Rapp mounts a devastating critique against the notion that literary and cultural theory since the 1960s has succeeded in effecting, or at least reporting, both the demise of philosophy and the emergence of a genuinely post-philosophical culture.

Explores the literary, philosophical, and cultural implications of Cabala during the Renaissance.

Makes available, for the first time in English, the work of a major modern Arab poet, providing a framework for understanding his experience not only as an Arab writer but as a postcolonial one.

Interprets Plato's Charmides as a microcosm of Socratic philosophy that presents Plato's vision of the life of critical reason and of its uneasy relation to political life in the ancient city.

Using Bakhtinian theory, this study reveals how and why readers routinely refer to the words and ideas of others to interpret the meanings and implications of the books they read.

Charts the interactive contours of European culture of the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, extending the chronological limits of Romanticism by identifying fresh links among works, authors, contexts, and institutions across national and linguistic borders.

Traces the early German Romantic origins of Joyce's modern and postmodern innovation of the novel.

Examines works of Québécois narrative fiction from a variety of perspectives.

Freccero argues that the Paradiso may be considered a medieval version of science fiction.

An anthology of literary essays focusing on the ways in which sexual, emotional, physical, racial, and other forms of violence have affected women artists' imaginations.

Focuses on the role played by the feminine principle in specific religious texts, epic poems, theater pieces, and tales narrating sacred events in which deities and supernatural or extraordinary beings move through their difficult celestial and earthly trajectories.

Argues that Aristotle's writings about the natural world contain a rhetorical surface as well as a philosophic core and shows that Aristotle's genuine views have not been refuted by modern science and still deserve serious attention.

Defines postmodern writing and distinguishes it from modern writing by citing examples from two modern and three postmodern writers: Italo Calvino, John Barth, Toni Morrison, E. L. Doctorow, and Antonio Tabucchi.

Examines the role of language in Nietzsche's thought, including the relationship between style and subjectivity, the semiological underpinnings of his theory of tragedy, his naturalism, and his theory of language and rhetoric.

Explores the way that four major works of Russian literature--Gogol's Dead Souls, Goncharov's Oblomov, Zamiatin's We, and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita--define a cultural "self" for the Russian people. Focusing on the deep cultural currents that pull Russian society in contradictory ways, Noplace Like Home also explores the writer's struggle to overcome these tensions through the creation of a literary utopia.

This is the first book-length work by Heribert Boeder to appear in English. The essays brought together here, several of which are to be found only in this volume, bear witness to a new perspective on ...

Approaches English Romanticism through sociological theory, arguing that Wordsworth and Coleridge tested hypotheses about social organization and action in their poetry. Offers a timely reevaluation of the Romantic poets as socially engaged thinkers.

Examines the concept of play in Western thought, with special emphasis on the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, and envisions literary discourse as contributing to an alternative mentality based on peace rather than power.

A comprehensive reexamination of the question of realism in literature, reviewing major critical approaches in Spanish, French, German, and Anglo-American literary tradition, and offering original reader-response-based theory and readings.

This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study of suffering and literature examines how literature can give expression to the essentially wordless reality of suffering.

Examines the influence of Nietzsche on Russian Formalists, Russian Modernism, and Mikhail Bakhtin, reinforcing the importance of the modernist theoreticians by reading them in the contemporary theoretical context.

This first scholarly edition in English of the philosophical writings of Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), the German Romantic poet, philosopher, and mining engineer, includes two collections of fragments published in 1798, Miscellaneous Observations and Faith and Love, the controversial essay Christendom or Europe, and substantial selections from his unpublished notebooks.

Establishes Blake’s controversial, unfinished epic, The Four Zoas, as the culmination of his mythos.

Focusing on the speeches and actions of the Platonic Socrates, this book argues that Plato's political philosophy is a crucial source for reflection on the hazards and possibilities of democratic politics. ...

Extends critical discussion of Adorno to works by Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison, and Amiri Baraka, arguing that Adorno's work can best be assessed in terms of its relevance in specific localized contexts.