"In our highly literate culture, orality is all-pervasive. Different kinds of media and performance - theatre, film, television, story-telling, structured play - make us ask what is the relation between improvisation and premeditation, between transcription and textualization, between rehearsal, recollection and re-narration. The challenge of writing down what is spoken is partly technical, but also political and philosophical. How do young writers represent the spoken language of their co...

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the work and thought of Umberto Eco - one of the most important writers in Europe today.

A groundbreaking translation of the epic work of one of the great minds of the nineteenth centuryGiacomo Leopardi was the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and was recognized by readers from Nietzsche to Beckett as one of the towering literary figures in Italian history. To many, he is the finest Italian poet after Dante. (Jonathan Galassi's translation of Leopardi's Canti was published by FSG in 2010.)He was also a prodigious scholar ...

'It's the most marvellous discovery for everyone who loves literature' Ian McEwan, BBC Radio 4Colum McCann once called Stoner one of the great forgotten novels of the past century, but it seems it is forgotten no longer - in 2013 translations of Stoner began appearing on bestseller lists across Europe. Forty-eight years after its first, quiet publication in the US, Stoner is finally finding the wide and devoted readership it deser...

A new edition to celebrate the 30th anniversary of David Foster Wallace's iconic, bestselling novel Infinite Jest - with an introduction by Michelle Zauner, author of Crying in H Mart'We will likely not see another book like this in our lifetimes' Michelle Zauner, bestselling author of Crying in H Mart and frontwoman for Japanese BreakfastTennis prodigy Hal Incandenza and recovering addict Don Gately are consume...

Since its first publication in English in 1985, Mieke Bal's Narratology has become the international classic and comprehensive introduction to the theory of narrative texts. Narratology is a systematic account of narrative techniques, methods, their transmission, and reception, in which Bal distills years of study of the ways in which we understand both literary and non-literary works. In this third edition, Bal updates the book to include more analysis of film narrati...

This collection of essays by the acclaimed author of Cosmicomics offers a fascinating, personal journey through some of literature's greatest works.Classics, according to Italo Calvino, are not only works of enduring cultural value, but also personal touchstones. They are the books we are always rereading in order to understand our world and ourselves. Here, Calvino introduces more than thirty works from his own ideal library in essays of warmth, humor, an...

Attempting to bridge the gap between specialised scholarship in the humanistic disciplines and an interdisciplinary project of cultural analysis, Mieke Bal has written an intellectual travel guide that charts the course 'beyond' cultural studies. As with any guide, it can be used in a number of ways and the reader can follow or willfully ignore any of the paths it maps or signposts.Bal's focus for this book is the idea that interdisciplinarity in the humanities - necessary, excitin...

This volume is designed to show the way to the reader, to satisfy and more especially to excite his initial curiosity in Philosophy. It affords an adequate idea of the march of facts and of ideas. The reader is led, somewhat rapidly, from the remote origins to the most recent efforts of the human mind.The aim of philosophy is to seek the explanation of all things: the quest is for the first causes of everything, and also how all things are, and finally why

Philosophy for Architects-áis an engaging and easy-to-grasp introduction to philosophical questions of interest to students of architectural theory. Topics include Aristotle's theories of visual imagination and their relevance to digital design, the problem of optical correction as explored by Plato, Hegel's theory of zeitgeist, and Kant's examinations of space and aesthetics, among others. Focusing primarily on nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, it provides students with a wide...

Serendipities is an iconoclastic, dazzlingly erudite and witty demonstration, by one of the world's most brilliant thinkers, of how myths and lunacies can produce historical developments of no small significance. In Eco's words, 'even errors can produce interesting side effects'. Eco's book shows how:-- believers in a flat earth helped Columbus accidentally discover America-- the medieval myth of Prester John, the Christian king in Asia, assisted the European drive ...

Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer was one of the seminal works of political philosophy in recent decades. It was also the beginning of a series of interconnected investigations of staggering ambition and scope, investigating the deepest foundations of Western politics and thought.The Use of Bodies represents the ninth and final volume in this twenty-year undertaking, breaking considerable new ground while clarifying the stakes and implications of the project as a whole...