Realism and Its Vicissitudes ─ Essays in Honor of Sandy Petrey

Colleagues and former students of Sandy Petrey mark the literature scholar's retirement with essays on the areas of his specialty: realism, speech act theory, and the impact of the French Revolution on Europe and the world at large. A perusal of topics includes titles such as the present King of France is bald, Victor Hugo as realist in Notre-Dame de Paris, Andre Gorz and the philosophical foundation of the political, Sontag between America and Europe, and a note on English loan words in American Italian and Standard Italian. Annotation c2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Robert Harvey is Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook where he chairs the Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory. He has written extensively on Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marguerite Duras, Marcel Duchamp, and Michel Deguy and has translated Lyotard, Deguy, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Paul Ric?ur. His most recent books are Witnessness: Beckett, Levi, Dante and the Foundations of Ethics, Les Ecrits de Marguerite Duras, and De l’exception a la regle. Harvey is a major co-editor of the prestigious Pleiade edition of the complete works of Marguerite Duras. He served as Program Director at the College International de Philosophie in Paris (2001–2007).
Patrice Nganang, writer and scholar, is Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Theory at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Nganang has published collections of poetry: elobi and L’apologie du vandale; novels: La Saison des prunes, Temps de chien, and La Joie de vivre, which constitute a cycle depicting city life, Mont plaisant and La Saison des prunes, a cycle about wars from a Cameroonian point of view; and short novellas: L’Invention du beau regard and La Chanson du joggeur. His publications also include three collections of essays: La Principe dissident, Manifeste d’une nouvelle litterature africaine: Pour une ecriture preemptive and Contre Biya: Proces d’un tyran. In addition, his columns appear regularly in Cameroonian and international newspapers such as Jeune Afrique and Le Monde. His novel Mont plaisant is scheduled to appear in English.