Since its publication in 1950, Kenneth Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives has been one of the most influential texts of theory and criticism. Critics have discovered in its pages concepts that reveal new dimensions of human motivation. And yet, despite its obvious genius, critics have interpreted A Rhetoric of Motives as a collection of provocations ......
How did creative genius develop in tandem with the criminalization of Blackness in the early United States? In Criminal Genius in African American and US Literature, 1793-1845, Erin Forbes uncovers a model of racialized, collective agency in American literature and culture. Identifying creative genius in the figure of the convict, the zombie, the ......
Critical Conceptions of Literature for the Anthropocene
This edited collection lends its origin to recent strands in philosophy that promote a critical conceptual return to the material world outside human culture. Through the lens of literary analysis and theory, this book devises the potential of New Materialism as a timely mode of critique towards the current human condition and its effect on ......
Post-Theories in Literary and Cultural Studies focuses on the shifting paradigms in literary and cultural studies. Prompted by the changes and problems on the global scale, the last two decades have seen a resurgence of scholarly interest in theories which are more embedded in the social realities and human condition. This volume shows that theory ......
In this book, Mick Howard uses a Saussurean framework to explore how bodies and technologies intermingle through a theory of cyborg semiotics. Howard argues that, like words, this combination follows rules of language and can be fruitfully analyzed through the lens of the cyborg. Just as spelling and grammar dictate which words may be formed and ......
It is commonplace to regard many great works of literature--poems, dramas, works of fiction--as in some sense philosophical. Yet ever since Plato, there has been a tension between the kind of abstract theorizing that goes on in philosophy and the focus on concrete particulars that occurs in poetry and fiction. Beyond Words: Philosophy, Fiction, ......
A sweeping history of how writing has preserved cultural practices, traditions, and knowledge throughout human history. In How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now, Walter Stephens condenses the massive history of the written word into an accessible, engaging narrative. The history of writing is not merely a record of technical ......
How did creative genius develop in tandem with the criminalization of Blackness in the early United States? In Criminal Genius in African American and US Literature, 1793-1845, Erin Forbes uncovers a model of racialized, collective agency in American literature and culture. Identifying creative genius in the figure of the convict, the zombie, the ......
How contemporary novels use narrative time to counter cultural homogenization and historical flattening. In From Empire to Anthropocene, Betty Joseph celebrates how contemporary fiction contributes to a novel framing of world literature by playing with our understanding of time. Bringing together an unusual constellation of writers-including ......
