Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003), one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century French literature, produced a wide variety of essays and fictions that reflect on the complexities of literary wo
What can be said about the silence that precedes a poem or a story? What myths have been thought up to explain the transition from "nothing" to a work of art? And when did the "account of composition"
One afternoon in December 1992, in Tartu, Estonia, Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman reluctantly sat down to dictate his memoirs to Elena Pogosian, his assistant, over a pot of tea. It was to be the first of t
With Flann O'Brien now widely acknowledged as a subversive genius of early post-modernism, Flore Coulouma gives the "question of language" a central position in his literary identity
After nearly a lifetime of reading Rilke in English translation, William H. Gass undertook the task of translating Rilke's writing himself, in order to see if he could, in that way, get closer to the
How do writers and filmmakers use repetition? It is useful when accenting an idea, but, in this original and thought-provoking book, Bruce F. Kawin argues that it serves a more important function as a
Caring for Japanese Art at the Chester Beatty Library is a memoir of Yoshiko Ushioda , looking back at more than five decades of life in Dublin. The story begins in 1960, when she traveled from Tokyo
For the past half-century, John Barth has been recognized as our quintessential postmodernist and praised as one of the best writers “we have ever had” (New York Times Book Review). In this unique col
"Translation as Innovation: Bridging the Sciences and the Humanities" was the theme of the second biennial conference coordinated through a partnership between the Center for Transla
This magnificent and witty study by an unrecognized innovator seeks to define and explore the nature of "nonsense" in literature. Relying mainly on readings of Lewis Carroll and Edwa
French Fiction Today focuses on the French novel in the twenty-first century, examining a series of works that are exemplary of broader currents in the genre. Each of these texts wagers insistently up
Theory of Literature was born from the collaboration of René Wellek, a Vienna-born student of Prague School linguistics, and Austin Warren, an independently minded “old New Critic.” Unlike many other
As species, and as a culture, we recognize ourselves by our capacity for possession, so that personhood is made equivalent to ownership. If, however, the way in which we imagine objects predisposes ou
Another View examines the impact of the foreign in the context of non-native prose writing and its implications for literature in translation. Containing significant debut translations into English fr
In Tests of Time (2003), Gass shares his thoughts about writing, reading, culture, history, politics, and public opinion, including essays on classic writers and contemporaries, literary "lists" and
The World Within the Word, Gass's second published volume of criticism, is a landmark collection discussing Valery, Henry Miller, Sartre, Freud, Faulkner, suicide, "art and order," and the transformat
Arguing that Australian works are a distinct subgenre in World War I literature, the author examines how leadership is represented in Australian prose narratives by veterans and civilians in relation
