Acts of Narrative

Thirteen essays from international scholars reflect on the nature of narrative, literary criticism, and history from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. For example, in one contribution, literary critic J. Hillis Miller analyzes the ways in which speech acts in general and lying in particular are inextricably bound up with death in Henry James' novel The Wings of the Dove. Other contributors include such renowned thinkers as philosopher Jacques Derrida and psychologist Cathy Caruth. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Carol Jacobs is Professor of Comparative Literature and German at Yale University. Her most recent work is In the Language of Walter Benjamin (1999). Henry Sussman is Professor of Comparative Literature at SUNY, Buffalo. He is the author, most recently, of The Aesthetic Contract: Statutes of Art and Intellectual Work in Modernity (Stanford, 1997).