Musica Naturalis delivers the first systematic account of speculative music theory as a discursive horizon for literary poetics. The title refers to the late medieval French poet Eustache Deschamps, w
The migration of American artists and intellectuals to Europe in the early twentieth century has been amply documented and studied, but few scholars have examined the aftermath of their return home.
Kaufman (comparative literature, UCLA) presents a study of Gilles Deleuze that, against the tendency to see him as a philosopher of becoming, focuses on his unappreciated thought about stasis. She sit
In this volume Guillemette Bolens examines the ways in which artists, authors, and readers draw on skills, sensorimotor capacities, and embodied knowledge when creating and experiencing artistic and l
Few events in European history generated more historical, artistic, and literary responses than the conquest of Jerusalem by the armies of the First Crusade in 1099. This epic military and religious e
Is it legitimate to conceive of and write a history of medieval French literature when the term "literature" as we know it today did not appear until the very end of the Middle Ages? In this novel int
Critics predominantly view Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor as a "testament of acceptance," the work of a man who had become politically conservative in his last years. William V. Spanos disagree
This book is about the ambition. in a set of paradigmatic writers of the twentieth century. to simultaneously enlist and break the spell of the real---their fascination with the spectacle of violence
This fascinating study explores the intersection of postcolonial theory and medievalism. While the latter has traditionally been defined primarily in terms of European nationalism, the essays in this
Paul A. Kottman offers a new and compelling understanding of tragedy as seen in four of Shakespeare's mature plays -- As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest. The author pushes beyond trad
Readers and scholars often question the inclusion of the Book of Esther in the canon. Where, they wonder, do the book’s flagrant displays of hatred, deceit, violence, and the antidotal grotesqueries o
Death is the opposite not of life, but of power. And as such, Mohammed Bamyeh argues in this original work, death has had a great and largely unexplored impact on the thinking of governance throughout
In recent years, articles in major periodicals from the New York Times Magazine to the Times Literary Supplement have heralded the arrival of a new school of literary studies that promises-or threaten
A new critical model drawing on the ideas of Wittgenstein and Cavell and focusing on the role of the ordinary and the familiar in the experience of writing and reading
Seventeen essays written by eminent literary critics and philosophers offer criticism grounded in the "ordinary" or natural language we all speak, based on the ordinary language philosophy deriving pa
In a trenchant critique of the full range of theoretical discourses that have come into favor in literary studies since the 1960s, Tony Hilfer demonstrates that none of the practitioners of these form
The dimension of religion in the life and work of Bakhtin has been fiercely contested--and willfully ignored--by critics. Unique in its in-depth focus on this subject, Bakhtin and Religion brings toge
Recently, a number of Anglo-American philosophers of very different sorts--pragmatists, metaphysicians, philosophers of language, philosophers of law, moral philosophers--have taken a reflective rathe
This collection assembles in-depth and insightful writings by and about, and interviews with, one of the most fascinating writers of the twentieth century. Anyone interested in Lem's provocative and u
The Romanian critic Eugen Simion contests leading twentieth-century critics who deny the author a place in criticism by maintaining that the author's life can tell us nothing about his or her literary
The Russian critic M. M. Bakhtin has recently become a major figure in contemporary theory beyond his traditional influence in Slavic literary studies. Bakhtin in Contexts explores the revolutionary i
After Poststructuralism: Interdisciplinary and Literary Theory challenges the premises of and suggests new alternatives to the more extreme approaches in current literary theory. The essays collected
Teaching, Responsibility, and the Corruption of Youth explores the notion of responsibility in a complex world focusing on practices of truth-telling, interculturalism and ethnocentrism, the sources o
Teaching, Responsibility, and the Corruption of Youth explores the notion of responsibility in a complex world focusing on practices of truth-telling, interculturalism and ethnocentrism, the sources o
