In The Plausible World , the intersections of literature and cartography enable readers to understand that place is anything but purely geographic: a plausible world is created as a strategy to fill the void. Innovative in his approach, Westphal challenges the view that perceptions and representations of space are stable or straightforward.

Geocriticism provides a theoretical foundation and a critical exploration of geocriticism, an interdisciplinary approach to understanding literature in relation to space and place. Drawing on diverse thinkers, Westphal argues that a geocritical approach enables novel ways of seeing literary texts and of conducting literary studies.

The connection between travel and translation is often evoked in contemporary critical theory, both practices seen as metaphors of mobility and flux linked to globalized 'post-modern' society. Travel is a multiple activity, encompassing temporary and voluntary displacement, repeated movement, exile, economic migration, diaspora. Places of origin are often plural and unstable, in spite of the enduring appeal of traditional labels such as 'mother country' or 'patrie'.The multiple int...

Postmodernism has been a buzzword in contemporary society for the last decade. But how can it be defined? In this Very Short Introduction Christopher Butler challenges and explores the key ideas of postmodernists, and their engagement with theory, literature, the visual arts, film, architecture, and music. He treats artists, intellectuals, critics, and social scientists 'as if they were all members of a loosely constituted and quarrelsome political party' - a party which includes such memb...

Originally published in 1970, The Urban Revolution marked Henri Lefebvre’s first sustained critique of urban society, a work in which he pioneered the use of semiotic, structuralist, and poststructuralist methodologies in analyzing the development of the urban environment. Although it is widely considered a foundational book in contemporary thinking about the city, The Urban Revolution has never been translated into English—until now. This first English edition, deftly translated by Robert...

More than ever before, the Renaissance stands as one of the defining moments in world history. Between 1400 and 1600, European perceptions of society, culture, politics and even humanity itself emerged in ways that continue to affect not only Europe but the entire world. This wide-ranging exploration of the Renaissance sees the period as a time of unprecedented intellectual excitement and cultural experimentation and interaction on a global scale, alongside a darker side of religion, intol...

Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. “Libraries,” he says, “have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been seduced by their labyrinthine logic.” In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries.

French philosopher Gilles Deleuze is known as a thinker of creation, joyous affirmation, and rhizomatic assemblages. In this short book, Andrew Culp polemically argues that this once-radical canon of joy has lost its resistance to the present. Concepts created to defeat capitalism have been recycled into business mantras that joyously affirm “Power is vertical; potential is horizontal!”Culp recovers the Deleuze’s forgotten negativity. He unsettles the prevailing interpretation thro...

"Provides an extremely valuable introduction to the work of Michel Serres for an English-speaking audience, as well as offering useful critical approaches for those already familiar with its outlines."---Robert Harrison, Stanford University [blurb from review pending permission]The work of Michel Serres---including the books Hermes, The Parasite, The Natural Contract, Genesis, The Troubadour of Knowledge, and Conversations on ...

The French philosopher Jacques Rancière has influenced disciplines from history and philosophy to political theory, literature, art history, and film studies. His research into nineteenth-century workers’ archives, reflections on political equality, critique of the traditional division between intellectual and manual labor, and analysis of the place of literature, film, and art in modern society have all constituted major contributions to contemporary thought. In this collection, leading s...

"I have tried to make a sketch or a model in several dimensions of the potency of Arendt's idea of invisibility, the necessary inconspicuousness of thinking and reading, and the ambivalently joyous and knotted agency to be found there. Just beneath the surface of the phonemes, a gendered name rhythmically explodes into a founding variousness. And then the strictures of the text assert again themselves. I want to claim for this inconspicuousness a transformational agency that runs count...

An in-depth biography of the Latin language from its very beginnings to the present day from the widely acclaimed author of ‘Empires of the Word’.The Latin language has been a constant in the cultural history of the West for over two millennia. It has shaped the way we think of ourselves and of our (central) place in the world. It has formed and united us as Europeans, has been the foundation of our education for centuries and defined the way in which we express our thoughts, our f...