Semiotics & Theory

Jean Baudrillard is one of the most controversial theorists of our time, famous for his claim that the Gulf War never happened and for his provocative writing on terrorism, specifically 9/11. This new and fully updated second edition includes: an...

Mimesis, with its connecting concepts of imitation, simile, and similarity, has been cited since classical times in the exploration of the relationship between art and reality. In this major study Arne Melberg discusses the theory and history of mimesis...

This work provides the first truly comprehensive and systematic reconstruction of proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian). It rigorously applies, throughout, the established canon and techniques of the historical-comparative method. It also fully incorporates...

Although the era of European colonialism has long passed, misgivings about the inequality of the encounters between European and non-European languages persist in many parts of the postcolonial world. This unfinished state of affairs, this lingering...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Alarms are alarming. They wake us up, demand our attention and force us to attend to things we've preferred to ignore. But alarms also allow us...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Glitter reveals the complexity of an object often dismissed as frivolous. Nicole Seymour describes how glitter's consumption and status have...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780374521608Author Roland BarthesFormat PaperbackPage Count 77Imprint Farrar, Straus & Giroux IncPublisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc

Fimi explores the evolution of Tolkien's mythology throughout his lifetime by examining how it changed as a result of his life story and contemporary cultural and intellectual history. This new approach and scope brings to light neglected aspects of...

The Age of the Poets revisits the age-old problem of the relation between literature and philosophy, arguing against both Plato and Heidegger's famous arguments. Philosophy neither has to ban the poets from the republic nor abdicate its own powers to the...

In a succession of provocative and wide-ranging chapters, Stanley Fish explores the rational basis of our literary, legal, and psychoanalytic interpretations. He argues that while we can never separate our judgements from the context in which they are...

Today, history is increasingly written in the first person. A growing number of historical works include an autobiographical dimension, as if writing about the past required exploring the inner life of the author. Neither traditional history nor...

Where does the idea of the postmodern come from? Who first conceived, and who developed it? How have its meanings changed? What purposes do they serve? These are the questions addressed in The Origins of Postmodernity. The answers take us from Lima to...

In "The Company We Keep", Wayne C. Booth argues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature. But the questions he asks are not confined to morality. Returning ethics to its root sense, Booth proposes that the...

This ground-breaking new work offers a spirited and severe critique of the turn to an anti-aesthetic in theoretical writing and asserts that it has now become an intellectual necessity to rethink the aesthetic and remake aesthetic discourse.About the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781640094109Author Susan GriffinFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint CounterpointPublisher Counterpoint

As a literary mode "lyric" is difficult to define precisely. While the term has conventionally been applied to brief, songlike poems expressing the speaker's interior thoughts critics have questioned many of the assumptions underlying this definition,...

The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded American culture from the beginning - and its powerful eloquence continues to be felt even today. In this book, acclaimed biblical translator and literary critic Robert Alter traces some...

In 1956 Jacques Lacan proposed an interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Purloined Letter" that at once challenged literary theorists and revealed a radical new concept of psychoanalysis. Lacan's far reaching claims about language and truth provoked a...

A passionate, wry, and personal book about how the greatest works of literature illuminate our livesWhy do we read literature? For Arnold Weinstein, the answer is clear: literature allows us to become someone else. Literature changes us by giving us...

This new edition of Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth begins with an historical, grounding overview that situates ecofeminist theory and activism within the larger field of ecocriticism and provides a timeline for...

What are the unconscious processes involved in reading literature? How does literature influence our psychological development and existential challenges? A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature offers a unique glimpse into the unconscious...

Many writing instructors teach writing through autobiography. By considering the lives of others and then contemplating their own lives, aspiring writers discover a wellspring of material that can be used in their prose. While not explicitly for courses,...

This seminal book, Eliot's first collection of literary criticism, appeared in London in 1920, two years before The Waste Land. It contains some of his most influential early essays and reviews, among them 'Tradition and the Individual Talent', 'Hamlet...

From his arrival in Britain in the 1950s and involvement in the New Left, to founding the field of cultural studies and examining race and identity in the 1990s and early 2000s, Stuart Hall has been central to shaping many of the cultural and political...

In this groundbreaking book, Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. In place of the traditionally selective literary canon of a few hundred texts, Moretti offers...

This reader provides a solid theoretical base for all those encountering the 'author' debate for the first time. It presents key readings from the main writers on authorship, including pieces from Plato, Descartes, Shelley, Freud, T. S. Eliot, Sartre,...

Terry Eagleton's book, in this vital new series from Blackwell, focuses on discriminating different meanings of culture, as a way of introducing to the general reader the contemporary debates around it.About the AuthorTerry Eagleton is Professor of...

Dead Pledges is the first book to explore the ways that U.S. culture-from novels and poems to photojournalism and horror movies-has responded to the collapse of the financialized consumer credit economy in 2008. Connecting debt theory to questions of...

Building on the foundational Affect Theory Reader, this new volume gathers together contemporary scholarship that highlights and interrogates the contemporary state of affect inquiry. Unsettling what might be too readily taken-for-granted assumptions in...

This successful introduction to intertextuality deftly introduces this crucial area and relates its significance to key theories and movements in the study of literature. The third edition is updated to include a brand new chapter, looking at...

Conversion disorder-a psychiatric term that names the enigmatic transformation of psychic energy into bodily manifestations-offers a way to rethink the present. With so many people suffering from unexplained bodily symptoms; with so many seeking recourse...

"[Mitchell] undertakes to explore the nature of images by comparing them with words, or, more precisely, by looking at them from the viewpoint of verbal language. . . . The most lucid exposition of the subject I have ever read."-Rudolf Arnheim, Times...

In this completely revised and considerably expanded new edition, Steven Connor considers the recent work of the most influential postmodern theorists, including Lyotard and Jameson, and offers accounts both of the work of newly emerging theorists and...

Showcases the energy and diversity of the young field of music semiology, appealing to readers who want to explore the meaning of music in our lives. The Dawn of Music Semiology showcases the work of nine leading musicologists, inspired by the work of...

In Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity, Janine Barchas makes the bold assertion that Jane Austen's novels allude to actual high-profile politicians and contemporary celebrities as well as to famous historical figures and...

Why have theorists approached narrative primarily as a form of retrospect? Mark Currie argues that anticipation and other forms of projection into the future are vital for an understanding of narrative and its effects in the world. In a series of...

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been characterised as the 'age of speed' but they also witnessed a reanimation of still life across different art forms. This book takes an original approach to still life in modern literature and...

This is the second volume of Theweleit's extraordinary study of the fantasies of some of the men centrally involved in the rise of Nazism. The author develops his account by focusing on the representation of masculinity and homosexuality and their...

Holquist's masterly study draws on all of Bakhtin's known writings providing a comprehensive account of his achievement. Widely acknowledged as an exceptional guide to Bakhtin and dialogics, this book now includes a new introduction, concluding chapter...

A guide to managing data in the digital age.Winner of the ALCTS Outstanding Publication Award by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, Winner of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award by the Society of American ArchivistsMany people...