The work of the French literary review, intellectual grouping, and publishing team Tel Quel had a profound impact on literary and cultural debate in the 1960s and '70s. THE TEL QUEL READER presents, for the first time in English, many of the key essays written by the Tel Quel group. The collection filled a much-needed gap in the literature available on the postculturalist movement.
* The first full-length study in any language of one of the most important elements in post-war French intellectual and cultural life. The journal Tel Quel was the focus of much of the intense theoretical activity of Paris in the 1960s and 1970s and played a vital role in the development of the key thinkers of the time: Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers. Patrickffrench traces its history, across the 'time of theory' and the catastrophe of May 1968, to the review's controversial affirmation of literature as akin to theology in the late 1970s. Beyond its documentary and historical significance, the book maps a 'genealogy' of theory, from its structuralausterity and 'terror' to a new time 'after theory'.
"A comprehensive encyclopedia of literary and cultural theory. Covers Literary Theory from 1900 to 1966, Literary Theory from 1966 to the present, and Cultural Theory. This encyclopedia provides accessible entries on the important concepts, theorists and trends in post-1900 literary and cultural theory. With explanations of complex terms and important theoretical concepts, and summaries of the work and ideas of key figures, it is a highly informative reference work for a multi-disciplinary readership"-- Nota de l'editor.
A rare and unique publication of Roland Barthes' notebooks from his travels in China. The notebooks document Barthes' thoughts during his 1974 visit to China, just as the last campaign of the Cultural Revolution was getting underway.
No text has its meaning alone; all texts have their meaning in relation to other texts. Since Julia Kristeva coined the term in the 1960s, intertextuality has been a dominant idea within literary and cultural studies leaving none of the traditional ideas about reading or writing undisturbed. Graham Allen's Intertextuality outlines clearly the history and the use of the term in contemporary theory, demonstrating how it has been employed in: structuralism post-structuralism deconstruction postcolonialism Marxism feminism psychoanalytic theory. Incorporating a wealth of illuminating examples from literary and cultural texts, this book offers an invaluable introduction to intertextuality for any students of literature and culture.
How Maoism captured the imagination of French intellectuals during the 1960s Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Phillipe Sollers, and Jean-Luc Godard. During the 1960s, a who’s who of French thinkers, writers, and artists, spurred by China’s Cultural Revolution, were seized with a fascination for Maoism. Combining a merciless exposé of left-wing political folly and cross-cultural misunderstanding with a spirited defense of the 1960s, The Wind from the East tells the colorful story of this legendary period in France. Richard Wolin shows how French students and intellectuals, inspired by their perceptions of the Cultural Revolution, and motivated by utopian hopes, incited grassroots social movements and reinvigorated French civic and cultural life. Wolin’s riveting narrative reveals that Maoism’s allure among France’s best and brightest actually had little to do with a real understanding of Chinese politics. Instead, it paradoxically served as a vehicle for an emancipatory transformation of French society. Recounting the cultural and political odyssey of French students and intellectuals in the 1960s, The Wind from the East illustrates how the Maoist phenomenon unexpectedly sparked a democratic political sea change in France.
Mixing fiction, history, psychoanalysis, and personal fantasy, Teresa, My Love turns a past world into a modern marvel, following Sylvia Leclercq, a French psychoanalyst, academic, and incurable insomniac, as she falls for the sixteenth-century Saint Teresa of Avila and becomes consumed with charting her life. Traveling to Spain, Leclercq, Julia Kristeva's probing alter ego, visits the sites and embodiments of the famous mystic and awakens to her own desire for faith, connection, and rebellion. One of Kristeva's most passionate and transporting works, Teresa, My Love interchanges biography, autobiography, analysis, dramatic dialogue, musical scores, and images of paintings and sculpture to engage the reader in Leclercq's—and Kristeva's—journey. Born in 1515, Teresa of Avila outwitted the Spanish Inquisition and was a key reformer of the Carmelite Order. Her experience of ecstasy, which she intimately described in her writings, released her from her body and led to a complete realization of her consciousness, a state Kristeva explores in relation to present-day political failures, religious fundamentalism, and cultural malaise. Incorporating notes from her own psychoanalytic practice, as well as literary and philosophical references, Kristeva builds a fascinating dual diagnosis of contemporary society and the individual psyche while sharing unprecedented insights into her own character.
Julia Kristeva's blend of the literary with the psychoanalytic places her work central to current thinking, from semiotics and critical theory to feminism and psychoanalysis. Her profound understanding of the dynamics of intention and creativity mark her out as one of the leading theoreticians of desire. Each essay in this volume offers new insight into the many aspects that make up Kristeva's thought, ranging from her analyses of sexual difference, female temporality and the perceptions of the body to the mental states of abjection and melancholia, and their representation in painting and literature.
