What is a musical work? What are its identity-conditions and the standards (if any) that they set for a competent, intelligent, and musically perceptive act of performance or audition? Should the work-concept henceforth be dissolved as some New Musicologists would have it into the various, everchanging socio-cultural or ideological contexts that make up its reception-history to date? Can music be thought of as possessing certain attributes, structural features, or intrinsically valuable qualities that are response-transcendent, i.e., that might always elude or surpass the best state of (current or future) informed opinion? These are some of the questions that Christopher Norris addresses by way of a sustained critical engagement with the New Musicology and other debates in recent philosophy of music. His book puts the case for a qualified Platonist approach that would respect the relative autonomy of musical works as objects of more or less adequate understanding, appreciation, and evaluative judgement. At the same time this approach would leave room for listeners share the phenomenology of musical experience in so far as those works necessarily depend for their repeated realisation from one performance or audition to the next upon certain subjectively salient modalities of human perceptual and cognitive response. Norris argues for a more philosophically and musically informed treatment of these issues that combines the best insights of the analytic and the continental traditions. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Norris's book, true to this dual orientation, is its way of raising such issues through a constant appeal to the vivid actuality of music as a challenge to philosophic thought. This is a fascinating study of musical understanding from one of the worlds leading contemporary theorists.

This path-breaking book explores different ways in which writing about poetry can deepen and extend our critical engagement by deploying creatively the manifold resources of poetic language and form. Through a series of verse-essays, reflective monologues, and inventive variations on topics in literary theory The Winnowing Fan makes a strong case for revising received ideas about the scope and limits of criticism. Norris's poems traverse the full range of European poetic history from Homer's Odyssey, through the work of French symbolists such as Mallarme, to modern writers such as Yeats, Benjamin, Heaney, Larkin, and Barthes. There are also verse-essays and shorter pieces on philosophers from Hume and Leibniz to Heidegger, Althusser, Derrida, de Man, Rorty, Deleuze, Badiou, and Agamben. In each case Norris seeks to free criticism from conventional academic forms and return it to an active mutual engagement with the practice of literature itself.

This book brings together three main topics - deconstruction, philosophy of language, and literary theory - that have figured centrally in Christopher Norris' work over the past two decades. It offers a refreshingly clear and vigorous statement of his views as to how 'theory' might profit from a greater awareness of current philosophical debates while philosophy might likewise gain by adopting a more open-minded attitude toward developments in literary theory. Most significant here is Norris's continuing exploration of the various points of contact between Jacques Derrida's thought and the kinds of concern - especially with issues in philosophical semantics and speech-act theory - that have preoccupied thinkers in the 'other', mainstream-analytic line of descent. However, his focus is consistently on matters that should be of interest to philosophers and literary theorists alike. Thus, Norris devotes some penetrating commentary to topics such as modal or 'possible-worlds' logic as it bears upon issues in narrative theory; the 'two cultures' (science versus literature) controversy; the different ways in which literary theory has alternately embraced and rejected the appeal to 'scientific' modes of analysis; and some possible reasons for Wittgenstein's well-known aversion to Shakespeare. He also suggests a novel approach to the free-will/determinism issue by way of debates about the nature of language and the scope it affords for expressive creativity despite - or owing to - the limits imposed by various structural constraints. Altogether, this important new book provides a welcome overview of the author's current thinking and an equally welcome enlargement of horizons in contrast to the narrowly specialised character of much present-day academic discourse.

Badiou is with doubt the most influential philosopher working in Europe today - this book will provide the first detailed introduction to "Being and Event", a hugely important, but challenging book. Alain Badiou's "Being and Event" is the most original and significant work of French philosophy to have appeared in recent decades. It is the magnum opus of a thinker who is widely considered to have reshaped the character and set new terms for the future development of philosophy in France and elsewhere.This book has been written very much with a view to clarifying Badiou's complex and demanding work for non-specialist readers. It offers guidance on: philosophical and intellectual context; key themes; reading the text; reception and influence; and, further reading."Continuum Reader's Guides" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to key texts in literature and philosophy. Each book explores the themes, context, criticism and influence of key works, providing a practical introduction to close reading, guiding students towards a thorough understanding of the text. They provide an essential, up-to-date resource, ideal for undergraduate students.

In this path-breaking study Christopher Norris proposes a transformed understanding of the much-exaggerated differences between analytic and continental philosophy. While keeping the analytic
tradition squarely in view his book focuses on the work of Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou, two of the most original and significant figures in the recent history of ideas.
Norris argues that these thinkers have decisively reconfigured the terrain of contemporary philosophy and, between them, pointed a way beyond some of those seemingly intractable issues that have polarised debate on both sides of the notional rift between the analytic and continental traditions. In particular his book sets out to show - against the received analytic wisdom - that continental philosophy has its own analytic resources and is capable of bringing some much-needed fresh insight to bear on problems in philosophy of language, logic and mathematics. Norris provides not only a unique comparative account of Derrida's and Badiou's work but also a remarkably wide-ranging assessment of their joint contribution to philosophy's current - if widely resisted - potential for self-transformation.

Low back pain affects most of us at some time, and exercise is key to both its prevention and treatment. Critically appraising work from several approaches to produce an integrated, practical approach suitable for day-to-day clinicians and personal trainers, this essential guide looks at the science and practice of designing and teaching the best exercise programmes for this common condition. Learn: vital client assessment skills, which exercises to use and why, the most effective teaching methods, how to structure and progress a full backpain management programme. Aimed at student therapists and clinical exercise teachers, as well as trainers planning exercise programmes for subjects recovering from low back pain, Back Rehabilitation is essential reading for Therapists and Exercise academics and professionals of all types.

What might be the outcome for philosophy if its texts were subjected to the powerful techniques of rhetorical close-reading developed by current deconstructionist literary critics? When first published in 1983, Christopher Norris' book was the first to explore such questions in the context of modern analytic and linguistic philosophy, opening up a new and challenging dimension of inter-disciplinary study and creating a fresh and productive dialogue between philosophy and literary theory.

Paul de Man - literary critic, literary philosopher, "American deconstructionist" - changed the landscape of criticism through his rigorous theories and writings. Upon its original publication in 1988, Christopher Norris' book was the first full-length introduction to de Man, a reading that offers a much-needed corrective to the pattern of extreme antithetical response which marked the initial reception to de Man's writings. Norris addresses de Man's relationship to philosophical thinking in the post-Kantian tradition, his concern with "aesthetic ideology" as a potent force of mystification within and beyond that tradition, and the vexed issue of de Man's politics. Norris brings out the marked shift of allegiance in de Man's thinking, from the thinly veiled conservative implications of the early essays to the engagement with Marx and Foucault on matters of language and politics in the late, posthumous writing. At each stage, Norris raises these questions through a detailed close reading of individual texts which will be welcomed by those who lack any specialised knowledge of de Man's work.

What might be the outcome for philosophy if its texts were subjected to the powerful techniques of rhetorical close-reading developed by current deconstructionist literary critics? When first published in 1983, Christopher Norrisa (TM) book was the first to explore such questions in the context of modern analytic and linguistic philosophy, opening up a new and challenging dimension of inter-disciplinary study and creating a fresh and productive dialogue between philosophy and literary theory.

Paul de Man - literary critic, literary philosopher, "American deconstructionist" - changed the landscape of criticism through his rigorous theories and writings. Upon its original publication in 1988, Christopher Norris' book was the first full-length introduction to de Man, a reading that offers a much-needed corrective to the pattern of extreme antithetical response which marked the initial reception to de Man's writings.

Norris addresses de Man's relationship to philosophical thinking in the post-Kantian tradition, his concern with "aesthetic ideology" as a potent force of mystification within and beyond that tradition, and the vexed issue of de Man's politics. Norris brings out the marked shift of allegiance in de Man's thinking, from the thinly veiled conservative implications of the early essays to the engagement with Marx and Foucault on matters of language and politics in the late, posthumous writing. At each stage, Norris raises these questions through a detailed close reading of individual texts which will be welcomed by those who lack any specialised knowledge of de Man's work.

This Routledge Revival, first published in 1985, gives detailed attention to the bearing of literary theory on questions of truth, meaning and reference. On the one hand, deconstruction brings a vigilant awareness of the figural and narrative tropes that make up the discourse of philosophic reason. On the other it insists that argumentative rigour cannot be divorced from the kind of close reading that has come to characterize literary theory in its more advanced or speculative forms. This present-day a ~contest of facultiesa (TM) has large implications for philosophers and critics, many of whom will welcome the reissue of such a clear-headed statement of the impact of deconstruction.

Series Information:
New Accents

Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction 1.Is it Possible to be a Realist About Quantum Mechanics? 2. Quantum Theory and the Logic of Anti-Realism 3. Bell, Bohm and the EPR Debate: a case for nonlocal realism 4. Quantum Worlds Without End: the multiverse according to Deutsch 5. Should Philosophers take Lessons from Quantum Theorists? 6. Putnam's Progress: quantum theory and the flight from realism 7. Can Logic be Quantum-Relativised? Putman, Dummett and the 'Great Quantum Muddle' 8. From Copenhagen to the Stars: some ways of quantum worldmaking Index

Low back pain affects most of us at some time, and exercise is key to both its prevention and treatment. Critically appraising work from several approaches to produce an integrated, practical approach suitable for day-to-day clinicians and personal trainers, this essential guide looks at the science and practice of designing and teaching the best exercise programmes for this common condition. Learn: vital client assessment skills, which exercises to use and why, the most effective teaching methods, how to structure and progress a full backpain management programme. Aimed at student therapists and clinical exercise teachers, as well as trainers planning exercise programmes for subjects recovering from low back pain, Back Rehabilitation is essential reading for Therapists and Exercise academics and professionals of all types.

Following the publication of Seven Types of Ambiguity in 1930 William Empson was quickly recognised as a critic of great originality and unique creative gifts and he has inspired a whole new method and style of approach in literary criticism. But this is the first full-length study of his work and it is an important part of Dr Norris's purpose to account for the gulf that has emerged between Empson's viewpoint and the development of his ideas by others, especially the American New Critics, and for the consequent failure of Empson's later books to generate the informed discussion they demand and deserve. Here particular attention is given to his critical summa, The Structure of Complex Words. To understand Empson's work as a consistent whole, Dr Norris argues, one must relate it to his philosophy of humanistic rationalism. This is to give a new perspective not only to his practical criticism but also to his differences with Eliot and Leavis and to his anti-Christian polemic.

In this latest collection of poems and verse-essays, Christopher Norris revisits many of the topics for which he is best known as a philosopher, literary theorist, and writer on music. Among them are the many-worlds metaphysics of Leibniz, the nature of subjective time-experience, the issue of poetic truth, the function of rhyme in poetry, the theory wars in literary studies, the augmented-fourth interval (or tritone), also known as the devil in music, and musical minimalism approached from a critical or cultural-diagnostic standpoint. There are also some shorter, more occasional pieces including an epithalamion (wedding-poem) for the poets daughter, a semi-fictive double sestina about police infiltration of activist groups, a savagely bawdy polemic imagined as addressed by the ancient Greek satirist Archilochus to his ex-fiancee Neobule, and a number of shrewdly angled political poems with reference to events from the 1980s to the present. These pieces have the hallmark qualities of intellectual range, perceptive wit, and formal inventiveness that characterise Norriss verse-essays. They make a strong case for poetry as a vehicle for argument, dialogue, and open debate.

William Empson (1906-84) was one of the twentieth century's most distinctive critical voices, and left a profound mark upon Anglo-American literary culture. Published in 1993, this book was the first full study of Empson's literary criticism in its various aspects, taking account of recent developments in critical theory and of Empson's complex - at times deeply antagonistic - attitude towards those developments. In their diversity of viewpoint and critical approach the nine essays reflect this sturdy resistance to fashionable trends of 'Eng. Lit.' opinion. Topics include the relations between Empson and Derrida's approaches to the issue of textual 'undecidability', and Empson's prominent (if unwilling role) in the shaping of English as an academic discourse. Christopher Norris's extended introduction charts the ground and offers a major revaluation of Empson's place in the theoretical tradition.

William Empson: Prophet Against Sacrifice provides the most coherent account of Empson's diverse career to date. While exploring the richness of Empson's comic genius, Paul H. Fry serves to discredit the appropriation of his name in recent polemic by the conflicting parties of deconstruction and politicized cultural criticism. He argues that Empson is a larger, more important figure than the orthodox in either camp can acknowledge, deserving to be considered alongside such versatile critics as Walter Benjamin, Kenneth Burke and Roland Barthes.

Christopher Norris argues for and constructs a new approach to philosophy of mind that combines naturalistic and rationalist perspectives usually thought to be at odds. "Re-Thinking the Cogito" seeks to combine a strongly naturalistic with a distinctively rationalist perspective on some nowadays much-discussed issues in philosophy of mind. Against the common view that they involve downright incompatible conceptions of mind, knowledge and ethics it seeks to unite a naturalism that draws on recent advances in neurophysiology and cognitive science with an outlook that gives full weight to those normative values at the heart of rationalist thought. True to the book's constructive spirit, Norris offers various detailed proposals for bringing the two approaches into a mutually enhancing - though also mutually provocative - relationship. He finds that claim strikingly prefigured in Spinoza's working-out of a non-reductive yet metaphysically uncompromising mind/body monism. Moreover he suggests how a thoroughly naturalised approach might yet become a locus of productive engagement with the work of an ultra-rationalist thinker such as Alain Badiou. Thus Norris puts the case that physically embodied human thought has cognitive, intellectual and creative powers that cannot and need not be accounted for in terms of conscious (let alone self-conscious) reflection. "Continuum Studies in Philosophy" presents cutting-edge scholarship in all the major areas of research and study. The wholly original arguments, perspectives and research findings in titles in this series make it an important and stimulating resource for students and academics from a range of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences.

Bringing some of the insights of modern critical theory to bear on a great deal of information about Pound's activities as a literary critic (some of it made available only recently), K.K. Ruthven provides a provocative re-reading of a major modernist writer who dominated the discourse of modernism.

The fifth edition of the retitled Sports and Soft Tissue Injuries sharpens its focus on the treatment of sports injuries, providing the most complete evidence-based guide for physiotherapists, sports therapists and medical practitioners working with athletes. Opening with chapters that examine the underlying science of tissue healing and principles of rehabilitation, the book employs a systematic approach, with chapters covering each area of the body, from facial through to ankle and foot injuries. Every chapter includes in-depth discussion and guidance on the treatment of common sports injuries through physiotherapeutic modalities, drawing on the author's wealth of personal experience and the latest peer-reviewed research. A complete pedagogical resource, Sports and Soft Tissue Injuries is highly illustrated in full colour, and is an important text for students of sports therapy, physiotherapy, sport medicine and athletic training, interesting further reading for sport and exercise science or kinesiology students with an interest in sports injury, and a crucial reference for practicing physiotherapists and athletic trainers and the related disciplines.

Empson was an ethical critic from the outset. He pioneered the techniques of "verbal criticism" chiefly in order to promote tolerance of cultural and historical differences, and to discourage the sacrifice of self or others to any form of irrationalism. In his later work, Empson's growing obsession with the horror of the Crucifixion (as event and symbol), together with his eclectic interest in the mediatory forms of pantheism and vitalism, are all enlisted in support of the campaign against human sacrifice in all its guises, which was already being waged in "Seven Types of Ambiguity" . "William Empson" provides an account of Empson's career to date, and seeks to serve also to discredit the appropriation of his name in recent polemic by the conflicting parties of deconstruction and politicized cultural criticism. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of the theory and history of literary criticism.

What literary historians describe as the modernist movement in literature - in which Ezra Pound doubled as a major poet and principal publicist - is currently being revalued by practitioners of various symptomatic styles of criticism who find modernism Fascist in its politics and masculinist in its sexual politics. "Ezra Pound as Literary Critic" contributes to some of those debates by which Pound came to dominate the discourse of modernism. Indeed, so successfully did he dominate that his version of it was reproduced by academic critics as an official literary history of the period beginning in 1910 with the publication of Pound's "The Spirit of Romance", and culminating in 1922 with the appearance of "Ulysses" and "The Wasteland".

This Routledge Revival, first published in 1985, gives detailed attention to the bearing of literary theory on questions of truth, meaning and reference. On the one hand, deconstruction brings a vigilant awareness of the figural and narrative tropes that make up the discourse of philosophic reason. On the other it insists that argumentative rigour cannot be divorced from the kind of close reading that has come to characterize literary theory in its more advanced or speculative forms. This present-day 'contest of faculties' has large implications for philosophers and critics, many of whom will welcome the reissue of such a clear-headed statement of the impact of deconstruction.