Revolutions of the Word: Intellectual Contexts for the Study of Modern Literature

This volume picks its way through the tangled webs of our literary and intellectual history, sorting out the proliferation of contexts, of theses methodologies and histories, drawing out connections as well as discontinuities between different orders of writing. A substantial introductory essay examines the relations between literature and intellectual history and addresses such issues as the relation between present and previous fin de siecles; the reconstruction of Modernism and the future of postmodern; the political, epistemological, and ethical nature of literary writing; the relations between science and literature. Each section also offers a brief introductory commentary which connects with the themes elaborated in the main introduction.