A World of Difference

Front Cover
JHU Press, 1989 - Literary Criticism - 225 pages

Is a willingness to carry an inquiry to the point of undecidability necessarily at odds with political engagement? In A World of Difference Barbara Johnson extends and rethinks the theoretical perspectives on literature opened up by her earlier book, The Critical Difference. Through subtle and probing analyses of texts by Wordsworth, Poe, Baudelaie, Mallarmé, Thoreau, Mary Shelley, Zora Neale HUrston, Gwendolyn Brooks, and others, she attempts to transfer the analysis of "difference" from the realm of linguistic universality or deconstructive allegory into contexts in which difference is very much at issue in the world. New to the paperback edition is a preface that readdresses the question of the politics of deconstruction in the context of current discussion about the life and works of Paul de Man.

 

Selected pages

Contents

THE FATE OF DECONSTRUCTION
11
SIGNIFICANT GAPS
49
POETIC DIFFERENCES
89
OTHER INFLECTIONS OF DIFFERENCE
137
Structures
172
Appendix to Chapter 7
201
Notes
213
Index
223
Copyright

Other editions - View all

A World of Difference
Barbara Johnson
Snippet view - 1987
A World of Difference
Barbara Johnson
Snippet view - 1989

Common terms and phrases

abortion Agnes Agnes's anacoluthon animation apostrophe Arnolphe attempt Baudelaire Baudelaire's becomes begins Chapter child colored criticism critique dead death decapitation deconstruction desire difference Eatonville erased essay fact feel female feminine feminism feminist Ferdinand de Lesseps figure Frankenstein function gender Geoffrey Hartman Gwendolyn Brooks Harold Bloom human Hurston ignorance inside intertextuality Jacques Derrida Janie Janie's kill L'Ecole des femmes language Lesseps literal literary literature logic Lucille Clifton lyric male Mallarmé Man's Mary Mary Shelley meaning metaphor metonymy Molière mother Nancy Friday nature never notion novel object opposition Panama passage Paul pedagogical personification philosophy play poem poem's poet poetic poetry political precisely prose question reader reading relation rhetorical seems sense sexual Shelley signifier soul story symbols teaching tell textual theory things Thoreau tion undecidability University Press voice woman women word Wordsworth writerliness writing Yale School Zora Neale Hurston

References to this book

About the author (1989)

Barbara Johnson is professor of French and comparative literature at Harvard University. She is author of Défigurations du langage poétique and translator of Jacques Derrida's La Dissémination.

Bibliographic information

TitleA World of Difference
A Johns Hopkins paperback
ACLS Humanities E-Book
AuthorBarbara Johnson
Editionreprint
PublisherJHU Press, 1989
ISBN0801837456, 9780801837456
Length225 pages
Subjects › 

Literary Criticism / General
Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory
  
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