Literary theory Books

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 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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Book SynopsisOffers points of entry into Derrida's complex and extensive works. From 'aporia' to 'yes', this dictionary demonstrates that Derrida is not just about philosophy, but also about politics and pop music. It explains why deconstruction matters, and how Derrida can change the way you think.Trade Review"Writing for fans of Dylan, Eastwood, Eminem, and Lou Reed, no less than for readers of Freud, Heidegger, and Nietzsche, Lucy catalogues the ways Derrida has rocked words to their alphabetic core. There is sharpness, wit, and high seriousness in every entry." Peggy Kamuf, University of Southern California "Niall Lucy has written a witty, incisive, timely and highly topical dictionary that deftly characterizes the most important entries in Derrida's lexicon. The book is chock full of references to contemporary film, music and politics and spares us the tediousness of trying to formalize ideas whose very idea is that they cannot be formalized. In addition to making for an insightful read and a pleasurable ride, Lucy does a good job of redefining what a “dictionary” is supposed to mean. A saucy, sparkling success." John D. Caputo, Villanova University "Lucy brings and ironic, iconoclastic, and earthy approach to his teask... Entries are cleverly focused so that major terms and concepts get full attention ... Lucy is unpretentious and plain speaking... This is a well worthwhile purchase for the library where Derrida comes as new and rather threatening to students." Reference ReviewsTable of ContentsList of Terms viii List of Abbreviations x Preface xii Dictionary 1 References (Image – Music – Print) 168 Index 174

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Book SynopsisThis is a lively, freshly invited collection of papers by a number of well-known philosophers and other specialists who have focused very pointedly on certain central conceptual puzzles posed by the general practice of interpretation in the arts, literature, history, and the natural and human sciences.Table of Contents1. Introduction: The Philosophy of Interpretation: Joseph Margolis and Tom Rockmore. 2.Interpretation and Justification: David Novitz. 3.Conventions and Rules in Literature: Stein Haugom Olsen. 4.Relativism and the Interpretation of Texts: Jorg J. E. Gracia. 5.On Changing the Subject: Paul Thom. 6.Interpretation and Intention: The Debate between Hypothetical and Actual Intentionalism: Noël Carroll. 7.Objects of Interpretation: Peter Lamarque. 8.Interpretation and its 'Metaphysical' Entanglements: Michael Krausz. 9.Representation as the Representation of Experience: F. R. Ankersmit. 10.Historical Knowledge as Perspectival and Rational: Remarks on the Annales School's Idea of History: Cecilia Tohaneanu. 11.Interpretation as Historical, Constructivism, and History: Tom Rockmore. 12.Relativism and Interpretive Objectivity: Joseph Margolis

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Book Synopsisaeo Brings Christian theology, creative literature, and literary critical theory into dialogue on the theme of a the enda . aeo Provides an exegesis of novels, plays, and poems by such writers as John Fowles, Julian Barnes, Doris Lessing, Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Shakespeare.Trade Review"As the field of literature and theology develops and becomes more sophisticated, so Fiddes is contributing at the cutting edge. His work is genuinely interdisciplinary, and his choice of texts is faultless. He initiates a learned and helpful dialogue with major theologians. I will certainly use this as a textbook in my teaching - it's one I have been looking for, for some time, indeed." David Jasper, Dean of Divinity and Professor of Literature and Theology, Glasgow University "This is a marvellous book which combines a variety of literatures, from the popular to the literary classics and new classics. That Fiddes can move so easily among these is impressive. Also impressive is his command of literary theory and theology, along with scientific theory. I recommend it with absolutely no reservations." Carolyn Jones Medine, Professor of Religious Studies and English, Louisiana State University "This book on eschatology is almost certainly like no other you have read. Through its dialogue between theology and literature it uniquely stimulates theological reflection and offers resources for pastoral care and preaching. It is a remarkable, if sometimes demanding, book, and a rewarding and recommended read." Regent's Reviews "A highly specialized survey of contemporary theology, literature, and critical theory dealing with the perception of endings ... No student of theology or literature should overlook this book." First Things "This book succeeds in finding fresh insights into eschatology at the interface of religion and literature and is a fine achievement. It is not always an easy book to read but is always a worthwhile one." The Baptist Ministers' Journal "In The Promised End, Fiddes offers a unique synthesis of interdisciplinary measures, offering theologically refreshing insights, on the end that is not so much perceived as promised. In the area where religion, literature and science often clash, Fiddes is remarkably clever at pointing out their potential for unification." Research News and Opportunities in Science and Theology "Fiddes' clarity regarding the theorists mentioned above, and his wide-ranging knowledge of theological studies are to be commended. However, the impressive aspect of his dialogue is the truly deep and profound grasp of the theological ideas that are shown to be lurking within the literary texts. One comes away with the sense that theological issues can be powerfully demonstrated in the context of literary works, and that even works which may not immediately seem "theological" are in fact pervaded by metaphysical concerns in ways we may not have clearly imagined." Religion and Literature "It is fortunate that Fiddes' literary judgements are as acute as his theological acumen, and for both we are much in his debt." TheologyTable of ContentsAcknowledgements. Part I: Facing the End:. 1. The Problem of Closure: John Fowles' the French Lieutenant's Woman and Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot. 2. Theology and Literature - A Dialogue. 3. The End Organizes the Human Story: Frank Kermode. 4. The End Discloses a Desired World: Northrop Frye. 5. Biblical Eschatology and Openness. 6. Closure and Openness in Ending. Part II: Deferment and Hope:. 7. The End Defers Meaning: Jacques Derrida. 8. Death and the Other. 9. Openness and Relativism. 10. The End Opens Hope: Paul Ricoeur. 11. Hope and a Passion for the Possible. 12. Hoping in the Face of Death. Part III: Taking Death Seriously:. 13. A Journey to Nothingness: Shakespeare's King Lear. 14. Human Surplus and Excess. 15. Images of a Desirable and Undesirable World. 16. The Configuring of Time. 17. Looking Upon Death. 18. Death the Last Enemy. 19. Creation from Nothing. Part IV: A Question of Identity:. 20. Resurrection and the Idea of Replication. 21. Problems About Identity. 22. Closing the Gap? A Modified Dualism. 23. The Person and the Finality of Death. 24. Survival and Relationships: Doris Lessing's Memoirs of A Survivor. 25. Corporate Resurrection. 26. The Identity of the Self: Lessing's the Making of the Representative for Planet 8. 27. The Making of the Person. Part V: the Eternal Moment:. 28. The Problem of Fragmentation By Time: T.S. Eliot's 'Ash Wednesday'. 29. The Problem of Isolation in Time: Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. 30. Eliot and the Timeless Moment: the Four Quartets. 31. Eternity as Simultaneity?. 32. The Healing of Time. 33. Woolf and the Symbols of Eternity: to the Lighthouse and Between the Acts. Part VI: Expecting the Unexpected:. 34. Two Parables of Waiting. 35. The Reversal of Expectations. 36. Two Plays of Waiting: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Endgame. 37. The Futility of Waiting: (A) Waiting for the 'Not Yet'. 38. Waiting For a Possible Future. 39. The Futility of Waiting: (B) A Programmed Future. Part VII: The Arrow of Time:. 40. The One-Way Flight of the Arrow. 41. The Arrow Points Backwards: Martin Amis' Time's Arrow. 42. The Counter-Movement to Evolution. 43. Cycles of Torment and Renewal: Flann O'Brien's the Third Policeman and James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. 44. Preservation and Retroaction. 45. The Eternal Dance. Part VIII: A Fuller Presence:. 46. The Desire for Presence. 47. Millennium and Utopia. 48. Fictional Images of Utopia: Aldous Huxley's Island and Ursula Leguin's the Dispossessed. 49. The Postmodern Critique of Full Presence. 50. Absence at the Heart of Existence. 51. Theological Versions of Hidden Presence. 52. The Millennial Hope. Part IX: Our Eternal Dwelling-Place:. 53. Participating in Triune Relationships. 54. Dwelling in Triune Spaces. 55. Particularity and Eschatology. 56. The Eternal City. Index.

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Book SynopsisIn the traditional Chinese symbolic vocabulary, the construction of gender was never far from debates about ritual propriety, desire, and even cosmic harmony. Competing Discourses maps the aesthetic and semantic meanings associated with gender in the Ming-Qing vernacular novel through close readings of five long narratives.

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Book SynopsisThe goal of this volume is to consider the relationship of writing to materiality in China's literary history and to ponder the physical aspects of the production and circulation of writing.

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Book SynopsisHearing across media is the source of innovation in a uniquely African American sphere of art-making and performance, Brent Hayes Edwards writes. He explores this fertile interface through case studies in jazz literature—both writings informed by music and the surprisingly large body of writing by jazz musicians themselves.Trade ReviewBrent Hayes Edwards is the finest literary scholar of his generation—an intellectual and artist of transformative force. His work reshapes the study and the making of world literature and art. -- Fred Moten, University of California, RiversideEpistrophies is a brilliant and essential contribution to the new and vital field of critical jazz studies. In addition to thorough explorations of poetry, liner notes, song titles, autobiography, and the many ways in which words can become musical (and vice versa), Edwards covers key figures from the entire history of jazz. He has provided nuanced readings of poetic writing as well as the multiple levels on which jazz and literature participate in the same aesthetic projects. -- Krin Gabbard, author of Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles MingusThis is an excellent book on an enduring theme of African-American culture, the intimate relationship of music—particularly jazz—and literary practice. Brent Edwards sees this as a two-way relation with many different manifestations rather than as a one-way subordination of black literature to jazz, as is often suggested. No author to my mind has approached this issue as thoroughly and in as nuanced a way as Edwards in what is the culmination of a decade-long project. -- Bernard Gendron, University of Wisconsin–MilwaukeeDazzling…[Edwards] compares the way poets use melody in language to the ways musicians use literary devices in jazz…[A] compellingly original perspective. * Publishers Weekly *This is a brilliant and utterly arresting book that takes a surprisingly uncommon subject and looks at it in a profoundly original way. -- Jeff Simon * Buffalo News *[Edwards] exhibits what I can only call intellectual glamour. He joins syntax and sentiment with élan, demonstrating a charismatic brilliance that persuades in parallel with, as well as through, his argumentation and evidence…Hilarious and trenchant at once, Edwards would be a beguiling writer in any field…He’s that rare academic whose work demands attention outside of experts in the field, without sacrificing tone or complexity. Almost conspicuously, William Empson comes to mind…As an alternative aesthetic history, Epistrophies is immensely satisfying…What makes Epistrophies such a singular work is the vividness and rigor of Edwards’s storytelling. As with Coleman’s Skies of America, there exists a temptation to discuss Epistrophies for what it could have been. Nevertheless, there is brilliance. -- David B. Hobbs * The Nation *Furnish[es] the reader with material that constantly surprises and subverts expectations. -- Jordan Penney * PopMatters *[Edwards] says something surprising and new that no one else has, or can, about two revered musicians [Mary Lou Williams and Cecil Taylor]—a genuine rarity in jazz scholarship…[The] critical and creative impulse to test the boundaries of the ‘sayable’ in both words and music—a ‘ferment at the horizon of articulacy’—is among the book’s guiding threads. In a brilliant chapter on the ‘poetics of transcription,’ Edwards studies the blues poem, a genre that has never found a happy home in either music or literature…Ambitiously, Edwards aims not just to hear, but to read, write, and think across a range of radically different sources. Epistrophies is a book whose individual parts persuade so easily and cohere so elegantly…The gift of Epistrophies is [an] act of renewal, an expansion not just of jazz literature as a category, but of jazz as a method. -- Colin Vanderburg * Los Angeles Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisThe Art of Reading is the first—long overdue—collection of essays by the French classical philologist and humanist Jean Bollack to be published in English. As the scope of the collection shows, Bollack felt equally at home thinking in depth about both the classics of Greek poetry and philosophy and modern, including contemporary, poetry.

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Book SynopsisPresents current thinking on some of the theoretical issues and dilemmas in the conception and writing of literary history, by scholars from Europe, Australia and North America. Topics covered include the role of literary history in new societies and the problem of literary classification.Table of ContentsIntroduction David Perkins Problems of Origin in Modern Literary History Ernst Behler Paul de Man, Modernist Ronald Bush Aristotle and the History of Tragedy Paul A. Cantor Genre Theory, Literary History, and Historical Change Ralph Cohen The Two Histories Alastair Fowler Postmodernism and Literary History John Frow Understanding Alterity: Auslanderliteratur between Relativism and Universalism Ulker Gokberk Transmission Failure Jon Klancher History, Herstory, Theirstory, Ourstory Jerome Mcgann Caliban and His Precursors: The Politics of Literary History and the Third World Michael Valdez Moses Measure and Countermeasure: The Lovejoy-Wellek Debate and Romantic Periodization Mark Parker Literary Classifications: How Have They Been Made? John Perkins Antihistoricism in Benedetto Croce and I. A. Richards John Paul Russo

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Book SynopsisIt is no wonder literary criticism is so sullen. It is too philosophical, too much indebted to the dour Walter Benjamin, wedded to aestheticized helplessness. Lit crit needs new inspirations: the sober cheer of Wallace Stevens; the loving eye of Rembrandt; romance, melodrama, and wit. Let there be more poetry, Paul Bové says, and less cynicism.Trade ReviewAn intellectual feast of the highest order. Bové’s monumental work is both magisterial and personal. He holds himself and others to the highest standards of poetic and critical excellence. And he writes with a strong sense of righteous indignation about the failures of the academy, the deterioration of intellectual integrity, and the decay of the life of the mind in our market-driven time. -- Cornel WestA bracing journey into the mind’s powers, this book is a dynamic invitation to think thought through and to imagine otherwise, an uncompromising feat of inquiry, especially necessary in these sodden times. For anyone who believes close reading or literary criticism is dead, Bové’s pages—especially his heady retrieval of poetic making in ‘The Auroras of Autumn’—bear witness to their indelible presence. -- Colin Dayan, author of In the Belly of Her Ghost and Animal QuintetModern criticism, Paul A. Bové suggests, has fallen in love with the ruins of meaning. We all are tempted by this perspective; who could entirely resist the sorrowful vision of Walter Benjamin’s angel, history piling up as mere debris? But there are alternatives, and this book explores in subtle detail the work of those—notably Rembrandt, Shakespeare, Stevens, and Adorno—who can teach us what some alternatives are. -- Michael Wood, author of On Empson and Alfred Hitchcock: The Man Who Knew Too MuchBové’s thinking has brought him to a fundamental insight about poetry and poetics: reality and its pressures cannot constrain humans’ ability to imagine the criteria required to meet their dreams. At once responsive and inventive, Bové’s book makes the case for the creativity and power of imagination that delights in movement of thought. I have not felt as elated by an intellectual experience since first reading Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense. -- Donald E. Pease, author of The New American ExceptionalismAt once a lament for the decline of the humanities and a manifesto on how to save them…Bové‘s summons to his fellow academics and aspiring cultural critics [is] to step out of the long shadow of Benjamin’s melancholy and to come into the light reflected by poetry, comedy, and the essay—a more expansive form of expression. * Boston Globe *Bové’s close readings make for a critical tour de force. This passionate call offers a refreshing contribution to the philosophy of criticism. * Publishers Weekly *Providing a sweeping look at the history of literary criticism, Bové argues that the proper (Aristotelian) goal of the critic is to choose the framing of the poet and essayist, and to learn new humanistic insights from them, instead of simply seeking a reaffirmation of one’s own melancholic mindsets. * Choice *

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Book SynopsisIn this account of how the novel reorients philosophy toward the meaning of existence, Yi-Ping Ong shows that the existentialists discovered a radical way of thinking about the relation between the form of the novel and the nature of self-knowledge, freedom, and the world. At stake are the conditions under which knowledge of existence is possible.Trade ReviewAnyone interested in the debates that have convulsed the study of the novel in recent years should read this book. It does more than any other piece of writing I’ve encountered to clarify the underlying stakes of the arguments about close reading versus distant, analog versus computational, depth versus surface…Ong’s masterful book raises questions that I suspect students of the novel will be grappling with for a long time. -- Michael Clune * Critical Inquiry *The Art of Being is brilliant—a beautifully conceived book that brings existentialist philosophy into creative dialogue with literary texts. Full of original and compelling insights into the philosophical content of the novels examined, the intricate readings are absorbing and show how literature subtly reaches beyond itself into our lives. -- Garry L. Hagberg, Bard CollegeYi-Ping Ong wears her immense learning lightly. Her philosophical and literary analyses are elegant and supremely intelligent, and the range of figures that her book draws together results in some startling constellations. The Art of Being is a model of philosophical criticism. -- Robert Chodat, Boston University

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Book SynopsisJames Dawes defines a new, dynamic American literary genre, which takes as its theme a range of atrocities at home and abroad. This vibrant and modern genre incorporates key debates within the human rights movement in the U.S. and in turn influences the ideas and rhetoric of that discourse.Trade ReviewJames Dawes is one of the founders of the interdiscipline of literature and human rights, with his important That the World May Know and Evil Men. His new book provides a map for traveling the complex paths laid out by the evolving human rights project and by literary artists who represent both rights violations and remedies in their work. The Novel of Human Rights is a landmark. -- Elizabeth Swanson, Babson CollegeHuman rights and literature scholars have worked around the edges of genre issues, but this book establishes an entirely new conceptual framework. It builds the case that the human rights novel is a definable genre, produced by deep and wide social, political, and cultural forces. Dawes’s insightful analysis of individual works and the genre advances our understanding of those forces, why we face the ethical dilemmas we face in contemporary local and global politics, and how we might think our way through these dilemmas to a better future. -- Greg Mullins, Evergreen State CollegeArgues persuasively that one of the places we might still find vibrant and critical human rights is in the contemporary American novel…A welcome example of slow reading, hard thinking and the value of reality-testing in dire political times. * Times Higher Education *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewMarvellous Thieves, which draws on hitherto neglected sources, is a brilliant, fluent, and original work of literary scholarship. -- Robert Irwin * Literary Review *Paulo Horta has uncovered a mass of fresh evidence about key figures in the making of the Arabian Nights and communicates his startling findings with a storyteller’s verve, raising many fascinating issues about the interplay of invention, imitation, translation, and plagiarism, and probing the vexed effects of the imperial gaze and the acquisition of local expertise and languages. In Marvellous Thieves, Paulo Horta has written a highly entertaining, attentive, and scholarly work of literary detection. -- Marina Warner, author of Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian NightsThis fine book…cogently probes an influential period in the knotted and at times sordid history of the Arabian Nights, serving as a fine example to those unraveling this promiscuous and forever malleable set of stories. -- Charles Shafaieh * Wall Street Journal *A nimble study of the Arabian Nights and its provenance. -- Anthony Lane * New Yorker *[A] vivid, intellectually lively and revelatory book…The real point about this clever book is that many of the things we think about modernity—let alone postmodernity—have already happened. Postmodernism says that the book is always fluid; no text shows this as clearly as Arabian Nights. There can be no perfect version. It shows that authors are also collaborators, translators, plagiarists, elusive. -- Stuart Kelly * Scotland on Sunday *Intelligent and engrossing…The great merit of Horta’s book is that its interest always lies in the story of the story, in mapping out the complex network of the translators, editors and travellers behind the Arabian Nights, in ways that enrich our sense of this remarkable text. -- Shahidha Bari * Times Higher Education *Drawing on resources that include the Vatican Library, [Marvellous Thieves] offers some fascinating revelations about the translation efforts that turned the Arabian Nights—also known as One Thousand and One Nights—into the world’s inheritance…Horta’s book has come out at a time when geopolitical developments give it added poignancy. The election of Donald Trump, the vote for Brexit, and the rise of far­-right parties in Europe have signaled a surging antipathy towards the idea of an interconnected world…In this context, reading Marvellous Thieves is a reminder of the blessings that can come from global commerce and communion. -- Celia Wren * Commonweal *In writing a biography of 200 years of Nights’ translation, with its multiplicity of voices, sources, contexts and prejudices, Horta has breathed life into another great story to emerge from the Thousand and One Nights. -- Clare Dight * The National *A fascinating work of cultural and literary history…An insightful examination of a significant literary work and the fraught complexities of translation. * Kirkus Reviews *In this enchanting work, Horta focuses on the European translations of The Arabian Nights that brought these Middle Eastern tales to a wide western audience…His fascinating search for the origins of The Arabian Nights as it exists today reveals a multitude of storytellers nearly as colorful as Sinbad or Aladdin. * Publishers Weekly *[In] this well-researched and highly engaging work, readers will uncover the origins of the Arabian Nights as it exists today in the West. This work is a major contribution to the study of the complexities inherent in translating such a masterpiece. -- Ali Houissa * Library Journal (starred review) *Horta takes the reader across empires and trade routes to discover the hidden networks of textual transmission which produced the Arabian Nights…Horta's multi-lingual research and his rich narrative style make for exciting reading. -- Sujaan Mukherjee * The Telegraph (Calcutta) *A work of meticulous cultural and literary history…This is a fascinating story of the many voices that narrated, authored, retold, embellished and translated the stories of Scheherazade; it is also an exploration into how stories travel. -- Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta * The Hindu *

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