Reading Knowledge

Michael Payne introduces the principal writings of Roland Barthes, Michael Foucault and Louis Althusser by means of a detailed focus on their common interest in the forms and conditions of knowledge.

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Payne (Bucknell U.) applies literary criticism to the mutual theoretical interests of these 20th century French thinkers in the forms and conditions of knowledge. From their principal writings (Althusser's "Reading Capital", Barthes's "S/Z", and Foucault's "The Order of Things"), and from a sampling of essays on the visual arts, the author investigates their readings on meaning, truth, and value in verbal and nonverbal contexts. Deleuze merits secondary attention in this company of poststructuralists (not the author's favorite term), "recovering" from Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche. French feminists are promised their due in a subsequent study. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Michael Payne is John P. Corzer Professor of English at Bucknell University. He is editor of Blackwell's Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory (1996) and general editor of the Bucknell Lectures in Literary Theory, also published by Blackwell. His Reading French Feminism is forthcoming, as is his Renaissance Literature: An Anthology, in the Blackwell Anthologies series.