Results for "Culler, Jonathan"

What is literary theory? Is there a relationship between literature and culture? These are some of questions addressed by Jonathan Culler in this new edition of his highly popular Very Short Introduction. Culler, an extremely lucid commentator and much admired in the field of literary theory, uses e... Read More about Literary Theory (Very Short Introductions)

The primary task of literary theory, Jonathan Culler asserts in the new edition of his classic in this field, is not to illuminate individual literary works but to explain the system of literary signification--the rules and conventions that determine a reader's understanding of a text and that make ... Read More about The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction

Gerard Genette, a critic of international stature, here builds a systematic theory of narrative upon an analysis of the writings of Marcel Proust, particularly Remembrance of Things Past. Adopting what is essentially a structuralist approach, the author identifies and names the basic constituents an... Read More about Narrative Discourse (Cornell Paperbacks)

The Flowers of Evil, which T.S. Eliot called the greatest example of modern poetry in any language, shocked the literary world of nineteenth century France with its outspoken portrayal of lesbian love, its linking of sexuality and death, its unremitting irony, and its unflinching celebration of the ... Read More about The Flowers of Evil (Oxford World's Classics)

The limits of interpretation--what a text can actually be said to mean--are of double interest to a semiotician whose own novels' intriguing complexity has provoked his readers into intense speculation as to their meaning. Eco's illuminating and frequently hilarious discussion ranges from Dante to T... Read More about Interpretation and Overinterpretation (Tanner Lectures in Human Values)

With an emphasis on readers and reading, Jonathan Culler considered deconstruction in terms of the questions raised by psychoanalytic, feminist, and reader-response criticism. On Deconstruction is both an authoritative synthesis of Derrida's thought and an analysis of the often-problematic relation ... Read More about On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism