The author, a noted literary critic, presents a selection of his thought on Balzac, Valery, Dickens, Goethe, Heine, Hoelderlin, lyric poetry, realism, the essay and the contemporary novel.

Kristeva points to Montesquieu's esprit general -- his notion of the social body as a guaranteed hierarchy of private rights -- in this humanistic plea for tolerance and commonality.

An exploration of gender, the body and the dynamics of repression in key literary works of the French Renaissance. The author describes how sexuality functions as a rhetorical figure through which desire is represented.

During the last two decades, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has become a dominant force in cultural activity ranging from taste in music and art to choices in food and lifestyles.

The Field of Cultural Production brings together Bourdieu's major essays on art and literature and provides the first introduction to Bourdieu's writings and theory of a cultural field that situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption.

Bourdieu develops a highly original approach to the study of literary and artistic works, addressing many of the...

Archives, monuments, celebrations: there are not merely the recollections of memory but also the foundations of history. Symbols, the third and final volume in Pierre Nora's monumental Realms of Memory, includes groundbreaking discussions of the emblems of France's past by some of the nation's most distinguished intellectuals. The seventeen essays in this book consider such diverse "sites" of memory as the figures of Joan D'Arc and Decartes, the national motto of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," the tricolor flag and the French language itself. Pierre Nora's closing essay on...

This text is the second of three volumes looking at the history of France. This volume examines how and why events and figures become part of a people's collective memory. It emphasizes the shared aspects of French history and cultural instrumental in the development of a national identity. It includes 14 essays on subjects ranging from Proust's Remembrance of Things Past to the Tour de France.

With more than two hundred entries by leading intellectuals in the French- and English-speaking world, this new volume presents the authoritative guide to twentieth-century French thought. Unrivaled in its scope and depth, The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought covers and critiques the intellectual figures, movements, and publications that helped shape and define fields as diverse as history and historiography, psychoanalysis, film, literary theory, cognitive and life sciences, literary criticism, philosophy, and economics. The contributors also discuss developments...

With more than two hundred entries by leading intellectuals in the French- and English-speaking world, this new volume presents the authoritative guide to twentieth-century French thought. Unrivaled in its scope and depth, The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought covers and critiques the intellectual figures, movements, and publications that helped shape and define fields as diverse as history and historiography, psychoanalysis, film, literary theory, cognitive and life sciences, literary criticism, philosophy, and economics. The contributors also discuss developments...

This volume, the third part of Realms of Memory, focuses on the emblems that signify Frenchness to people around the world. It includes 13 essays on cultural icons from Joan of Arc to Descartes; the national motto of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; the tricolour flag; and the French language itself. The closing essay on commemoration provides an overview of the series.

Julia Kristeva, herself a product of the famous May '68 Paris student uprising, has long been fascinated by the concept of rebellion and revolution. Psychoanalysts believe that rebellion guarantees our independence and creative capacities, but is revolution still possible? Confronted with the culture of entertainment, can we build and nurture a culture of revolt, in the etymological and Proustian sense of the word: an unveiling, a return, a displacement, a reconstruction of the past, of memory, of meaning? In the first part of the book, Kristeva examines the manner in which three of the most...