(abridged and revised) This reference grammar offers intermediate and advanced students a reason ably comprehensive guide to the morphology and syntax of educated speech and plain prose in Spain and Latin America at the end of the twentieth century. Spanish is the main, usually the sole official language of twenty-one countries,} and it is set fair to overtake English by the year 2000 in numbers 2 of native speakers. This vast geographical and political diversity ensures that Spanish is a good deal less unified than French, German or even English, the latter more or less internationally standardized according to either American or British norms. Until the 1960s, the criteria of internationally correct Spanish were dictated by the Real Academia Espanola, but the prestige of this institution has now sunk so low that its most solemn decrees are hardly taken seriously - witness the fate of the spelling reforms listed in the Nuevas normas de prosodia y ortograjia, which were supposed to come into force in all Spanish-speaking countries in 1959 and, nearly forty years later, are still selectively ignored by publishers and literate persons everywhere. The fact is that in Spanish 'correctness' is nowadays decided, as it is in all living languages, by the consensus of native speakers; but consensus about linguistic usage is obviously difficult to achieve between more than twenty independent, widely scattered and sometimes mutually hostile countries. Peninsular Spanish is itself in flux.

Bringing together writers, translators, poets, and leading scholars of cultural theory, literary theory, comparative literature, philosophy, history, political science, music studies, and education, The Wounds of Possibility aims to offer an in-depth and wide-ranging study of George Steiner’s imposing body of work. This book is a timely volume of important essays on one of the most provocative thinkers, critics, and philosophers now writing. During an era in which the question of the ethical and of the status of the work of art, and its relation to the theological dimension, has returned with renewed urgency, Steiner’s work provides rich resources for reflection and it is hoped that the volume will stand on its own as a rich, nuanced accompaniment to the reading of Steiner’s work. With their broad range of thematic foci, theoretical approaches, and stunning constellations of quoted material from different backgrounds, all the essays in the book try to reflect upon the relation between human identity and language, ethics and literature, philosophy and art, and they all offer what we regard as being the most comprehensive engagement with Steiner’s work to date.

Philosophical realism has taken a number of different forms, each applied to different topics and set against different forms of idealism and subjectivism. Maurizio Ferraris's Manifesto of New Realism takes aim at postmodernism and hermeneutics, arguing against their emphasis on reality as constructed and interpreted. While acknowledging the value of these criticisms of traditional, dogmatic realism, Ferraris insists that the insights of postmodernism have reached a dead end. Calling for the discipline to turn its focus back to truth and the external world, Ferraris's manifesto—which sparked lively debate in Italy and beyond—offers a wiser realism with social and political relevance.