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S/Z: An Essay

Roland Barthes · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Literary Theory: An Introduction

Terry Eagleton · 244 pages

This classic work covers all of the major movements in literary studies in this century. Noted for its clear, engaging style and unpretentious treatment, Literary Theory has become the introduction of choice for anyone interested in learning about the world of contemporary literary thought.

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

Jonathan Culler · 152 pages

Culler offers insights into theories about the nature of language and meaning, looks at whether literature is a form of self-expression or a method of appeal to an audience, and outlines the ideas behind deconstruction and semiotics.

Literary CriticismPhilosophyDense ProseNonfiction
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Writing and Difference

Jacques Derrida · 407 pages

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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Poetics

Aristotle · 144 pages

One of the first books written on what is now called aesthetics. Although parts are lost (e.g., comedy), it has been very influential in western thought, such as the part on tragedy.

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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Marxism and Literature

Raymond Williams · 217 pages

This study examines the place of literature within Marxist cultural theory, and offers an assessment of the contributions of previous thinkers to Marxist literary theory.

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Fredric Jameson · 438 pages

This wide-ranging work seeks to crystallize a definition of postmodernism. The author looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from high art to low; from market ideology to architecture, from painting to punk; film, from video art to literature.

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

Walter Benjamin · 280 pages

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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Six Memos For The Next Millennium

Italo Calvino · 124 pages

"Six memos for the Next Millenium" is a collection of five lectures Italo Calvino was about to deliver at the time of his death. Here is his legacy to us: the universal values he pinpoints become the watch-words for out appreciation of Calvino himself. What should be cherished in literature? Calvino devotes one lecture, or memo to the reader, toe each of five indispensable qualities: lightness, qu

Literary CriticismDense ProseNonfictionLanguage and Linguistics
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The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories

Christopher Booker · 736 pages

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection

Julia Kristeva · 219 pages

"Kristeva is one of the leading voices in contemporary French criticism, on a par with such names as Genette, Foucault, Greimas and others ... [Powers of Horror is] an excellent introduction to an aspect of contemporary French literature which has been allowed to become somewhat neglected in the current emphasis on para-philosophical modes of discourse. The sections on Céline, for example, are ind

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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The Outsider

Colin Wilson · 320 pages

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf · 129 pages

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the m

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

David Foster Wallace · 343 pages

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult-video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or conf

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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The Road to Middle-earth

Tom Shippey · 252 pages

"The Road to Middle-earth, Tom Shippey's classic work, now revised and expanded in paperback explores J.R.R. Tolkien's creativity and the sources of his inspiration. Shippey shows in detail how Tolkien's professional background led him to write The Hobbit and create a timeless charm for millions of readers. He argues convincingly that the source of Tolkien's inspiration lay not just in his love of

Literary CriticismDense ProseNonfictionLanguage and Linguistics
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The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Joseph Campbell · 456 pages

A thoroughly intense and all-embracing read. In the 2-page preface written in 1948, he states such ground-shakingly obvious facts about the human psyche, that you'll wonder why these ideas had never dawned on you before. Then, into the main text of the book, and you're spirited away into an adventure that explores all forms of mythology and their importance in founding different cultures all aroun

Dense ProseLiterary CriticismPhilosophyNonfiction
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Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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Master of Middle-Earth

Paul H. Kocher · 247 pages

Literary CriticismPhilosophyDense ProseNonfiction
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The History of the Hobbit, Part One: Mr. Baggins

John D. Rateliff, J.R.R. Tolkien · 512 pages

Literary CriticismDense ProseNonfictionLanguage and Linguistics
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The Poetics of Space

Gaston Bachelard · 241 pages

This book is another of the French philosopher's explorations into the meaning and being of art.

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present

Jacques Barzun · 896 pages

"Highly regarded here and abroad for some thirty works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun has now set down in one continuous narrative the sum of his discoveries and conclusions about the whole of Western culture since 1500.". "In this account, Barzun describes what Western Man wrought from the Renaissance and Reformation down to the present in the double light of

Dense ProseLiterary CriticismPhilosophyNonfiction
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On Being Blue

William H. Gass · 91 pages

Dense ProseLiterary CriticismPhilosophyNonfiction
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Russian Thinkers

Isaiah Berlin, Jason Ferrell · 312 pages

Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that Russia's outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In addition to Tolstoy's philosophy of history, which he addresses in his most famous essay, 'The Hedgehog and the Fox,' Berlin considers the social and p

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

Bart D. Ehrman · 256 pages

For almost 1,500 years, the New Testament manuscripts were copied by hand — — and mistakes and intentional changes abound in the competing manuscript versions. Religious and biblical scholar Bart Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself are the results of both intentional and ac

Literary CriticismDense ProsePhilosophyNonfiction
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Écrits

Jacques Lacan · 878 pages

Presents an English translation of Jacques Lacan's most famous work, with translations of all the papers featured in the original French edition.

Dense ProseLiterary CriticismPhilosophyNonfiction

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