Poet Laureate Robert Hass considers some of the twentiethcentury poets who bring him pleasure: Robert Lowll, JamesWright, Tomas Transtromer, Joseph Brodsky, Yvor Winters,Robert Creeley, James McMichael, Czeslaw Milosz, and others,in this, his first collection of essays. Originally published in1984, Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry won theNational Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. A new collection of Robert Hass's essays will be published by Ecco in 1998.

    A series of essays including: Stealing Tomorrow, Down the Rabbit-Hole to TV-Land, Rolling Dat Ole Debbil Electronic Stone, Defeating the Green Slime, Fear Not your Enemies, From Albany, With Hate, Centerpunching, Voe Doe Dee Oh Doe, Cheap Thrills on the Road to H*ll, and more.

    Available in a one-volume paperback edition for the first time, the Companion brings together in conveniently numbered glosses for each canto the most pertinent details from the vast body of work on the Cantos during the last thirty years. The Companion contains 10,421 separate glosses that include translations from eight languages, identification of all proper names and works, Pound's literary and historical allusions, and other exotica, with exegeses based upon Pound's sources. Also included is a supplementary bibliography of works on Pound, newly updated, and an alphabetized index to The Cantos.

    For this purpose he concentrates on the texts and their theatrical rendering, in such a way as to transmit to us, at the same time, a powerful impression of Shakespeare the man, such as perhaps no other book can give us.

    She shows us that this most intellectual of poets is in fact the most personal of poets; that his words are not devoted to epistemological questions alone but are also "words chosen out of desire."

    In this volume we find Burke’s first entry into what he calls his theory of Dramatism; and here also is an important section on the nature of ritual.

    It is grounded in technical scholarship, to which it constantly referes and is intended to contribute, and I hope that even Homeric specialists will find ideas and interpretations to interest them. I have tried to present clearly what seem to me the most valuable results of modern research and criticism of the Iliad while setting forth my own views. My goal has been to interpret the poem as much as possible on its own mythological, religious, ethical, and artistic terms. The topics and problems I focus on are those that have arisen most often and most insistently when I have thought the poem, in translation and in the original, as I have done every year since 1968. This book is a literary study of the Iliad. I have not discussed historical, archaeologoical, or even linguistic questions except where they are directly relevant to literary interpretation. Throughout I have emphasized what is thematically, ethically, and artistically distinctive in the Iliad in contrast to the conventions of the poetic tradition of which it is an end product.

    Rather, it uses the future as a means of talking about the present and its potentiality. By recognizing a text's specific "difference", we begin to see the quality of its particulars. Through riveting analyses of works by Joanna Russ, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and Thomas M. Disch, Delany reveals critical strategies for reading that move beyond overwrought theorizing and formulaic thinking. Throughout, the author performs the kinds of careful inquiry and urgent speculation that he calls others to engage in.

    In his latest book, Christopher Lasch, the renowned historian and social critic, powerfully argues that self-concern, so characteristic of our time, has become a search for psychic survival.

    He scatters bright ideas everywhere, writes The New York Times Book Review, and they are sure to be picked up. This volume presents a rich sampling of Steiner's ideas, including selections from his seminal books The Death of Tragedy, After Babel, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, and Language and Science. Aside from pointing to work that lies ahead, this anthology offers a rich retrospective of the intellectual ground Steiner has already covered. Whether discussing Marxist literary theory, the significance of Tolstoy, or the problems of treating sexual material in literature, Steiner's writings give us the pleasure of watching an astute and nimble mind constantly at work.

    

    This last work by Paul de Man before his death in 1983 brings together what is essentially his complete work on the study of European Romanticism and post-Romanticism.

    It includes reviews of a great number of European writers, especially French writers, along with more general essays and the Prefaces Henry James wrote for the New York Edition of his works, published between 1907 and 1909.The collection attests to James’s nearly unparalleled creative energy and to the reach of his theoretical and interpretive curiosity. His unique authority as a commentator draws upon the European-American contrast that is a central circumstance of his own fiction. A member of intellectual circles on both continents, he became the foremost interpreter to American readers of the literary and cultural life of Europe.More than one hundred reviews and essays are gathered by author, so that readers can trace the development of James’s complex, meditative, and highly volatile attitudes toward a wide spectrum of literature. James reviews the formidable Honoré de Balzac (with his “huge, all compassing, all desiring, all devouring love of reality”), Gustave Flaubert (“a pearl-diver, breathless in the thick element while he groped for the priceless word”), and Ivan Turgenev, the Russian visitor in Paris, with whom James felt great personal affinity, even though Tugenev “lacked the immense charm of absorbed inventiveness.”James delivers his critical judgments with great elegance and point, especially when he discusses the performance of other critics like Hippolyte Taine and Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and, of course, he can be wonderfully acerbic. An early moralistic essay on Baudelaire finds Poe “vastly the greater charlatan of the two, and the greater genius.”James brings his critical zest, exhilaration, and independence of judgment to bear on writers as diverse as Alphonse Daudet, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Guy de Maupassant, Théophile Gautier, J. W. von Goethe, and Gabriele D’Annunzio.Readers will find, in the complete collection of the Prefaces, one of literature’s most revealing artistic autobiographies, a wholly absorbing account of how writing gets written, and a vision of the possibilities for fiction which critics and novelists of later times will find immensely instructive and liberating.

    Renowned classicist Seth Benardete’s careful translations clearly illuminate the dramatic and philosophical unity of these dialogues and highlight Plato’s subtle interplay of language and structure. Extensive notes and commentaries, furthermore, underscore the trilogy’s motifs and relationships. “The translations are masterpieces of literalness. . . . They are honest, accurate, and give the reader a wonderful sense of the Greek.”—Drew A. Hyland, Review of Metaphysics

    Lewis to offer a detailed examination of "Till We Have Faces," Peter J. Schakel's book is also the first to explore the tension between reason and imagination that significantly shaped Lewis' thinking and writing. Schakel begins with a close analysis of "Till We Have Faces" which leads the readers through the plot, clarifying its themes and it discusses structure, symbols and allusions. The second part of the book surveys Lewis' works, tracing the tension between reason and imagination. In the works of the thirties and forties reason is in the ascendant; from the early fifties on, in works such as the Chronicles of Narnia, there is an increased emphasis on imagination - which culminates in the fine "myth retold," "Till We Have Faces." Imagination and reason are reconciled, finally in the works of the early sixties such as "A Grief Observed" and "Letters to Malcolm." PETER J. SCHAKEL is Professor of English at Hope College, Holland, MI. "This book is what Lewis scholarship ought to be. It is the most thoughtful, careful Lewis study yet." - Peter Kreeft "Reason and Imagination" is a remarkable achievement, literary criticism that is both wise and moving." - Margaret Hannay "Peter Schakel brings to C. S. Lewis scholarship what has often been lacking, namely rigorous scholarly method and real critical detachment. His study of "Till We Have Faces" is a major contribution to Lewis studies." - Thomas Howard

    Sentenced to death by Creon, she forestalled him by committing suicide. The theme of the conflict between Antigone and Creon—between the state and the individual, between man and woman, between young and old—has captured the Western imagination for more than 2000 years. George Steiner here examines the far-reaching legacy of this great classical myth. He considers its treatment in Western art, literature, and thought—in drama, poetry, prose, philosophic discourse, political tracts, opera, ballet, film, and even the plastic arts.  A study in poetics and in the philosophy of reading, Antigones leads us to look again at the influence the Greek myths exercise on twentieth-century culture."A remarkable feat of intellectual agility."—Washington Post Book World"[An] intellectually demanding but rewarding book. . . consistently stimulating and sometimes disturbing."—The New Republic"An. . . account of the various treatments of the Antigone theme in European languages. . . Penetrating and novel."—The New York Times Book Review"A tradition of intelligence and style lives in this prolific man."—Los Angeles Times"Antigones triumphantly demonstrates that Antigone could fill several volumes of study without becoming tedious or exhausted."—The New York Review of Books

    Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.In his foreword to this reprint of Erich Auerbach's major essays, Paolo Valesio pays tribute to the author with an old saying that he feels is still the best metaphor for the genesis of a literary critic: the critic is born of the marriage of Mercury and Philology. The German-born Auerbach was a scholar who specialized in Romance philology, a tradition rooted in German historicism—the conviction that works of art must be judged as products of variable places and times, not from the eye of eternity, nor by a single unchanging aesthetic standard. The mercurial element in Auerbach's work is significant, for in a life of motion—of exile from Hitler's Germany—he came to believe that literary history was evolutionary, ever-changing—a view reflected in the title of his book, which suggests life and literature are historical drama.Auerbach is best known for his magisterial study Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, written during the war, in Istanbul, when he was far from his own culture and from the books that he normally relied on. In 1957, just before his death, he arranged for the publication in English of his six most important essays, in a volume called Scenes from the Drama of European Literature.As in Mimesis,Auerbach's fresh insights bring to the disparate subjects of the essays a coherence that reflects the unity of Western, humanistic tradition, even while they hint at the deepening pessimism of his later years.In the first essay, "Figura," Auerbach develops his concept of the figural interpretation of reality; applied here to Dante's Divine Comedy,it also served as groundwork for his treatment of realism in Mimesis. A second essay on Dante's examines the poet's depiction of St. Francis of Assisi. The next three essays deal with the paradoxical nature of Pascal's political thought; the merging of la cour and la ville—the king's entourage and the bourgeoisie—chiefly in relation to the seventeenth-century French theater; and Vico's formulation concepts by the German Romantics. In the final essay Auerbach confers upon Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal the designation "aesthetic dignity" because, not in spite of, the hideous reality of the peoms."A major collection of important essays on European literature, almost all classics, and almost all required reading for their various centuries—thus the book is indispensable for the medieval period,the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries; in addition, the 'Figura' and the Vico essays are very significant theoretical statements. The book is lucid and far more accessible for undergraduates than, say, current high theory. Nor has Auerbach's own work aged . . . All of his varied strengths are evidence in this collection, which is a better way into his work than Mimesis." –Fredric Jameson, University of California, Santa Cruz.

    is a brilliant work." Choice "[Sternberg] has written a very important book, both for his comprehensiveness and for the clearly-avowed faith stance from which he understands and interprets the strategies of the biblical narratives... a superb overview ... " Theological Studies " ... rated very highly indeed. It is a book to read and then reread." Modern Language Review " ... Sternberg has accomplished an enormous task, enriching our understanding of the theoretical basis of biblical narrative and giving us insight into a remarkable number of particular texts." Journal of the American Academy of Religion " ... an important book for those who seek to take the Bible seriously as a literary work because it shows, more clearly and emphatically than any book I know, that the Bible is a serious literary work - a text manifesting a highly sophisticated and successful narrative poetics." Adele Berlin, Prooftexts

    

    A book which should appeal to both literary theorists and to readers of the novel, this study invites the reader to consider how the plot reflects the patterns of human destiny and seeks to impose a new meaning on life.

    These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 voulme set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.

    Originally published: New York: Viking Press, 1984.

    H. Auden as the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding. Though published independently over many years, each of the essays in this collection asks how a poet's words reveal the force ofpoetry, that force--in Dr Johnson's words--which calls new power into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter. The poets covered range from John Gower, Marvell, and Milton to Wordsworth, Empson, Stevie Smith, Lowell, and Larkin, and the book contains four wider essays on clich�s, lies, misquotations, and American English.

    In tracing this effort, he illuminates the repression by psychoanalysis of its own radical past and its transformation into a narrow medical technique. This book is of critical interest to the general reader as well as to psychoanalytic historians, theorists, and therapists.

    Michael Levenson analyses that complex process by following the successive phases of a literary movement - Impressionist, Imagist, Vorticist, Classicist - as it attempted to formulate the principles on which a new aesthetic might be founded. The emphasis here falls on the ideology of modernism, but throughout the book the ideological question is tied on the one hand to specific literary works and on the other to general movements in philosophy and the fine arts. The major figures under discussion, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and T. S. Elliot, are placed in relation to thinkers who have been largely neglected in the history of modernism: Max Stirner, Wilhelm Worringer, Pierre Lasserre, Allen Upward, and Hilaire Belloc. Levenson thus situates the emergence of a modernist aesthetic within the context of literary theory, literary practice, and cultural history.

    They crackle with contradictions, with and anger. Shange challenges all of her readers, black and white, to think fresh thoughts and to rise to brand new feelings.” —Rosellen Brown

    Rohmer, one of the founding members of the French 'New Wave' cinema, was also one of the journal's original critics and served as its editor. Divided into four sections, the essays deal with fundamental and theoretical questions of film-making from a single theoretical viewpoint. Rohmer, a film-maker of great eloquence and erudition, writes in depth on the issues most fundamental to film: what the camera best portrays; the role of sound and colour; the use of drama and comedy; the role of speech; and the problem of literary adaptation; he also includes a personal defence of his films. The final section is devoted entirely to the film-maker Jean Renoir. The Taste for Beauty will be appreciated by students and critics of film, as well as those who love French cinema in general.

    Film Theory. Over 200 photographs. Bibliography. Contains Maya Deren's school letters, articles she wrote for socialist youth journals In the Thirties, as well as her correspondence, poetry, fiction and essays published here for the first time. Includes a history of her life between 1917 and 1942, documented by interviews with friends and family, photographs and other visual materials: letters and Interviews with Katherine Dunham, Alexander Hammid, Miriam Arsham, Hal Draper, Herbert Passin, Harry Roskolenko, Raymond Rosenthal and many of her other contemporaries.

    

    She finds that, although the American frontiersman imagined the wilderness as virgin land, an unspoiled Eve to be taken, the pioneer woman at his side dreamed more modestly of a garden to be cultivated. Both intellectual and cultural history, this volume continues Kolodny's study of frontier mythology begun in The Lay of the Land.