Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Semiotics & Theory

Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well as her impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Levi-Strauss, sceince-fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thought.

This edition has a new afterword, "Thirty Years Later," in which Sontag restates the terms of her battle against...

Interest in critical theory has grown enormously since the end of the 1960s and now seems to be fully integrated into most university programs. Leonard Orr has prepared a much needed historical and international dictionary of the language of critical theory. He includes terms that have appeared with great frequency in the indexes to anthologies of critical theory, either general or specific to a period or school; terms that have appeared in the indexes to standard histories of criticism; schools of criticism or broad types of criticism; and key terms from foreign-language critical theory....

Treating the cultural giants of the 20th century, this volume traces their reading habits and intellectual development, as well as their contributions to Western culture. Suggesting the literary influences on these figures, the book includes 355 entries on people from a broad range of fields, including scientists, politicians, business figures, writers, religious leaders, and figures from the performing arts and popular culture.

The volume is a handy companion to Powell's earlier volume, Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Nineteenth Century, 1800-1914....

Arguing that genre must play a role in our study of narrative fiction, this tour of the novel examines interactive storytelling scenes in which characters argue about how to tell a tale that meets their respective social and aesthetic expectations. Through intense readings of interactive storytelling scenes in works spanning the 17th through 20th centuries, Halevi-Wise demonstrates how dramatized arguments about storytelling open a window on social and generic dilemmas affecting the narrative of each novel at the time of its composition. Examined in detail are Cervantes' Don...

Much of contemporary critical theory holds that meaning is relative and subjective. This book scrutinizes the principal assumptions and beliefs about mind, language, meaning, truth, and reality governing current debate and discussion not only in literary criticism and theory but also in the broader academic culture. In doing so, the volume brings support to the growing number of scholars who are expressing renewed interest in authors, determinate meanings, formal and aesthetic issues, and related concerns, but who have been laboring without sufficient theoretical arguments or...