This highly acclaimed volume contains thirty essays by such leading literary critics as A.O. Lovejoy, Lionel Trilling, C.S. Lewis, F.R. Leavis, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, Jonathan Wordsworth, and Jack Stillinger. Covering the major poems by each of the important Romantic poets, the contributors present many significant perspectives in modern criticism--old and new, discursive and explicative, mimetic and rhetorical, literal and mythical, archetypal and phenomenological,...

There have been signs now, for some time, that poststructuralist hegemony is declining. This book helps us to understand the theoretical flaws that make this decline inevitable.The essays in this volume represent a collective questioning of the poststructuralist ascendancy, and of the assumptions involved therin, by a group of our most prominent scholars. These scholars were charged with examining the truth-value, methodology, practice, and humanistic status of poststructuralist the...

A new collection of essays by the legendary literary scholar and critic.In the year of his one-hundredth birthday, preeminent literary critic, scholar, and teacher M. H. Abrams brings us a collection of nine new and recent essays that challenge the reader to think about poetry in new ways. In these essays, three of them never before published, Abrams engages afresh with pivotal figures in intellectual and literary history, among them Kant, Keats, and Hazlitt. The c...

Edited and with an Introduction by Gordon MarinoBasic Writings of Existentialism, unique to the Modern Library, presents the writings of key nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers broadly united by their belief that because life has no inherent meaning humans can discover, we must determine meaning for ourselves. This anthology brings together into one volume the most influential and commonly taught works of existentialism. Contributors include Simone ...

The atmosphere of silence all around provided a faithful setting for Heidegger’s philosophy. I could not help comparing it with the atmosphere I had encountered in the house of Professor Berdyaev near Paris and that of Professor Jaspers in Heidelberg. In every case, the external world faithfully reflected the world of the mind. In Berdyaev’s case it was the spirit of communion; in Jaspers’s that of spiritual engagement. But in Heidegger’s case it was the spirit of overwhelming solitude. Wi...

'The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking' Heidegger'We should never allow our fears of the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny'Martin Heidegger was one of the most controversial philosophers of the 20th century, and still causes widespread division. Born in Germany, he was concerned with what makes beings intelligible as beings, and best known for his contributi...

In this characteristically concise, witty, and lucid book, Terry Eagleton turns his attention to the questions we should ask about literature, but rarely do. What is literature? Can we even speak of "literature" at all? What do different literary theories tell us about what texts mean and do? In throwing new light on these and other questions he has raised in previous best-sellers, Eagleton offers a new theory of what we mean by literature. He also shows what it is that a great ...

Much has been written of the forbidden pleasures. But what of the "unforbidden" pleasures?Unforbidden Pleasures is the singular new book from Adam Phillips, the author of Missing Out, Going Sane, and On Balance. Here, with his signature insight and erudition, Phillips takes Oscar Wilde as a springboard for a deep dive into the meanings and importance of the unforbidden, from the fall of our "first parents," Adam and Eve, to the work of the great p...

A rich and evocative study of one of modern history's most compelling and controversial philosophers by a literary and critical grand masterIn Martin Heidegger, George Steiner delves into the life and work of the prolific German philosopher. His deft analysis lays bare the intricacies of Heidegger's work and his influence on modern society, offering a clear and accessible analysis of the philosopher's more difficult ideas, from the human condition and lang...

The Liberal Imagination is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but an important statement about politics and society. Published in 1950, one of the chillier moments of the Cold War, Trilling’s essays examine the promise —and limits—of liberalism, challenging the complacency of a naïve liberal belief in rationality, progress, and the panaceas of economics and other social science...

As an essayist, Adam Phillips combines the best of two worlds: a mastery of psychotherapy as both practitioner and theorist, and a reputation as one of the best literary writers around. In this collection of essays, he brings these two gifts to bear upon each other, speculating on the relative merits of psychoanalysis and literature and on the connections between them. In his quirky, epigrammatic style, Phillips shows us how psychoanalysis and literature at their best share the goal of she...

Reissued with an additional preface to sit alongside the volume on Stanley Cavell in Contemporary Philosophy in Focus this famous collection of essays covers a remarkably wide range of philosophical issues (there are essays on Wittgenstein, Austin, Kierkegaard, and the philosophy of language) and extends beyond philosophy into discussions of music and drama.