Bachelard takes us on a journey, from cellar to attic, to show how our perceptions of houses and other shelters shape our thoughts, memories, and dreams."A magical book. . . . The Poetics of Space is a prism through which all worlds from literary creation to housework to aesthetics to carpentry take on enhanced-and enchanted-significances. Every reader of it will never see ordinary spaces in ordinary ways. Instead the reader will see with the soul of the eye, the glint of Gaston Bachelard." -from the new foreword by John R. Stilgoe

    First published in English in 1965, this timeless classic explores the psychological effects of colonialism on colonized and colonizers alike.

    There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this book—one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way readers and philosophers view the world around them.Our age is a triumph of codification. We own devices that bring the world to the command of our fingertips. We have access to boundless information and prodigious quantities of stuff. We decide to like or not, to believe or not, to buy or not. We pick and choose. We think we are free. Yet all around us, in pop culture, politics, mainstream media, and advertising, there are codes and symbols that govern our choices. They are the fabrications of consumer society. They express myths of success, well-being, and happiness. As Barthes sees it, these myths must be carefully deciphered, and debunked.What Barthes discerned in mass media, the fashion of plastic, and the politics of postcolonial France applies with equal force to today's social networks, the iPhone, and the images of 9/11. This new edition of Mythologies, complete and beautifully rendered by the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, critic, and translator Richard Howard, is a consecration of Barthes's classic—a lesson in clairvoyance that is more relevant now than ever.

    He challenges any single discourse on the erotic. The scope of his inquiry ranges from Emily Bronte to Sade, from St. Therese to Claude Levi-Strauss, and Dr. Kinsey; and the subjects he covers include prostitution, mythical ecstasy, cruelty, and organized war. Investigating desire prior to and extending beyond the realm of sexuality, he argues that eroticism is "a psychological quest not alien to death."

    Employing examples of world literature from ancient times to the present, he provides a conceptual framework for the examination of literature. In four brilliant essays on historical, ethical, archetypical, and rhetorical criticism, he applies "scientific" method in an effort to change the character of criticism from the casual to the causal, from the random and intuitive to the systematic.Harold Bloom contributes a fascinating and highly personal preface that examines Frye's mode of criticism and thought (as opposed to Frye's criticism itself) as being indispensable in the modern literary world.

    A Glossary of Literary Terms covers the terminology of literature - from literary history to theory to criticism - making it a valuable addition to any literary theory or literature course.

    He exposes the byways through which the natural environment is turned into art. In the process he illuminates some of the central issues in current discussions of the theory of art.In "Aberrations, "Baltrusaitis creates a remarkable panorama of modern culture. He interweaves the rational with the fabulous - the fable of the beast in man figurative images in stones, the forest in the Gothic edifice, and whole cultures in the garden - to reveal the ways in which natural phenomena have been read into cultural forms, and vice versa. Illustrated throughout the essays are "Animal Physiognomy," "Images in Stones," "The Romance of Gothic Architecture," and "Gardens and Lands of Illusion."Jurgis Baltrusaitis is the author of eight books, among them "Anamorphoses: Formations, Deformations, "and "The Quest for Isis. "He has been awarded the Prix Bordin of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Prix Hercule Catenacci of the French Academy. An OCTOBER Book