The material elements of writing have long been undervalued, and have been dismissed by recent historicising trends of criticism; but analysis of these elements - sound, signature, letters - can transform our understanding of literary texts. In this 1994 book Tom Cohen shows how, in an era of representational criticism and cultural studies, the role of close reading has been overlooked. Arguing that much recent criticism has been caught in potentially regressive models of representation, Professor Cohen undertakes to counter this by rethinking the 'materiality' of the text itself. Through a series of revealing new readings of the work of writers including Plato, Bakhtin, Poe, Whitman and Conrad, Professor Cohen exposes the limitations of new historicism and neo-pragmatism, and demonstrates how 'the materiality of language' operates to undo the representational models of meaning imposed by the literary canon.

This second volume presents the director's work as a radical collage of images and absences, letters and numbers, citations and sounds that together mark Hitchcock as a knowing figure who was entirely aware of this - and cinema's place at the dawn of a global media culture, as well as the cinema's revolutionary impact on perception and memory.

Uses close readings of Hitchcock's films to combine an articulation of Lacan's theory of ethics with a discussion of recent theories of feminine subjectivity and queer textuality.

This new edition of A Hitchcock Reader aims to preserve what has been so satisfying and successful in the first edition: a comprehensive anthology that may be used as a critical text in introductory or advanced film courses, while also satisfying Hitchcock scholars by representing the rich variety of critical responses to the director's films over the years. a total of 20 of Hitchcock's films are discussed in depth - many others are considered in passing section introductions by the editors that contextualize the essays and the films they discuss well-researched bibliographic references, which will allow readers to broaden the scope of their study of Alfred Hitchcock

This book makes an important contribution to cultural analysis by opening up the work of two canonical authors to issues of exile and migration. Barbara Straumann's close reading of selected films and literary texts focuses on Speak, Memory, Lolita, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Suspicion, North by Northwest and Shadow of a Doubt and explores the connections between language, imagination and exile. Invoking psychoanalysis as the principal discourse of dislocation, the book not only uses concepts such as 'screen memory', 'family romance', 'fantasy' and 'the uncanny' as hermeneutic foils, it also argues that, in their own ways, the arch-parodists Hitchcock and Nabokov are remarkably in tune with the images and tropes developed by Freud.

This book presents a thorough study and an up to date anthology of Plato’s Protagoras. International authors' papers contribute to the task of understanding how Plato introduced and negotiated a new type of intellectual practice – called philosophy – and the strategies that this involved. They explore Plato’s dialogue, looking at questions of how philosophy and sophistry relate, both on a methodological and on a thematic level. While many of the contributing authors argue for a sharp distinction between sophistry and philosophy, this is contested by others. Readers may consider the distinctions between philosophy and traditional forms of poetry and sophistry through these papers. Questions for readers' attention include: To what extent is Socrates’ preferred mode of discourse, and his short questions and answers, superior to Protagoras’ method of sophistic teaching? And why does Plato make Socrates and Protagoras reverse positions as it comes to virtue and its teachability? This book will appeal to graduates and researchers with an interest in the origins of philosophy, classical philosophy and historical philosophy.

Tom Cohen's radical exploration of Hitchcock's cinema departs from conventional approaches--psychoanalytic, feminist, political--to emphasize the dense web of signatures and markings inscribed on and around his films. Aligning Hitchcock's agenda with the philosophical and aesthetic writings of Nietzsche, Derrida, and Benjamin, Cohen's project dramatically recasts the history and meaning of cinema itself. This first volume of "Hitchcock's Cryptonymies provides a singularly close reading of films such as "The Lady Vanishes, Spellbound, and "North by Northwest, exposing the often imperceptible visual and aural puns, graphic elements, and cryptograms that traverse his entire body of work. Within Hitchcock's cinema, Cohen argues, these "secret agents" have more than just decorative or symbolic significance; they also reflect, critique, and disrupt traditional cinematic practice, undermining ways of seeing inherited from the Enlightenment and prefiguring postmodern culture. Cohen offers an unprecedented guide to the entirety of Hitchcock's labyrinthine signature system.