Semiotik / semiologi

This book examines the intersection of music and temporality in British literature of the long nineteenth century, arguing the temporal multiplicity of music as the most dynamic way to subvert mimetic bias. Temporally vexed sound spaces rupture the narrative, transgressing the hegemonic structures to which it is subject.

Realism seems to be everywhere, both as a trending critical term and as a revitalized aesthetic practice. This volume brings together for the first time three aspects that are pertinent for a proper understanding of realism: its 19th-century aesthetics committed to making reality into an object of serious art; the experiments with and against realism by 20th-century modernist, postmodernist, or magical realist writing; and the politics of realism, especially its ambitions to map the complex realities produced by global capitalism and climate catastrophe. This juxtaposition of aesthetics, experiments, and politics unsettles the entrenched opposition between realism and experimental literature that tends to ignore the fact that realism, by virtue of its commitment to a changing material and social world, cannot be but continuously experimenting.The innovative chapters of this book address some of the pressing questions of literary and cultural studies today, like the complex relation between historical materialism and new materialisms, between science and art, or the different aesthetic and political affordances of making systemic analyses against depicting the specificity of the local. Some of the chapters deal with classically realist authors, such as George Eliot, Émile Zola, and Joseph Conrad, to gauge the aesthetic radicalism of their diverse realist projects. Others investigate the experimental engagements with realism by authors such as B.S. Johnson, J.M. Coetzee, or Rachel Cusk. Yet others, analyze the politics of realism found in contemporary anglophone novels by writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, David Mitchell, or Rohinton Mistry. The readings assembled here are a testament to the diversity of literary realism(s) from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, and to the ongoing controversies surrounding definitions and deployments of "realism."

Unter dem Begriff ,Pen-and-Paper-Rollenspiel' oder ,Tabletop-Rollenspiel' wird eine Form des Gesellschaftsspiels verstanden, in dem eine Gruppe von Spielenden unter Berücksichtigung eines Regelsystems die Rollen fiktionaler Figuren einnimmt, die innerhalb einer von ihnen erschaffenen fiktionalen Welt existieren und handeln. Aus der Verbindung dieser ludischen und fiktionalen Komponenten ergeben sich Potenziale für das Erzählen, die je nach Gruppenpräferenz und zugrundliegendem Spielsystem auf unterschiedliche Weise realisiert werden. Die vorliegende Studie liefert eine prozessorientierte Erzähltheorie des Pen-and-Paper-Rollenspiels, die durch ihre umfassende theoretische Fundierung Anbindung an die klassische und postklassische Narratologie sowie zentrale ludonarratologische Arbeiten der Game Studies bietet. Entlang der Analyse aufgezeichneter Spielsitzungen und publizierter Spielmaterialien wird ein Erzählmodell entwickelt, das sowohl die Eigenschaften narrativer Kommunikation abbildet als auch zentrale Kategorien inhaltlicher und diskursiver Parameter aufgreift. Aus dieser Konzeption werden literaturvermittelnde Potenziale des Spiels abgeleitet, die den Blick für vielfältige empirische Settings öffnen.

Anekdotisches Erzählen nimmt gegenüber dem Roman als zentraler Gattung der Frühromantik in der politisch zugespitzten (nach-)napoleonischen Phase eine fundamentale Rolle ein. Gemeint ist dabei nicht (nur) die Gattung der Anekdote, sondern das Anekdotische als Schreib- und Erzählweise, die vielfältig und vor allem auch in nicht genuin literarischen Kontexten zum Einsatz kommt: im Zeitungskontext als Nachrichtenerzählung und Gerücht; im geselligen Kontext als Witz, Schwank oder Klatsch und im literarischen Zusammenhang eingebettet in längere Erzählungen. Politische Relevanz erhält das Erzählen in der Herstellung von gefühlten statt Tatsachenwahrheiten, in der (behaupteten) Gemeinschaftskonsolidierung bei paralleler Ausschließungspraxis sowie in der medialen Bindung der Zuhörer- bzw. Leserschaft. Das Anekdotische fungiert dabei nicht nur als besonderes Medium politischer Inhalte, sondern zugleich als Beschreibungsdispositiv einer sich narrativ konstituierenden Gemeinschaft. Vor diesem Hintergrund widmet sich die Arbeit der politischen Übergangszeit zwischen Revolution und Restauration, in der Fragen nach der politischen Gemeinschaftsbildung - und nach dem, was daraus ausgeschlossen werden soll - besonders virulent werden.

"Geschichte wird erzählt" lässt sich als Konsens in der geschichtstheoretischen Diskussion über die Darstellung von Geschichte festhalten. Darüber, wie Geschichte erzählt wird, besteht erkennbarer Dissens. Der vorliegende Band überführt die Analyse nationalhistoriografischer Narrative in eine erzähltheoretische Systematik und macht diese Texte in ihrer ästhetisch-literarischen Repräsentation, Erzählhaltung und -konvention als Konstrukt sichtbar. Das erarbeitete textstrukturelle Werkzeug zeigt auf, wie eine historiografisch-erzähltheoretische Analyse nationaler "Meisternarrative" entlang analytischer Kategorien funktionieren kann, um Geschichte(n) systematisch dekonstruierbar zu machen. Indem analytische Kategorien der Erzähltextanalyse für diese besondere Form des Erzähltextes adaptiert und/oder (neu) definiert und direkt auf das Korpus (Nipperdey, Wehler, Winkler) angewendet werden, kann gezeigt werden, wie Historiker:innen historiografisch erzählen. Die hier vorgelegte Narratologie historiografischer "Meisternarrative" liefert somit einen formal erweiterten Werkzeugkasten, der die theoretische Diskussion um die Frage, wie Geschichte erzählt wird, kategorial perspektiviert.

Jaan Valsiner has made numerous contributions to the development of psychology over the last 40 years. He is internationally recognized as a leader and innovator within both developmental psychology and cultural psychology, and has received numerous prizes for his work: the Alexander von Humboldt prize, the Hans Killian prize, and the Outstanding International Psychologist Award from the American Psychological Association. Having taught at Universities in Europe, Asia and north and south America, he is currently Niels Bohr professor at Aalborg University, Denmark. This book is the first to discuss in detail the different sides of Valsiner's thought, including developmental science, semiotic mediation, cultural transmission, aesthetics, globalization of science, epistemology, methodology and the history of ideas. The book provides an overview, evaluation and extension of Valsiner's key ideas for the construction of a dynamic cultural psychology, written by his former students and colleagues from around the world.

The "Muthuppechi" is a complicated book. There are some problems with how we understand this. As an author, I tell my readers that when you read this book, where we are travelling will be less visible. Suddenly there will be some twists. In some places, the sense of understanding is very limited. Usually, this will look like sailing in the sea or ocean. Overall, it travels through all departments. Hail! Jacques Derrida.

This book addresses the vexed status of literary value, focusing on everyday scholarly and pedagogical activities, using Chaucer studies as a case in point. It explores how we may reconcile literary value's inevitability with its uncertainties and complicities, seeking to forge a viable rationale for literary studies generally.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.While wine drunk millennia ago was the humble beverage of the people, today the drink is inextricable with power, sophistication, and often wealth. Bottles sell for half a million dollars. Point systems tell us which wines are considered the best. Wine professionals give us the language to describe what we taste.Agricultural product and cultural commodity, drink of ritual and drink of addiction, purveyor of pleasure, pain, and memory - wine has never been contained in a single glass. Drawing from science, religion, literature, and memoir, Wine meditates on the power structures bound up with making and drinking this ancient, intoxicating beverage.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

The most exhaustive mapping of contemporary literary theory to date, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of the field of contemporary literary theory. Examining 75 key topics across 15 chapters, it provides an approachable and encyclopedic introduction to the most important areas of contemporary theory today.Proceeding broadly chronologically from early theory all the way through to postcritique, Di Leo masterfully unpacks established topics such as psychoanalysis, structuralism and Marxism, as well as newer topics such as trans* theory, animal studies, disability studies, blue humanities, speculative realism and many more.Featuring accessible discussion of the work of foundational theorists such as Lacan, Derrida and Freud as well as contemporary theorists such as Haraway, Braidotti and Hayles, it offers a magisterial examination of an enormously rich and varied body of work.

In the nineteenth century, Charles Dickens backed the cause of abolition of the death penalty and wrote comprehensively about it, in public letters and in his novels. At the end of the twentieth century, Jacques Derrida ran two years of seminars on the subject, which were published posthumously. What the novelist and the philosopher of deconstruction discussed independently, this book brings into comparison.Tambling examines crime and punishment in Dickens's novels Barnaby Rudge, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist and Bleak House and explores those who influenced Dickens's work, including Hogarth, Fielding, Godwin and Edgar Allen Poe. This book also looks at those who influenced Derrida - Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault and Blanchot - and considers Derrida's study on terrorism and the USA as the only major democracy adhering to the death penalty.A comprehensive study of punishment in Dickens, and furthering Derrida's insights by commenting on Shakespeare and blood, revenge, the French Revolution, and the enduring power of violence and its fascination, this book is a major contribution to literary criticism on Dickens and Derrida. Those interested in literature, criminology, law, gender, and psychoanalysis will find it an essential intervention in a topic still rousing intense argument.

This book defends a novel view of mental representation-of how, as thinkers, we represent the world as being. The book serves as a response to two problems in the philosophy of mind. One is the problem of first-personal, or egocentric, belief: how can we have truly first personal beliefs-beliefs in which we think about ourselves as ourselves-given that beliefs are supposed to be attitudes towards propositions and that propositions are supposed to have their truth values independent of a perspective? The other problem is  how we can think about nonexistents (e.g., Santa Claus) given the widespread view that thought essentially involves a relation between a thinker and whatever is being thought about. The standard responses to this puzzle are either to deny that thought is essentially relational or to insist that it is possible to stand in relations to nonexistents. This book offers an error theory to the problem.The responses from this book arise from the same commitment: a commitment to treating talk of propositions-as the things towards which our beliefs are attitudes-as talk of entities that actually exist and that play a constitutive and explanatory role in the activity of thought. 

This edited volume is the first specialized book in English about the Swiss zoologist and anthropologist Adolf Portmann (1897-1982). It provides a clarification and update of Portmann¿s theoretical approach to the phenomenon of life, characterized by terms such as ¿inwardness¿ and ¿self-presentation.¿ Portmann¿s concepts of secondary altriciality and the social uterus have become foundational in philosophical anthropology, providing a benchmark of the difference between humans and animals.In its content, this book brings together two approaches: historical and philosophical analysis of Portmann¿s studies in the life sciences and application of Portmann¿s thought in the fields of biology, anthropology, and biosemiotics. Significant attention is also paid to the methodological implications of his intended reform of biology. Besides contributions from contemporary biologists, philosophers, and historians of science, this volume also includes a translation of an original essayby Portmann and a previously unpublished manuscript from his most remarkable English-speaking interpreter, philosopher Marjorie Grene.Portmann¿s conception of life is unique in its focus on the phenomenal appearance of organisms. Confronted with the enormous amount of scientific knowledge being produced today, it is even clearer than it was during Portmann¿s lifetime that although biologists employ physical and chemical methods, biology itself is not (only) physics and chemistry. These exact methods must be applied according to what has meaning for living beings. If biology seeks to understand organisms as autonomous agents, it needs to take display and the interpretation of appearances as basic characteristics of life.The topic of this book is significantly relevant to the disciplines of theoretical biology, philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and biosemiotics. The recent epigenetic turn in biology, acknowledging the interconnections between organismal development, morphology and communication, presents an opportunity to revisit Portmann¿s work and to reconsider and update his primary ideas in the contemporary context.

This open access book uses Swedish literature and the Swedish publishing field as recurring examples todescribe and analyse the role of the literary semi-peripheral position in world literature from various perspectives and on meso, micro and macro levels, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. This includes the role of translation in the semi-periphery and the conditions under which literature travels to and from that position. The focus is not on Sweden, as such, but rather on the semi-peripheral transitional space as exemplified by the Swedish case. Consisting of three co-written chapters, this study sheds light on what might be called the semi-peripheral condition or the semi-periphery as an area of transition. As part of the Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures series, it makes continuous use of the concepts of 'cosmopolitan' and 'vernacular' - or rather, the processual terms, cosmopolitanization and vernacularization - which provide an overall structure to the analysis of literature and literary phenomena. In this way, the authors show that the semi-periphery is an ideal point of departure to further the understanding of world literature, because it is a place where the cosmopolitan (the literary universal) and the vernacular (the rootedness in a particular culture or place) interact in ways that have not yet been thoroughly explored.The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.