David Winters has quickly become a leading voice in the new landscape of online literary criticism. His widely-published work maps the furthest frontiers of contemporary fiction and theory. The essays in this book range from the American satirist Sam Lipsyte to the reclusive Australian genius Gerald Murnane; from the "distant reading" of Franco Moretti to the legacy of Gordon Lish. Meditations on style, form and fictional worlds sit side-by-side with overviews of the cult status of Oulipo, the aftermath of modernism, and the history of continental philosophy. Infinite Fictions is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the forefront of literary thought.
"It is not only the Hammer films based on Dennis Wheatley's novels that are full-blooded, sensational entertainment, so was Wheatley's life, brilliantly evoked by Phil Baker. This gripping biography draws out all the comedy from Wheatley's history, from his childhood in a family of wine merchants who were dedicated to social climbing (the scrambling for status never left Wheatley either, even in his 70's he was proudly joining gentlemen's clubs such as White's) to his experiences in World War One.
Sarah Hutton presents a rich historical study of one of the most fertile periods in modern philosophy. It was in the seventeenth century that Britain's first philosophers of international stature and lasting influence emerged. Its most famous names, Hobbes and Locke, rank alongside the greatest names in the European philosophical canon. Bacon too belongs with this constellation of great thinkers, although his status as a philosopher tends to be obscured by his status as father of modern science.
This volume inscribes itself in the long-standing debate on the question of the status of "the word". Considering the multi-faceted nature of the word, the authors are aware that no answer to the question might be exhaustive, yet they realizes that each answer brings us closer to a fuller understanding of the issue. The eleven authors included here address the nature of the word from a number of perspectives, such as the duality of the word; the status of the word as a meaningful unit; the meaning extension; the lexico-grammar continuum; and the pragmatic functioning of the word, to name but a few.
This book explores the uses of adjectives in different constructions, and of the problems that arise in their analysis, both in terms of syntactic theory and philosophy of grammar. Professor Matthews also examines a variety of other issues relating to individual adjective positions, including the basic structure of noun phrases and the justification for binary constituents; the status of the copular and its uses in the progressive; the indeterminacy of what were once described as raised constructions; and the function of postmodifying adjectives and adjective phrases in relation to others.
