Lebanon: Books under fire in Beirut

For all the benefits of immediacy that the electronic and print media offer, there are times when we reach for the heft of a book to try to give context to history as it unfolds around us. So, in the past few weeks, there has been reason aplenty to be grateful for the existence of Saqi Books, whose wide range of titles includes Hizbullah, Israel's Ayatollahs and Rafiq Hariri and the Fate of Lebanon

read more

The Essential Wayne Booth. Edited by Walter Jost

Wayne Booth wrote some of the most influential and engaging criticism of our time, most notably the 1961 classic The Rhetoric of Fiction, a book that transformed literary criticism and became the standard reference point for advanced discussions of how fiction works, how authors make novels accessible, and how readers re-create texts. While Booth’s work was formative to the study of literature, his essential writings have never been collected in a single volume—until now. Selected by Walter Jost in collaboration with Booth himself, the texts anthologized here present a picture of this indispensable critic’s contributions to literary and rhetorical studies. The selections range from memorable readings of Macbeth, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Henry James to engagements with Booth’s intellectual heroes, such as Richard McKeon and Mikhail Bakhtin. But rhetoric, Booth’s abiding concern as a critic and thinker, provides the organizing principle of the anthology.

read more

Routledge Companion to Critical Theory, S. Malpas and P. Wake (eds)

Routledge Companion to Critical Theory is an indispensable aid for anyone approaching this exciting field of study for the first time. By exploring ideas from a diverse range of disciplines ‘theory’ encourages us to develop a deeper understanding of how we approach the written word. This book defines what is generically referred to as ‘critical theory’, and guides readers through some of the most complex and fundamental concepts in the field, ranging from Historicism to Postmodernism, from Psychoanalytic Criticism to Race and Postcoloniality.

read more

Hélène Cixous: When the Word is a Stage, a special issue of the New Literary History, Winter 2006

New Literary History focuses on theory and interpretation-the reasons for literary change, the definitions of periods, and the evolution of styles, conventions, and genres. Throughout its history, NLH has always resisted short-lived trends and subsuming ideologies. By delving into the theoretical bases of practical criticism, the journal reexamines the relation between past works and present critical and theoretical needs. Volume 37, Number 1, Winter 2006 Special Issue: Hélène Cixous: When the Word is a Stage

read more