This book offers work by the most outstanding researchers in each field and is intended as a snapshot of the sort of theory and research taking place in language acquisition in the 1990s. All of the articles were chosen to reflect topics and debates of current interest, and all take an interdisciplinary approach to language development, relating the study of how a child comes to possess a language to issues within linguistics, computational theory, biology, social cognition, and comparative psychology.
"Fictional Minds suggests that readers understand novels primarily by
following the functioning of the minds of characters in the novel
storyworlds. Despite the importance of this aspect of the reading
process, traditional narrative theory does not include a complete and
coherent theory of fictional minds. Readers create a continuing
consciousness out of scattered references to a particular character and
read this consciousness as an "embedded narrative" within the whole
narrative of the novel. The combination of these embedded narratives
forms the plot.
Roman Jakobson, one of the most important thinkers of our century, was best known for his role in the rise and spread of the structuralist approach to linguistics and literature. His formative years with the Russian Futurists and subsequent involvement in the Moscow and Prague Linguistic Circles (which he co-founded) resulted in a lifelong devotion to fundamental change in both literary theory and linguistics. In bringing each to bear upon the other, he enlivened both disciplines; if a literary work was to him a linguistic fact, it was also a semiotic phenomenon -part of the entire universe of signs.
From Romanticism to Critical Theory
explores the philosophical roots of literary theory through the
traditions of German philosophy that started with the Romantic
reactions to Kant. Andrew Bowie traces the continuation of the Romantic
tradition, culminating in Heidegger's approaches to art and truth, the
work of Adorno and Benjamin and the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory.
Literary Theory: An Anthology is a definitive collection of classic and contemporary statements in the field of literary theory and criticism. It is an invaluable resource for students who wish to familiarize themselves with the most recent developments in literary theory and with the traditions from which these new theories are derived.The anthology represents all the major schools and methods that make up the dynamic field of literary theory.
