to be a healthy influence in the age of post-Derridean reconstruction."—Virginia Quarterly Review"Like Todorov's other books, this one is filled with brilliant critical insights and immense learning. Todorov has the gift to deal with large concepts of a very complex order in lucid and direct terms. It is astonishing to see with what ease Todorov wanders across a variety of disciplines and many centuries—from Greek antiquity to the present age—in the course of elucidating his theories on poetics and interpretation."—Melvin J. Friedman, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
£25.19
Cornell University Press Self and Its Pleasure
Book SynopsisIn this innovative cultural history, Carolyn J. Dean sheds light on the origins of poststructuralist thought, paying particular attention to the reinterpretation of the self by Jacques Lacan, Georges Bataille, and other French thinkers.Trade ReviewCarolyn J. Dean's book is an intelligent, well-researched, and thought-provoking study of an important problem in modern cultural and intellectual history. Focusing on the difficult work of Jacques Lacan and Georges Bataille, Dean furnishes a critical history of the decentered subject in early twentieth-century France—a history that has broader implications given the widespread influence of modern French thought. * American Historical Review *Carolyn J. Dean's central question in this complex and allusive book is 'why has France been the home of a certain model of self-dissolution?’, and the answer is pursued largely in the criminolegal and psychoanalytical domain, eschewing the more literary ‘death of the author’ institutionalized by Barthes. * Modern Language Review *
£15.99
Johns Hopkins University Press Structure and Society in Literary History Studies
Book SynopsisA new concluding chapter, written especially for the Johns Hopkins edition, presents a coherent and systematically developed survey of those poststructuralist positions most relevant to the placement of "Structure and Society in Literary Historywithin the critical context of the mid 1980s.Table of ContentsPreface to the Original EditionIntroduction: Toward a Theory of Literary HistoryChapter 1. Past Significance and Present Meaning in Literary HistoryChapter 2. The Concept of Tradition ReconsideredChapter 3. Past origins and Present Functions in American Literary HistoryChapter 4. Structuralism and Literary HistoryChapter 5. Metaphor and Historical Criticism: Shakespeare's Imagery RevisitedChapter 6. Structure and History in Narrative Perspective: The Problem of Point of View ReconsideredChapter 7. Text and History: Epilogue, 1984Index of Names
£25.17
Johns Hopkins University Press A World of Difference
Book Synopsis''Dazzling and fun, from the memorial to the formidable (or should I say notorious?) Paul de Man, which introduces the possibility of feminist deconstruction, to the revisions and re-readings of motherhood as a nearly untenable discursive position.''--Voice Literary Supplement.Trade ReviewDazzling and fun, from the memorial to the formidable (or should I say notorious?) Paul de Man, which introduces the possibility of feminist deconstruction, to the revisions and re-readings of motherhood as a nearly untenable discursive position. Voice Literary Supplement Dazzling and fun, from the memorial to the formidable (or should I say notorious?) Paul de Man, which introduces the possibility of feminist deconstruction, to the revisions and re-readings of motherhood as a nearly untenable discursive position. Voice Literary SupplementTable of ContentsPreface to the Paperback EditionAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I. The Fate of DeconstructionChapter 1. Nothing Fails Like SuccessChapter 2. Rigorous UnreliabilityChapter 3. Is Writerliness Conservative?Chapter 4. Gender Theory and the Yale SchoolChapter 5. Deconstruction, Feminism, and PedagogyPart II. Significant GapsChapter 6. A Hound, a Bay Horse, and a Turtle Dove: Obscurity in WaldenChapter 7. Erasing Panama: Mallarmé and the Text of HistoryChapter 8. Teaching Ignorance: L'Ecole des femmesPart III. Poetic DifferencesChapter 9. Strange Fits: Poe and Wordsworth on the Nature of Poetic LanguageChapter 10. Disfiguring Poetic LanguageChapter 11. Les Fleurs du Mal Armé: Some ReflectionsPart IV. Other Inflections of DifferenceChapter 12. Mallarmé as MotherChapter 13. My Monster/My SelfChapter 14. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching GodChapter 15. Thresholds of Differences: Structures of Address in Zora Neale HurstonChapter 16. Apostrophe, Animation, and AbortionAppendix to Chapter 7Appendix to Chapter 16Notes Index
£23.85
Johns Hopkins University Press Taking Chances
Book SynopsisA challenging and multisided meditation on the importance of Derrida to current developments in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical interpretations of literature.Trade ReviewThrough its engagement with literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytical texts, Taking Chances introduces a critical vocabulary... with which to analyze questions of influence in a theoretical way. Philosophy and LiteratureTable of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1. My Chances/Mes Chances: A Rendezvous with Some Epicurean StereophoniesChapter 2. The Debts of Deconstruction and Other, Related AssumptionsChapter 3. The Double Game: An IntroductionChapter 4. Atoms Again: The Deaths of IndividualismChapter 5. Institutional Authority vs. Critical Power, or the Uneasy Relations of Psychoanalysis and LiteratureChapter 6. Thomas Hardy, Jacques Derrida, and the "Dislocation of Souls"Chapter 7. GoethezeitIndex
£24.75
Johns Hopkins University Press Consequences of Theory Selected Papers from the
Book Synopsis"Highly articulate, sophisticated, and tightly imbricated essays. This volume will make exceptionally fine reading for those well-acquainted with the rigorous techniques of theory."--'English Language Notes.Trade ReviewHighly articulate, sophisticated, and tightly imbricated essays. This volume will make exceptionally fine reading for those well-acquainted with the rigorous techniques of theory. English Language Notes.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Truth or ConsequencesChapter 1. Oppositional Professionals: Theory and the Narratives of ProfessionalizationChapter 2. Theory, Pragmatisms, and PoliticsChapter 3. Solidarity or Singularity? Richard Rorty between Romanticism and TechnocracyChapter 4. Tolerable Falsehoods: Agency and the Interests of TheoryChapter 5. History as Gesture; or, The Scandel of HistoryChapter 6. Toward a Sociology of Literary Knowledge: Greenblatt, Colonialism, and the New historicismChapter 7. Theory in the Margin: Coetzee's Foe Reading Defoe's Crusoe/RoxanaChapter 8. And We Are Not Married: A Journal of Musings upon Legal Language and the Ideology of StyleChapter 9. The English InstituteChapter 10. The ProgramSponsoring InstitutionsRegistrants, 1988
£25.17
Johns Hopkins University Press The Aesthetics of Murder A Study in Romantic
Book SynopsisSince then, both traditional art forms and the modern mass media have contributed to the growing aestheticization of violence.Trade ReviewWell-written and often brilliant. Virginia Quarterly Review Chances are that you'll have a hard time fighting his suasive thesis. Voice Literary SupplementTable of ContentsContents: Preface Introduction Part I ONE Murder as (Fine) Art TWO Murder as (Pure) Action THREE Murder as (Carnal) Knowledge Part II FOUR Mimesis and Murder FIVE Catharsis and Murder AFTERWORD Writing after Murder Notes Index
£24.75
Johns Hopkins University Press Money Language and Thought
Book SynopsisHe demonstrates how literature and philosophy have been driven to account self-critically for a "money of the mindthat pervades all discourse, and concludes the book with a discomforting thesis about the cultural and political limits of literature and philosophy in the modern world.Trade ReviewShell offers admirably close readings [which are] often brilliant... Summary could do little more than hint at the riches laid open. The Eighteenth Century A remarkable piece of work. Valuable for a wide range of readers from the expert to the inquiring generalist. Religious Studies Review
£23.85
Johns Hopkins University Press HyperTextTheory
Book SynopsisDrawing on Derrida, Lacan, and Wittgenstein, Gregory Ulmer offers an example of the new form of writing hypertextuality demands.Trade ReviewIn this volume, 11 pieces explore the nature of critical theory in the age of hypertext, looking variously at computers and democracy, art and pedagogy, indeterminacy, hypertext as resistance, and other probings of the cultural, political, economic, and social effects of the emergence of hypertext. Journal of Communication
£27.45
Johns Hopkins University Press Trauma
Book SynopsisContributions by: Georges Bataille, Harold Bloom, Laura Brown, Cathy Caruth, Kai Erikson, Shoshana Felman, Henry Krystal, Claude Lanzmann, Dori Laub, Kevin Newmark, Onno van der Hart, and Bessel van der Kolk. Interviews with: Robert Jay Lifton, Gregg Bordowitz, Douglas Crimp, and Laura PinskyTrade Review"An unusually informative, as well as sensitive, series of essays with important ramifications for interdisciplinary theory and both social and literary thought. Caruth and her contributors work at the very intersection of contemporary life and scholarship."--Geoffrey Hartman, Yale University "These essays offer fresh approaches on the subject of trauma from both a psychoanalytic and contemporary theoretical point of view. The combination of theoretical articles about trauma with interviews about its ongoing effects is a particular strength--and a particularly appropriate approach when the topic itself is silence or testimony about trauma. The book will be of great interest to those in the psychoanalytic community interested in this kind of interdisciplinary work."--Alan Bass, Ph.D., PsychoanalystTable of ContentsPrefacePart I: Trauma and Experience Chapter 1. IntroductionChapter 2. Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of TeachingChapter 3. Truth and Testimony: The Process and the StruggleChapter 4. Trauma and Aging: A Thirty-Year Follow-UpChapter 5. Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic TraumaChapter 6. Freud: Frontier Concepts, Jewishness, and Interpretation Chapter 7. An Interview with Robert Jay LiftonPart II: Recapturing the PastChapter 8. IntroductionChapter 9. The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of TraumaChapter 10. Notes on Trauma and Community Chapter 11. The Obscenity of Understanding: An Evening With Claude LanzmannChapter 12. Concerning the Accounts Given by the Residents of Hiroshima Chapter 13. Traumatic Poetry: Charles Baudelaire and the Shock of LaughterChapter 14. "The AIDS Crisis is Not Over": A Conversation with Gregg Bordowitz, Douglass Crimp, and Laura PinskyContributors
£27.45
Hopkins Fulfillment Service Writing Womens Literary History
Book SynopsisDrawing both on French feminisms and on recent historicist scholarship, Ezell points us to new possibilities for the recovery of early modern women's literary history.Trade ReviewEzell's book is radical and revisionary, and especially interesting in its specificity and concentration on a neglected period of female writing. She is not afraid to take issue with established, even sacred, ideas in feminist writing, or to suggest that feminist literary criticism and history has been limited by its own prejudices and acceptance of questionable definitions of what is good and valid... Establishes many lost and missing names and texts within the margins of female literary history. -- Siv Jansson Yearbook of English Studies From 'The Myth of Judith Shakespeare,' to 'Writings by Early Quaker Women,' Ezell's critique cuts a broad swath through women's literature. -- Elaine Gale Boston Phoenix One hopes that her book will be read not only by scholars who have long agreed with her premise, but also by a wider audience that is unfamiliar with Renaissance genres and modes of publication. Journal of English and Germanic Philology
£21.85
Johns Hopkins University Press Theory of the Novel
Book SynopsisAll the selections in this anthology date from the twentieth century-most from the last forty years-and represent the attempts of different theorists, and different theoretical schools, to describe the historical stages of the genre's formal development.Trade ReviewMcKeon's dissections are often breathtaking... [his] anthology is solid, commandingly centered,... superbly energetic and uniquely powerful. -- Marshall Brown Eighteenth-Century Fiction As comprehensive an account of the genre as you could wish. What a marvelous collection and what a skillful editor McKeon is, marshalling the essays into an argument for the novel as a distinct 'literary historical genre' rather than as one element in a bland, all-embracing narrative theory... The outstanding feature of this fine collection is its firm commitment to the art of the novelist. Throughout, there is a profound recognition of the novel's ability to criticise the existing order, to create new and compelling worlds, to extend our grammar and enlarge our vocabulary for coping with the great dramas of life, love, death and the shoelace snapping when you are late for work. -- Gary Day Times Higher Education Supplement The anthology provides not only a splendid guide to thinking about the novel, but also a useful warning against assuming that fiction is merely the instrument of those who wish to dampen revolution, forge national identities, and build empires. -- Jonathan Lamb Studies in English Literature This breathtaking comprehensive collection of essays... is an amazingly ambitious project... McKeon has provided us with an invaluable map of the theoretical and literary-historical landscape surrounding the origins, theories, and developments of the novel. -- Ansgar Nunning Giesen LWU This is a richly stimulating volume, an invaluable resource and challenging intervention for all serious researchers into the novel. This Year's Work in English Studies As a teaching text this anthology can hardly be bettered. -- David Walker British Journal for 18th-Century StudiesTable of ContentsContents and Contributors: Part One: Genre TheoryNorthrop Frye, from Anatomy of Criticism: Four EssaysE. D. Hirsch, from Validity in InterpretationClaudio Guillen, from Literature as System: Essays toward the Theory of Literary HistoryJonathan Culler, "Toward a Theory of Non-Genre Literature"Marthe Robert, from Origins of the NovelPart Two: The Novel as Displacement I: StructuralismWalter Benjamin, "The Storyteller"Claude Levi-Strauss, from The Savage Mind, from The Origin of Table Manners, "How Myths Die," from The Naked ManNorthrop Frye, from Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, from Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology, from The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of RomancePart Three: The Novel as Displacement II: PsychoanalysisSigmund Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams, "Family Romances"Marthe Robert, from Origins of the NovelPart Four: Grand Theory IGeorg Lukacs, from The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature, from The Historical NovelPart Five: Grand Theory IIJose Ortega y Gasset, from Meditations on Quixote, "Notes on the Novel"Part Six: Grand Theory IIIMikhail M. Bakhtin, from The Dialogic Imagination: Four EssaysPart Seven: Revisionist Grand TheoryIan Watt, from The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and FieldingMichael McKeon, "Generic Transformation and Social Change: Rethinking the Rise of the Novel"Fredric Jameson, from The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic ActBenedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of NationalismPart Eight: Privacy, Domesticity, WomenIan Watt, from The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and FieldingNancy Armstrong, from Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the NovelGillian Brown, from Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self in Nineteenth-Century AmericaPart Nine: Subjectivity, Character, DevelopmentDorrit Cohn, from Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in FictionAnn Banfield, from Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of FictionAmelie Oksenberg Rorty, "Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals"Franco Moretti, from The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European CultureClifford Siskin, from The Historicity of Romantic DiscoursePart Ten: RealismRosalind Coward and John Ellis, from Language and Materialism: Developments in Semiology and the Theory of the SubjectMichael McKeon, from "Prose Fiction: Great Britain"George Levine, from The Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady ChatterleyMichael Davitt Bell, from The Development of American RomancePart Eleven: Photography, Film, and the NovelHenry James, from "Preface to The Golden Bowl"Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"Keith Cohen, Film and Fiction: The Dynamics of ExchangeAndre Bazin, "In Defense of Mixed Cinema"Part Twelve: ModernismVirginia Woolf, "Modern Fiction," "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown"Georg Lukacs, from Realism in Our Time: Literature and the Class StruggleJoseph Frank, from Spatial Form in Modern LiteraturePart Thirteen: The New Novel, the Postmodern NovelAlain Robbe-Grillet, from For a New Novel: Essays on FictionLinda Hutcheon, "Historiographic Metafiction"Part Fourteen: The Colonial and Postcolonial NovelDoris Sommer and George Yudice, "Latin American Literature from the 'Boom' On"Kwame Anthony Appiah, "Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?"Kumkum Sangari, "The Politics of the Possible"
£50.09
Johns Hopkins University Press Girls Boys Books Toys Gender in Childrens
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewClark describes the book as a 'sampler' of the many cloths of feminist writing. It is theoretically sophisticated and engaging on many levels. -- Kenneth Kidd Michigan Quarterly Review
£27.00
