Alchemy of the Word is a study of the literary, philosophical, and cultural ramifications of Cabala during the Renaissance. Important intellectual figures from 1490 to 1690 are considered, including Agrippa, Dee, Spenser, Shakespeare, Browne, and Milton; Cabala's more recent impact is also discussed. Cabala, a hermeneutic style of Biblical commentary of Jewish origin, is based on the notion that, along with an inscribed Decalogue, Moses received a secret, oral supplement that provides a symbolic, allegorical, and moral qualification of the literal law of religion. Building on the work of...
Alchemy of the Word is a study of the literary, philosophical, and cultural ramifications of Cabala during the Renaissance. Important intellectual fig...
Although in theory deconstruction has pronounced dead the idea of literature as a special category, in practice is has fostered what might be called a literature of a library of deconstruction. In exploring works by seven twentieth-century writers - Tzara, Beckett, Leiris, Blanchot, Joyce, Sollers, and Des Forets - Beitchman focuses on the shared qualities that make them central texts in the literature of deconstruction and in so doing reveals the main tensions that form our postmodernist sensibility. In commentaries that participate in and extend the method and spirit of the particular works...
Although in theory deconstruction has pronounced dead the idea of literature as a special category, in practice is has fostered what might be called a...