Jonathan Culler's 'On Deconstruction' is a remarkably lucid analysis of the theory and practice of deconstruction. Not only does Culler introduce the whole concept of deconstruction step by step for beginners, but also analyzes the most complex aspects of Derrida and De Mann's work for the more knowledgeable reader. This in fact, is the beauty of the work. The reader's journey into the murky field of deconstruction begins with an analysis of reading. Focussing on the reader-response theories of Stanley Fish, Culler illustrates how reader's have been seen to take a more active role in the production of meaning in texts in recent years. The role of the reader has gained importance also in the world of feminist criticism. Culler attempts to analyze what exactly it means to 'read as a woman'. So far, so good, even for the beginner. A reader with virtually no knowledge of deconstruction can begin to develop an idea of what the theory is actually based on, reading strategies and the production of meaning. The final two sections, which deal with deconstruction itself are more difficult to grasp without a background in literary theory and terminology. Culler addresses topics such as 'graft', 'traditional hierachies of thought', and the now notorious 'differance'. Yet still, his analysis is clear, thorough and comprehensible. His final section, giving examples of deconstructionist criticism, is interesting in the way that it shows the complexity of the topic. Few of the works he cites have anything in common with each-other, and the meaning extracted from various works proves to be both thought-provoking and original. Isn't this, after all, the whole aim of deconstruction. Fornovices in the world of post-modernist literary theory, this book is still extremely useful (especially if read more than once). Those readers with a background in the subject will also benefit from Culler's extremely detailed analysis of the mysterious world of deconstrution.

On Deconstruction delivers lucid explanations of some of the most difficult ideas in post-structural theory. Culler manages to explain the ideas without diluting them, which is no mean feat. Culler reads like an excellent teacher who whets the appetite for further reading. Read this book before you read anything by Jacques Derrida. It may change your whole experience. This book is also helpful as an introduction to a cross section of literary trends including feminist criticism and reader response. I have owned this book for several years and find myself returning to it again and again.

As Cullers himself tells this book is a sequel of his Structuralist Poetics but with different methods and conclusions. In the 80ths write about critical theory is no longer to introduce unfamiliar questions, methods, and principles, but to intervene in a lively and confusing debate. This is the special point about this book.

The reader finds an account of what Culler considers the most vital and significant in recent theoretical writing and undertake an exposition of issues often seem poorly undertood. For it brings up debate, On deconstruction is provocative and demands some effort from the reader. It is certainly not a book for begginners... The theory and criticism of recent years is discussed focusing on deconstruction as the principal source of energy and innovation. He offers a detailed exposition of its ideas and methods, defining its relation to other strands of contemporary criticism, and assessing its implications for literary studies.

With emphasis on readers and reding, Culler considers deconstruction, in terms of the questions raised by psychoanalytic, feminist, and reader-response criticism. He then turns to a systematic analysis of deconstruction, drawing together the disparate and difficult writings of Jacques Derrida and the working out the implications of his approach for the concepts and methods that literary critics have relied on.

Surveying the variations and achievements of American deconstructive criticism, the author clarifies the procedures and assumptions of several interpretative essays, giving special attention to the work of Paul de Man. Not an easy book but surely a good deal for those who search for a better understanding of the post structuralist critics point of view and methods. Give a try!

This dual language edition of Baudelaire's revolutionary work is an excellent addition to any poetry lover's bookshelf. The translations are well thought out and can be read as works on their own if you do not speak French. However, Baudelaire's poetry is best read in the original French if the reader really wishes to appreciate the gravity and depth of poems such as 'Le Cygne' (Andromac je pense a vous) or marvel at the streets of Paris in the middle of Haussmann's redevelopment plan.

Baudelaire allows us to explore our own emotions and leads us on a journey from this world, to the classical world and then on to the next. We see love in many guises, from Baudelaire's various 'amantes' to sex with common prostitutes. We cannot help be amazed by the poet's versatility of subject matter and even of style, particularly in 'Harmonie du Soir'. This collection can be read on many different levels and every time one rereads a poem, there is always something more.

I would recommend 'Les Fleurs du Mal' to anyone who has been entranced by French literature all through the ages. You will see love, hate and Paris as you've never seen them before.

This is a magnificent edition of the seminal Fleurs du Mal, printed in its original French and a sympathetic and incisive English that retains rhythm and form in a way rarely seen in recent Baudelaires. For poetry lovers, and lovers of literature, Baudelaire is a first-stop: all of twentieth century poetry is in his debt, yet he is often overlooked in contemporary analysis of influences on poets like Eliot, even Heany. The stark, startling honesty of poems like De Profundis Clamavi, or The Balcony, wipe away the years and bring this rebel visionary of the soul full-dimensionally into our twenty-first century living-rooms. This is an important work, as important as anything in French literature. The frame of "poetry" distracts: Flowers of Evil is life lessons, a handbook more stimulating and life-affirming than any top-ten self-help manual.

This edition of "Flowers of Evil" contains all of the poems, not in their original order. However, ample introductory material and two tables of contents allows the reader to see what the work was when it was first published.

The poems themselves cover many subjects in traditional symbolist style, from cats to gypsies to corpses to a whole section on wine. A must for any student of poetry.

However, if you're looking for a translation that is true word for word and does not attempt to preserve the meter and rhyme, this is not the book for you. Mcentyre does a fabulous job tweaking the enlish to preserve poetic structure, but for students of French, and those interested in doing their own translations, other editions are preferable.

When reading a text, how much does what the author intended count for, if anything? Is there any way to tell what a text "really" means, or can it be read however you like for whatever purpose you like? Simple as they seem, these are the fundamental questions this book is concerned with, and it is Eco's task to explain why he thinks there should be limits to interpretation - against the prevailing opinions of many modern critics and thinkers.

The book is laid out in eight sections. The first is the Introduction, which is substantial. If you're in the habit of skipping the introduction I would advise against it here, unless you consider yourself thoroughly familiar with the subject - it's helpful.

The next three sections consist of a series of lectures Eco gave on this subject, where he establishes his main points. It's quite accessible to the layman, and in the few places where the terms get a bit obscure you can usually figure out what he's talking about from the context. He uses several historical examples which keep things interesting, and his arguments are interesting whether you find them convincing or not.

Essays by Rorty, Culler and Brooke-Rose in response to these lectures make up the next part. Rorty, a self-described "pragmatist", makes the argument that we shouldn't concern ourselves with what makes a "valid" interpretation, and instead just use texts as they come before us for whatever purpose suits us best. Culler, coming from the side of the deconstructionists, argues that what Eco calls "overinterpretation" has a value of its own and reacts strongly to the implication that there should be any limits whatsoever imposed upon the critic. Brooke-Rose's piece on "palimpsest history" is not uninteresting but somewhat tangential, and you really have to stretch things to relate it to the argument going on between Eco, Rorty and Culler.

The wrap-up section is a response from Eco, mostly addressing Rorty's points though dealing somewhat with Culler's objections. There is no clear "winner", and you may not be swayed to Eco's point of view if you found one of the others more compelling, but there is ample food for thought.

I don't have much background in literary theory, but I still found Eco's writing very accessible and very enjoyable. I think the topic would interest anyone that has ever tried to appreciate literature: up to what point can we take events in a book/play/poem to be significant to the idea the writer is trying to get across?

This book constructs its arguments from the ground up, although at times the approach to interpretation taken by Eco is radically different from how one would be accustumed to reading a book.

I believe that eventually one gets used to the different approaches suggested -- or better, exemplified -- by Eco, and the initial difficulties in understanding his point of view are overcome to open a great new horizon of ideas and literary enjoyment.

Genette is one of the biggest-names in stylistic literary criticism around. One would imagine that this means his works are read far and wide, though this is not always the case.

Narrative Discourse samples essays from Figures III, Genette's most well read collection of essays. The theme of all of the essays is structure and presentation in the narrative, itself a topic which has only recieved a high place in the study of narrative in recent history. This collection gives the reader the basics of Genette's own view of narrative, but stands itself incomplete without criticism (which is presented and answered in Narrative Discourse Revisited).

Genette's ideas besides, this volume is difficult reading for the simple reason that information is not easily locatable and one is required to sift through the beach to find a sand dune: in other words, a person does ALL the work even if you want to double check the meaning of a single major term. This is another reason to get Narrative Discourse Revisited, where Genette actually explains in simple, straitforward terms his own ideas on narrative.

One unfortunate note on the translation is the original terms as they appeared in French are not included in the text. Instead, terms were applied which seem to add more confusion that clarity, such as the term recit in French being simply translated as narrative and histore translated as "story", neither of which are very accurate considering their respective english meaning.

In short, if you are going to buy this buy the other as well. It will save a lot of headaches in the end.

I have only half finished this book and that is what kept my review from appearing a few days ago: Like an anal Proustian, I repented. However, upon looking through the antiquated, anachronistic, farcical profiles of Proust on the cover of his dated translations I was at the same time shopping for some audio tapes of him with the covers of the translations insinuating the eye of an omniprescent narrator. Given the fact that this book was -by no fault of the author(I mean here Genette) - profiled with that english visage I can't help but to say a few things; namely, that it is worth the headache: Anybody who has labored through to the point of "The Captive" deserves some expanded temporal explanation, and if it means using flashcards for the weird french words, so be it. Proust is not only a long read but a second and (let's face it) a third read.

Temporality, or simply time versus narrative, seems to me the main theme of Genette's great book and it is well worth reading. The only suggestions I would and really could be able to give is to someone who has chosen to read other forms of literature instead of this kind; and that he should make haste to read the Odyssey or its cliff notes and additionally a couple of Balzac novels before taking this particular book on. I have read some Balzac, and I feel remarkably safe in saying that LOST ILLUSIIONS would be enough if one doesn't want to bore oneself with things one doesn't like. I don't think it necessary to read through, for example, Cousin Betty or Old Goriot, both of which, in my view, fall very below any valid proustian juxtaposions and would almost be better consigned to the realm of Jane Austen in comparison to the modern novel. However, I haven't read Madame Bovary, which is apparently a turning point in literature along with Tolsoy and Maussapant(?) and I can sense this while reading this book; there is for me a palpable gap - a real sense of missing something.

Yet in the end one has to choose, and I guess in my case I ellec an apparently indispensable classic: IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. Genette draws on many sources. (Yet he can choose whomsoever he wants. The endings of Lermantov's great "A Hero of our time" or Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" could just as easily fit in for a missing scene in a James novel by perhaps replacing some mode of comparison. Why not, really, use that extremely weird scene in Juan Ruiz's "Book of Good Love, where the archpriest, for no "Elliptical" reason whatsoever, disappears into a "nothingness" as "idiosynchratic" (if "nothingness, so to speak, could become "Idiosynchratic") as any modern novel,(the narrator just disappears!) perhaps admittedly due to its "contrariwise" ordinariness or whatever.

The book may be burdensome, but so is a lot of Proust. I would say anyone would agree that many parts of "The Fugitive" and "The Captive" are pretty wearisome, and actually make a laugh feast of even the most abstruse Robbet-grillet novels.

This book presents a succinct "psychological anatomy" of proustian time, and that is obviously something very important in Proust, even though my professor stated that Proust is accessible. After reading this book, and considering the STAKES, what is truly accessible? One thing that is accessible is a cunning and clever writers' gift to impart his spadework and wisdow unto those who either don't have the time or - why not admit it? - temporal fortitude to survy every ravine Marcel Proust indeed seemed to plant.

And as far as content goes, for my money, Genette need not even address it - we have Proust for that. It is Proust's intentional or unintentional modes of recollection that may be,- as Genette suggests here,- as important as philosophy, fiction, reality, history, emotions, or what have you. I think this book is worth the headache for anyone who has read the first four books (up to The Captive) once because on the necessary secondary and againin perhaps third reading many very basic, important and proustian modes of thought are brought to light, sometimes glaringly so.

This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to look seriously at narrative theory. Genette's analysis of the construction of time in narrative discourse is the still the model for theorists writing since then. Such categories as order, frequency, and duration in the narrative presentation of story-time show how narrative decisions on the part of authors can have dramatically different rhetorical effects. Genette views these narrative strategies as a form of rhetorical figuration and gives them terms drawn from classical rhetoric (e.g., "prolepsis" for a flashing forward, "analepsis" for a flashback). Genette's work is one of the clearest of all the French theorists of the 1970s and 1980s who became popular among literary critics and theorists in the US. His work is easily the most empirical of his academic geration of French theorists and perhaps the most likely to be useful in generations to come.

Literary theory is a pretty imposing topic, and it's especially imposing to people like myself who don't have a liberal arts education. So, I was really happy to find Culler's introduction to literary theory. Rather than hiding behind a taxonomy of the various schools of thought, he discusses and attempts to answer some difficult questions: What is theory? What is literature? Why might we care about the answers to these questions? My take on this book is that Culler has successfully managed to convey some of the difficult and interesting challenges of theory to uninitiated readers without dumbing down the subject too much. Recommended.

Let me just start off by saying that Professor Culler's "Very Short Introduction to Theory" should be read by every undergraduate English Lit student as they start their major, and reread by every English Lit grad student as they start graduate school.

I myself never used or thought about theory as an undergraduate, and when I started my Masters program at Notre Dame a couple of years ago, I was terrified and repulsed by the barrage of, as Culler puts it, "foreign names" and odd sounding approaches like Deconstruction and Post-Colonialism. Now starting my Ph.D. program at Northwestern, I have some appreciation for theory and its usefulness, but not until I read Culler's book was I at all really comfortable or at ease with it.

Culler chooses not to launch into explications of the various approaches (Marxism, Feminism, et al) or their hybridizations (Marxist-Feminist, among others), although there are very succint statements dealing with each, both along the way, and in the appendix. Instead, he discusses, in very basic and understandable terms, the issues that 'theory' is concerned with; to wit, 'literature,' 'culture,' 'language,' and 'identity,' primarily. He uses examples that pretty much anyone can understand, filtering in, from time to time, foundational concepts of theorists like Saussure, Derrida, Foucault, and others.

Perhaps the best thing about "Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction" is the language that Culler himself uses. In conversational, even colloquial prose, and using very simple kinds of examples, Culler manages to demystify a normally forbidding subject matter. By taking this kind of approach, theory becomes something useful and engaging.

One possible limitation of this book is that with all the discussion of 'subject' and 'identity,' there is virtually no discussion of the 'other.' While Culler does address this topic by way of queer theory, feminism, and briefly, post-colonialism toward the end of the work itself, the concepts of the 'other' and 'othering' are not introduced as such, which I think would be useful.

Overall, though, this is a fantastic book, and a must-read for students of literature - and I think I've only said that about one other book I've reviewed on Amazon - that being Aristotle's "Poetics." No disrespect intended to Northwestern or their theory specialists, but if I had known that Professor Culler was so good at explaining such usually high-flown concepts, I probably would've gone to Cornell.

This is an excellent text for students new to literary theory, but even the more experienced readers should be delighted by it. Rather than simply making an historical tour through various schools of thought, Culler relegates that to a useful appendix and instead focuses on key questions and concepts, beginning with 'What is Theory?' and 'What is Literature?' - two very good questions which are too rarely asked. He then explores various focuses of literary studies, such as meaning, poetics, narrative and identity. Culler's great skill here is to summarize without simplifying; to make refreshingly plain what other writers seem to delight in rendering obscure. (His cogent analysis of the intersection between literature and cultural studies in Chapter 3 is the clearest and most insightful I've ever read.) Intelligently structured, full of useful examples, and often employing a wryly humorous tone, Culler makes literary theory interesting, inspiring and above all accessible - something any student will undoubtedly appreciate.

Paul De Man spent his early years in Europe as a confirmed Anti-Semitic fascist. When the Nazis invaded his homeland, he actively collaborated in creating and disseminating virulent polemics against Jews. After the war De Man fled to America. He was hired to teach at Yale (great background check, guys) while desperately attempting to conceal his wartime activities. De Man became famous at Yale for founding the School of Deconstructionism, an intellectually disreputable philosophy which claimed that works of art may be freely interpreted by observers without consideration for the creator's intentions. In other words, Hitler's "Mein Kampf" might have one meaning to a Bantu and another meaning to a Swede without concern for Hitler's intentions. This type of moral equivocation appealed to members of the politically correct sect, which faithfully regurgitated De Man's shallow assertions. Early in his Yale career De Man's European escapades became known to the senior staff and faculty at Yale. When confronted by his accusers, De Man lied. Yale never publicized De Man's record of violent bigotry (great moral courage, guys), allowing De Man to proselytize his message of moral relativism for decades without public recognition of the Great Scholar's character or moral fitness.

In the person of Paul De Man the politically correct are forced to confront the true nature of their inhuman philosophy. Thomas Jefferson preached freedom and liberalism while owning slaves, in direct contradiction of his philosophy, becoming a hypocrite. De Man preached genocide against helpless minorities, lied after the fact, and never apologized for his actions. In doing so he conformed perfectly to the moral relativism of political correctness. Deconstructionism became the intellectual shield behind which hides the totalitarian urge.

Although Derrida utilizes the death of a friend to illustrate reflections on other thinkers, the text primarily illustrates the double bind we find ourselves in when those close to us die, as illustrated in Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia" as well as in Holderin. We find ourselves making an impossible decision. We may repair our memories inward like a "tomb", a "bad object" incorporation resulting in an inward flow of libidinal cathexes, leading to a dead, incorporated otherness and a narcissistic and deadened state, or retrieve our libidinal investitures from our deceased friend, resulting in a sense of betrayal. A timeless human dilemna illustrated beautifully here. I suppose a third choice is a healthy dose of therapy. Maybe M. Derrida should have called on his buddy M. Lacan when he had the chance, like M. Althusser? At any rate, I can't comment on De Man's political activities prior to his Yale appointment because I don't know. I suppose I'm just an irresponsible intellectual. Nonetheless, "Memoires" is worthwhile for those initiated in continental thought and some of the nuances of presentation.

Ferdinand de Saussure, an outstanding linguist of the late 19th century, lectured on general linguistics at the University of Geneva intermittently from 1907 to 1911. The _Cours de Linguistique Generale_ was not actually written by him, but compiled and edited by Bally and Sechehaye, who had not themselves attended his lectures, from lecture notes written by those who had been his students. As Culler remarks (p. 25), "Most teachers would shudder at the thought of having their views handed on in this way," and the fact that Saussure did not himself choose to publish a work on the nature of linguistics is significant. However, on the basis largely of the _Cours_, Saussure is often cited as the founder of modern structural linguistics.

Unfortunately for the 20th century, the _Cours_ is also the ultimate source of ideas which eventually settled into studies other than linguistics, such as sociology and anthropology, and most notably and most inevitably, literary theory and even philosophy. This in spite of the fact that Saussure's model of language did not survive, for very good reasons, in linguistics itself after the middle of the century, and has undergone, again within linguistics itself, severe criticism, of which perhaps the best summing-up is to be found in Roy Harris's _Reading Saussure_ (Open Court, 1987). Thus we have Jacques Derrida's deconstructionism, founded on a deeply flawed manner of dealing with human languages, at the very root of what is now widely known as the "post-modern" era. I recommend Harris's book highly to anyone with some linguistics background who is at all curious about the actual origins of so much fashionable contemporary thought.

Meanwhile, linguistics itself has been almost untouched by deconstruction and post-modernism. The term "linguistics," which frequently appears in the writings of such as Derrida, Barthes, Baudrillard and the rest of "the French intellectuals" and their many followers in academia seems to refer to Saussure of the _Cours_, rather than to the last century of actual linguistic work.

Unlike that of Harris, Culler's book can be approached rather easily by the general reader. It falls essentially into two halves, the first dealing with the ideas of the _Cours_ and the second with their impact on disciplines other than linguistics, the latter being handled mainly by describing the development of semiotics, the general study of sign systems. Culler is entirely uncritical of Saussure's ideas and merely attempts to describe them in a general way; if he sees the problems he does not say so. One of the most significant errors of the _Cours_, for example, is the notion that language creates concepts (rather than presupposing them). This Culler transmits without the slightest sign of awareness of its profound implications (such as that human beings with no full-fledged sign system-the congenitally deaf and those deafened in early life who due to isolation or other factors do not acquire a system of manual signing-have no concepts).

In fairness to Culler I confess I have not looked at his 1983 work, _On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism_ (Cornell University Press), which actually followed the first edition of _Ferdinand de Saussure_, mainly because my main interest is linguistics rather than literary theory.

I can recommend _Ferdidand de Saussure_ as very readable; but I must point out that Saussure has long since gone the way of a number of other still derivatively influential 19th-century thinkers.

Ken Miner

"Is it the meat or is it the motion?" Jonathan Culler asks irreverently in this ambitious book on puns and the origins of "written" literature. In other words, which is the more persuasive of the two dominant competing theories of literature's origins--the essentialist or the pragmatic. Try as he might to be evenhanded in his presentation of both theories, he doesn't leave you in doubt as to his preference for the latter. Though he commits himself in the introduction to writing his book more for the general reader than for the specialist, he compromises his intent by frequently resorting to turgid, opaque prose; for example: "By their coaxial ambivalence, the anal and the nasal "markers" crystallize the discomfiture that must have been felt by the first hominid rising out of the miasmal mists of consciousness." If this weren't enough of a distraction for the reader, his theory that the transition from oral to written literature first manifested itself in, of all places, prehistoric Finland should make one's head spin. All in all, this a book that only a graduate student will take unqualified pleasure in reading.

The first reviewer fails to note the basic fact that this is a collection of essays by different writers, some of them witty and graceful, others less so. The sentence he or she quotes is from the most rebarbative essay, and readers who are put off by this sample of the prose should read the essays by Derek Attridge, Debra Fried and Fred Ahl, for example.