Essays on Literature, Mimesis and Anthropology (POD)
An individual desires an object, not for itself, but because another individual also desires it. This mimetic desire, Rene Girard contends, lies at the source of all human disorder and order. In brilliant readings of Dante, Camus, Nietzsche, Dostoevski, Levi-Strauss, Freud, and others, Girard draws out the thesis of mimetic desire -- and ponders ......
Jacques Lacan's seminar on ''The Purloined Letter'' at once challenged literary theorists and revealed a radically new conception of psychoanalysis. His far-reaching claims about language and truth provoked a vigorous critique by Jacques Derrida, whose essay in turn has spawned further responses from Barbara Johnson, Jane Gallop, Irene Harvey, ......
''An unprecedented encounter between feminist criticism, reading-research and reader-response criticism...I found 'Gender and Reading' a valuable book to read as a feminist critic. Valuable because it asserts our rights, as women, to read; to read as women. Valuable because it begins a dialogue among so many varieties of criticism and ......
''Blonsky has grouped numerous original and newly translated works by those who have been highly visible forces in semiotic circles . . . His book functions as a unified voice proclaiming the power of semiotics to reveal the hidden practices and secrets of modern society.''--Journal of Communication.Contributors include Roland Barthes, Michel de ......
Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading (POD)
''When it is done well, deconstructive criticism can be a pleasure to read, as it is in the case of Barbara Johnson. Her discussions of the reading process . . . are patient, ingenious, and persuasive.''--Robert Scholes, Yale Review
''Tropics of Discourse'' develops White's ideas on interpretation in history, on the relationship between history and the novel, and on history and historicism. Vico, Croce, Derrida, and Foucault are among the figures he assesses in this work, which also offers original interpretations of a number of literary themes, including the Wild Man and the ......
Studies in the History and Theory of Literary Criticism (POD)
In Structure and Society in Literary History Robert Weimann, one of Germany's leading literary theoreticians, raises important questions about the social function of literature and sketches the outlines of a new historical criticism.Weinmann's Marxist analysis relates the history of writing and reading to the history of social and economic ......
An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (POD)
Originally published in 1766, the Laocoon has been called the first extended attempt in modern times to define the distinctive spheres of art and poetry.
Saving the Text cuts through Jacques Derrida's complex blend of philosophy, commentary, and elaborate wordplay to ascertain his place in the history of criticism and the significance of Glas as a literary event. Distinguished critic and scholar Geoffrey Hartman explores the usefulness of Derrida's style of close reading for English and American ......
