Kenneth Burke's influence ranged across history, philosophy and the social sciences. This important study examines Burke's influence on contemporary theories of rhetoric and the subject, and explains why Burke failed to complete his Motives trilogy. Burke's own critique of the "isolated unique individual" led him to question the possibility of unique individuation, thereby anticipating important elements of postmodern concepts of subjectivity. This book is both a timely and judicious exposition of Burke's long career and a crucial intervention in critical debates surrounding rhetoric, history...

The concept of possible worlds, originally introduced in philosophical logic, proves to be a productive tool when borrowed by literary theory to explain the notion of fictional worlds. Ruth Ronen develops a comparative reading of the use of possible worlds in philosophy and in literary theory. She suggests new criteria for the definition of fictionality; and through specific studies of domains within fictional worlds--events, objects, time and point of view--she proposes a radical rethinking of fictionality in general and fictional narrativity in particular.

The concept of possible worlds, originally introduced in philosophical logic, proves to be a productive tool when borrowed by literary theory to explain the notion of fictional worlds. Ruth Ronen develops a comparative reading of the use of possible worlds in philosophy and in literary theory. She suggests new criteria for the definition of fictionality; and through specific studies of domains within fictional worlds--events, objects, time and point of view--she proposes a radical rethinking of fictionality in general and fictional narrativity in particular.

Peter Szondi is widely regarded as being among the most distinguished postwar literary critics. This first English edition of one of his most lucid and interesting series of lectures, translated by Martha Woodmansee and with a foreword by Joel Weinsheimer, opens up his work in hermeneutics to English-speaking readers. Peter Szondi here traces the historical development of hermeneutics through examination of the work of German Enlightenment theorists, which yields valuable insights into the "material theory" of interpretation.

The material elements of writing have long been undervalued; but analysis of these elements--sound, signature, letters--can transform our understanding of major texts. Tom Cohen argues in this book that in an era of representational criticism the role of close reading has been overlooked. Through astonishing new readings of writers such as Plato, Bakhtin, Poe, Whitman, and Conrad, Professor Cohen exposes the limitations of new historicism and neo-pragmatism, and demonstrates how the "materiality of language" challenges representational models of meaning imposed by the canon.

The work of Jacques Derrida can be seen to reinvent most theories; here Robert Smith offers a reading of the philosophy of Derrida and an investigation of theories of autobiography. Smith argues that for Derrida autobiography is not so much a general condition of thought as a general condition of writing that mocks any self-centered finitude of living and dying. In this context, Smith thinks through Derrida's texts in a new way, and finds new perspectives to analyze classical writers including Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud and de Man.

The material elements of writing have long been undervalued; but analysis of these elements--sound, signature, letters--can transform our understanding of major texts. Tom Cohen argues in this book that in an era of representational criticism the role of close reading has been overlooked. Through astonishing new readings of writers such as Plato, Bakhtin, Poe, Whitman, and Conrad, Professor Cohen exposes the limitations of new historicism and neo-pragmatism, and demonstrates how the "materiality of language" challenges representational models of meaning imposed by the canon.

The skeptical relativism and self-conscious rhetoric of the pragmatist tradition, which began with the pre-Socratic Sophists and developed through an American tradition including William James and John Dewey, have attracted new attention in the context of postmodernist thought. At the same time there has been a more general renewal of interest in rhetoric itself. This book explores the various ways in which rhetoric, sophistry, and pragmatism overlap in their current theoretical and political implications, and demonstrates how they contribute both to a rethinking of the human sciences within...

What is the relationship between contemporary intellectual culture and the European Enlightenment? In Consequences of Enlightenment, Anthony Cascardi revisits the arguments advanced in Horkheimer and Adorno's seminal work Dialectic of Enlightenment. Cascardi argues that postmodern culture does not reject Enlightenment beliefs and explores the link between aesthetics and politics in thinkers as diverse as Habermas, Derrida, Arendt, Nietzsche, Hegel and Wittgenstein. He reverses the tendency to see art simply in terms of the worldly practices among which it is situated. Aesthetic objects, he...

In Chronoschisms Ursula Heise explores the way developments in communication and information technology have led to the emergence of a new culture of time in Western societies. Drawing on theories of postmodernism and narratology, she shows how postmodern narratives break up the concept of plot into a spectrum of contradictory story lines that allow new conceptions of history and posthistory to emerge. This wide-ranging study offers new readings of postmodernist theory and fresh insight into the often vexing relationship between literature and science.