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In its most specific form, deconstruction is a mode of philosophical and literary analysis, derived from the work of French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, which questions the most basic philosophical categories or concepts. Since deconstruction has traditionally been an activity based in philosophy, it has required, from the outset, explanation and explication. Indeed, one could argue that deconstruction has to a considerable extent been formed by critical accounts of it. This collection will reprint a cross section of these important works. The result is a set which charts the ways in which deconstruction is conceptualised and demonstrates the impact it has had on a wide range of traditions - areas as diverse as psychoanalysis, law, gender studies and architecture.
With an emphasis on readers and reading, Jonathan Culler considers
deconstruction in terms of the questions raised by psychoanalytic,
feminist, and reader-response criticism. On Deconstruction is both
an authoritative synthesis of Derrida's thought and an analysis of
the often-problematic relationship between his philosophical
writings and the work of literary critics. Culler's book is an
indispensable guide for anyone interested in understanding modern
critical thought. This edition marks the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the first publication of this landmark work and includes a new
preface by the author that surveys deconstruction's history since
the 1980s and assesses its place within cultural theory today.
'The brilliance, precision and clarity with which Dr Culler conducts his argument make this a book which all those concerned with the analysis of literature should read.' - A.S. Byatt
This book shows how rhythm constitutes an untapped resource for
understanding poetry. Intervening in recent debates over formalism,
historicism, and poetics, the authors show how rhythm is at once a
defamiliarizing aesthetic force and an unstable concept. Distinct
from the related terms to which it's often assimilated-scansion,
prosody, meter-rhythm makes legible a range of ways poetry affects
us that cannot be parsed through the traditional resources of
poetic theory. Rhythm has rich but also problematic roots in
still-lingering nineteenth-century notions of primitive, oral,
communal, and sometimes racialized poetics. But there are reasons
to understand and even embrace its seductions, including its
resistance to lyrical voice and even identity. Through exploration
of rhythm's genealogies and present critical debates, the essays
consistently warn against taking rhythm to be a given form offering
ready-made resources for interpretation. Pressing beyond poetry
handbooks' isolated descriptions of technique or inductive
declarations of what rhythm "is," the essays ask what it means to
think rhythm. Rhythm, the contributors show, happens relative to
the body, on the one hand, and to language, on the other-two
categories that are distinct from the literary, the mode through
which poetics has tended to be analyzed. Beyond articulating what
rhythm does to poetry, the contributors undertake a genealogical
and theoretical analysis of how rhythm as a human experience has
come to be articulated through poetry and poetics. The resulting
work helps us better understand poetry both on its own terms and in
its continuities with other experiences and other arts.
Contributors: Derek Attridge, Tom Cable, Jonathan Culler, Natalie
Gerber, Ben Glaser, Virginia Jackson, Simon Jarvis, Ewan Jones,
Erin Kappeler, Meredith Martin, David Nowell Smith, Yopie Prins,
Haun Saussy
To gain a deeper understanding of the literary movement that has
dominated recent Anglo-American literary criticism, The Pursuit of
Signs is a must. In a world increasingly mediated, it offers
insights into our ways of consuming texts that are both brilliant
and bold. Dancing through semiotics, reader-response criticism, the
value of the apostrophe and much more, Jonathan Culler opens up for
every reader the closed world of literary criticism. Its impact on
first publication, in 1981, was immense; now, as Mieke Bal notes,
'the book has the same urgency and acuity that it had then', though
today it has even wider implications: 'with the interdisciplinary
turn taking hold, literary theory itself, through this book,
becomes a much more widespread tool for cultural analysis'.
Has "theory" neglected literature? Often literary and cultural
theory, which goes by the nickname "Theory," has seemed to be the
theory of everything except literature: theory of language, of
sexuality, of history, of the body, of the psyche, of meaning (or
meaninglessness), of politics, but not theory of literature.
In this timely and wide-ranging book, Jonathan Culler, whose lucid
analyses of structuralism, semiotics, and deconstruction have been
prized by generations of readers, explores the place of the
literary in theory. If theory has sometimes neglected literature,
the literary has, Culler argues, retained a crucial if
misunderstood role. Culler's account of the fortunes of the
literary in theory, of the resistance to theory, and of key
theoretical concepts--text, sign, interpretation, performative, and
omniscience--provides valuable insight into today's theoretical
debates; and his analysis of various disciplinary practices
explores the possibilities of theory for the present and the
future.
Is academic writing, particularly in the disciplines of literary
theory and cultural studies, needlessly obscure? The claim has been
widely circulated in the media and subject to passionate debate,
but it has not been the subject of serious discussion. Just Being
Difficult? provides learned and thoughtful analyses of the claim,
of those it targets, and of the entire question of how critical
writing relates to its intended publics and to audiences beyond
them. In this book, a range of distinguished scholars, including
some who have been charged with willful obscurity, argue for the
interest and importance of some of the procedures that critics have
preferred to charge with obscurity rather than confront in another
way. The debate on difficult writing hovers on the edges of all
academic writing that seeks to play a role in the public arena.
This collection is a much-needed contribution to the discussion.
''The brilliance, precision and clarity with which Dr Culler conducts his argument make this a book which all those concerned with the analysis of literature should read.' - A.S. Byatt
With an emphasis on readers and reading, Jonathan Culler considers
deconstruction in terms of the questions raised by psychoanalytic,
feminist, and reader-response criticism. On Deconstruction is both
an authoritative synthesis of Derrida's thought and an analysis of
the often-problematic relationship between his philosophical
writings and the work of literary critics. Culler's book is an
indispensable guide for anyone interested in understanding modern
critical thought. This edition marks the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the first publication of this landmark work and includes a new
preface by the author that surveys deconstruction's history since
the 1980s and assesses its place within cultural theory today.
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The Flowers of Evil (Paperback)
Charles Baudelaire; Translated by James N. McGowan; Introduction by Jonathan Culler
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R320
R231
Discovery Miles 2 310
Save R89 (28%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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The Flowers of Evil, which T. S. Eliot called the greatest example
of modern poetry in any language, shocked the literary world of
nineteenth century France with its outspoken portrayal of lesbian
love, its linking sexuality and death, its unremitting irony, and
its unflinching celebration of the seamy side of urban life. The
volume was seized by the police, and Baudelaire and his published
were put on trial for offence to public decency. Six offending
poems were banned, in a conviction that was not overturned until
1949. This bold new translation, which restores the banned poems to
their original places and reveals the full richness and variety of
the collection, makes available to English speakers a powerful and
original version of the world. Jonathan Culler's Introduction
outlines this vision, stressing that Baudelaire is more than just
the poet of the modern city. Originally to be called `The
Lesbians', The Flowers of Evil contains the most extraordinary body
of love poetry. The poems also pose the question of the role of
evil in our lives, of whether there are not external forces working
to frustrate human plans and to enlist men and women on appalling
or stultifying scenarios not of their own making. ABOUT THE SERIES:
For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the
widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable
volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the
most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features,
including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful
notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further
study, and much more.
What sort of thing is a lyric poem? An intense expression of
subjective experience? The fictive speech of a specifiable persona?
Theory of the Lyric reveals the limitations of these two
conceptions of the lyric-the older Romantic model and the modern
conception that has come to dominate the study of poetry-both of
which neglect what is most striking and compelling in the lyric and
falsify the long and rich tradition of the lyric in the West.
Jonathan Culler explores alternative conceptions offered by this
tradition, such as public discourse made authoritative by its
rhythmical structures, and he constructs a more capacious model of
the lyric that will help readers appreciate its range of
possibilities. "Theory of the Lyric brings Culler's own earlier,
more scattered interventions together with an eclectic selection
from others' work in service to what he identifies as a dominant
need of the critical and pedagogical present: turning readers'
attention to lyric poems as verbal events, not fictions of
impersonated speech. His fine, nuanced readings of particular poems
and kinds of poems are crucial to his arguments. His observations
on the workings of aspects of lyric across multiple different
structures are the real strength of the book. It is a work of
practical criticism that opens speculative vistas for poetics but
always returns to poems." -Elizabeth Helsinger, Critical Theory
Benedict Anderson is best known for his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, one of the most influential works of the last twenty years. Read both by social scientists and humanists, Anderson has thought anew such questions as why people love and die for nations, how religious faith became a territorial issue, the interrelation of capitalism and print, and how forms of nationalism have been adapted and transformed in different situations. This volume includes essays on Anderson's themes and ideas by such scholars as Andrew Parker, Lydia Liu, Doris Sommer, Harry Harootunian, Partha Chatterjee, David Hollinger, and Marc Redfield. Of particular interest is a substantial new essay by Benedict Anderson, written for this volume.
To gain a deeper understanding of the literary movement that has
dominated recent Anglo-American literary criticism, The Pursuit of
Signs is a must. In a world increasingly mediated, it offers
insights into our ways of consuming texts that are both brilliant
and bold. Dancing through semiotics, reader-response criticism, the
value of the apostrophe and much more, Jonathan Culler opens up for
every reader the closed world of literary criticism. Its impact on
first publication, in 1981, was immense; now, as Mieke Bal notes,
'the book has the same urgency and acuity that it had then', though
today it has even wider implications: 'with the interdisciplinary
turn taking hold, literary theory itself, through this book,
becomes a much more widespread tool for cultural analysis'.
This book shows how rhythm constitutes an untapped resource for
understanding poetry. Intervening in recent debates over formalism,
historicism, and poetics, the authors show how rhythm is at once a
defamiliarizing aesthetic force and an unstable concept. Distinct
from the related terms to which it’s often
assimilated—scansion, prosody, meter—rhythm makes legible a
range of ways poetry affects us that cannot be parsed through the
traditional resources of poetic theory. Rhythm has rich but also
problematic roots in still-lingering nineteenth-century notions of
primitive, oral, communal, and sometimes racialized poetics. But
there are reasons to understand and even embrace its seductions,
including its resistance to lyrical voice and even identity.
Through exploration of rhythm’s genealogies and present critical
debates, the essays consistently warn against taking rhythm to be a
given form offering ready-made resources for interpretation.
Pressing beyond poetry handbooks’ isolated descriptions of
technique or inductive declarations of what rhythm “is,” the
essays ask what it means to think rhythm. Rhythm, the contributors
show, happens relative to the body, on the one hand, and to
language, on the other—two categories that are distinct from the
literary, the mode through which poetics has tended to be analyzed.
Beyond articulating what rhythm does to poetry, the contributors
undertake a genealogical and theoretical analysis of how rhythm as
a human experience has come to be articulated through poetry and
poetics. The resulting work helps us better understand poetry both
on its own terms and in its continuities with other experiences and
other arts. Contributors: Derek Attridge, Tom Cable, Jonathan
Culler, Natalie Gerber, Ben Glaser, Virginia Jackson, Simon Jarvis,
Ewan Jones, Erin Kappeler, Meredith Martin, David Nowell Smith,
Yopie Prins, Haun Saussy
Is academic writing, particularly in the disciplines of literary
theory and cultural studies, needlessly obscure? The claim has been
widely circulated in the media and subject to passionate debate,
but it has not been the subject of serious discussion. Just Being
Difficult? provides learned and thoughtful analyses of the claim,
of those it targets, and of the entire question of how critical
writing relates to its intended publics and to audiences beyond
them. In this book, a range of distinguished scholars, including
some who have been charged with willful obscurity, argue for the
interest and importance of some of the procedures that critics have
preferred to charge with obscurity rather than confront in another
way. The debate on difficult writing hovers on the edges of all
academic writing that seeks to play a role in the public arena.
This collection is a much-needed contribution to the discussion.
Has theory neglected literature? Often literary and cultural
theory, which goes by the nickname Theory, has seemed to be the
theory of everything except literature: theory of language, of
sexuality, of history, of the body, of the psyche, of meaning (or
meaninglessness), of politics, but not theory of literature. In
this timely and wide-ranging book, Jonathan Culler, whose lucid
analyses of structuralism, semiotics, and deconstruction have been
prized by generations of readers, explores the place of the
literary in theory. If theory has sometimes neglected literature,
the literary has, Culler argues, retained a crucial if
misunderstood role. Culler's account of the fortunes of the
literary in theory, of the resistance to theory, and of key
theoretical concepts - text, sign, interpretation, performative,
and omniscience - provides valuable insight into today's
theoretical debates; and his analysis of various disciplinary
practices explores the possibilities of theory for the present and
the future.
What is literary theory? Is there a relationship between literature
and culture? These are some of questions addressed by Jonathan
Culler in this new edition of his highly popular Very Short
Introduction. Culler, an extremely lucid commentator and much
admired in the field of literary theory, uses easy-to-grasp
examples as he outlines the ideas behind schools of criticism that
can otherwise be quite daunting, such as deconstruction, semiotics,
and postcolonial theory. He explains "theory" not by describing
warring "schools" but by sketching key "moves" that theory has
encouraged, and by speaking directly about the implications of
theory for thinking about literature, human identity, and the power
of language.
In this Second Edition, Culler includes much new material,
including a discussion of the "death of theory," a look at topics
such as trauma theory, ecocriticism, and the link between the
theory of narrative and cognitive science, plus a new chapter on
"Ethics and Aesthetics." The book also includes updated
bibliographies. Shedding light on everything from literature and
social identity, to poetry, poetics, and rhetoric, Literary Theory
is a welcome guide for all lovers of literature.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and
style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of
life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the
newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about
the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from
philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
Gerard Genette, a critic of international stature, here builds a
systematic theory of narrative upon an analysis of the writings of
Marcel Proust, particularly Remembrance of Things Past. Adopting
what is essentially a structuralist approach, the author identifies
and names the basic constituents and techniques of narrative and
illustrates them by referring to literary works in many languages.
From reviews of the first edition?"Academic literary crticism
continues to be dominated by 'theory' and the struggle between
deconstructionist and humanist approaches to the business of
reading. Jonathan Culler's On Deconstruction is a typically
patient, thoughtful, illuminating exposition of the ideas of
Jacques Derrida and their application to literary studies." David
Lodge, Commonwealth"Culler is lucid and thorough, can move into and
out of other people's arguments without losing the sense of his own
voice and argument, and can manage to seem equally at home with
Freudianism, feminism, and traditional literary criticism." Times
Literary Supplement"As a practicing critic Culler has always been a
deconstructor, and he approaches this topic with special immediacy
and force. In On Deconstruction he offers generous summaries of
numerous representative articles and a fine annotated bibliography.
. . . His magisterial way of tracing particular topics and
techniques through our diaspora of critical texts, and his
provocative analyses, cannot fail to focus any critic's thinking
about deconstruction." Modern Language Quarterly"Gifted with grace
and clarity, Culler provides us with a stimulating survey of
contemporary literary criticism." Antioch ReviewWith an emphasis on
readers and reading, Jonathan Culler considered deconstruction in
terms of the questions raised by psychoanalytic, feminist, and
reader-response criticism. On Deconstruction is both an
authoritative synthesis of Derrida's thought and an analysis of the
often-problematic relation between his philosophical writings and
the work of literary critics. Culler's book is an indispensable
guide for anyone interested in understanding modern critical
thought. This edition marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the
first publication of this landmark work and includes a new preface
by the author that surveys deconstruction's history since the 1980s
and assesses its place within cultural theory today."
Roland Barthes was the leading figure of French Structuralism, the theoretical movement of the 1960s which revolutionized the study of literature and culture, as well as history and psychoanalysis. But Barthes was a man who disliked orthodoxies. His shifting positions and theoretical interests make him hard to grasp and assess. This book surveys Barthes' work in clear, accessible prose, highlighting what is most interesting and important in his work today.
The primary task of literary theory, Jonathan Culler asserts in the
new edition of his classic in this field, is not to illuminate
individual literary works but to explain the system of literary
signification -- the rules and conventions that determine a
reader's understanding of a text and that make literary
communication possible. In this wide-ranging book, he investigates
the possibilities of a semiotics of literature. A new preface
places The Pursuit of Signs in the context of major developments in
the study of literature since publication of the original Cornell
edition in 1981.
With an emphasis on readers and reading, Jonathan Culler considered
deconstruction in terms of the questions raised by psychoanalytic,
feminist, and reader-response criticism. On Deconstruction is both
an authoritative synthesis of Derrida's thought and an analysis of
the often-problematic relation between his philosophical writings
and the work of literary critics. Culler's book is an indispensable
guide for anyone interested in understanding modern critical
thought. This edition marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the
first publication of this landmark work and includes a new preface
by the author that surveys deconstruction's history since the 1980s
and assesses its place within cultural theory today.
Umberto Eco, international bestselling novelist and literary
theorist, here brings together these two roles in a provocative
discussion of the vexed question of literary interpretation. The
limits of interpretation - what a text can actually be said to mean
- are of double interest to a semiotician whose own novels'
intriguing complexity has provoked his readers into intense
speculation as to their meaning. Eco's discussion ranges from Dante
to The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum to Chomsky and
Derrida, and bears all the hallmarks of his personal style. Three
of the world's leading figures in philosophy, literary theory and
criticism take up the challenge of entering into debate with Eco on
the question of interpretation. Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler and
Christine Brooke-Rose each add a distinctive perspective on this
contentious topic, contributing to an exchange of ideas between
some of the foremost theorists in the field. The work is intended
for students and scholars of literary theory and philosophy
(especially semiotics).
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