This book, first published in 1988, does not concern the theory of poetry so much as the poetry of theory: a poetry that theorizes, that has a "view" on things, that thinks. What or what things does poetry think about, and what do we mean by thinking? The author attempts to answer these questions by examining the work of three poets - Wallace Stevens, Cesar Vallejo, and Rene Char - and reflects upon the poetry itself. This title will be of interest to students of literature and literary theory.

This book, first published in 1988, does not concern the theory of poetry so much as the poetry of theory: a poetry that theorizes, that has a "view" on things, that thinks. What or what things does poetry think about, and what do we mean by thinking? The author attempts to answer these questions by examining the work of three poets - Wallace Stevens, Cesar Vallejo, and Rene Char - and reflects upon the poetry itself. This title will be of interest to students of literature and literary theory.

Northrop Frye's The Secular Scripture was first published in 1976 and was soon recognized as one of his most influential works, reflecting an extensive development of Frye's thoughts about romance as a literary form. This new edition in the Collected Works of Northrop Frye series brings The Secular Scripture together with thirty shorter pieces pertaining to literary theory and criticism from the last fifteen years of Frye's life.

Frye's study illuminates the enduring attraction and deep human significance of the romance genre in all its forms. He provides a unique perspective on popular fiction and culture and shows how romance forms have, by their very structural and conventional features, an ability to address both specific social concerns and deep and fundamental human concerns that span time and place. In distinguishing popular from elite culture, Frye insists that they are both ultimately two aspects of the same "human compulsion to create in the face of chaos." The additional late writings reflect Frye's sense at the time that he was working "toward some kind of final statement," which eventually saw the light of day, only months before his death, as Words with Power (1990).

This study offers a complex analysis of the psychodynamic role of shame in Melville's work, with detailed readings of Moby-Dick, Pierre, and "Billy Budd". Its concrete application of the rich analytic framework supplied by the work of such theorists as Heinz Kohut, Leon Wurmser, Silvan Tomkins, and Donald Nathanson implicitly challenges the contemporary reliance on an often abstract poststructuralist model of psychoanalysis. As a paradigmatic, coherent reading of the work of a single author, the book will appeal both to the many scholars interested in Melville's work and to anyone interested in psychoanalytic or psychological approaches to literature.

"It is a very erudite book, bringing together sound scholarship in several areas: comparative literature, psycho-analysis, history, and philosophy...excellent". -- Leon Wurmser, author of The Hidden Dimension and The Mask of Shame

"There is no better literary study of any corpus using psychodynamic notions, and none which wields the contemporary literature on shame with anything like the skill and coherence demonstrated by Adamson". -- Benjamin Kilborne, Los Angeles Institute & Society for Psychoanalytic Studies

Exploring the writings of Kierkegaard, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, Nietszche, D. H. Lawrence, Faulkner, Anne Sexton, and Toni Morrison, 11 contributions explore Lacanian notions of shame as evidenced by the works of the aforementioned writers. The purpose of the collection is to emphasize the