The lever appears to be a very simple object, a tool used since ancient times for the most primitive of tasks: to lift and to balance. Why, then, were prominent intellectuals active around 1800 in areas as diverse as science, philosophy, and literature inspired to think and write about levers? In The Lever as Instrument of Reason, readers will discover the remarkable ways in which the lever is used to model the construction of knowledge and to mobilize new ideas among diverse disciplines. These acts of construction are shown to model key aspects of the human, from the more abstract processes of moral decision-making to a quite literal equation of the powerful human ego with the supposed stability and power of the fulcrum point.

In this volume collaborators from different universities all over the world explore a wide variety of methods for the study of literature as cultural memory. In literature, the past may be (re)constructed in various ways and in very diverse forms. This immediately raises the question as to how one can describe and inventory the various discourses and metadiscourses of historical representation. In what sense can the rhetoric of literary historiography itself contribute to literature's function as cultural memory? Which methods of analysis are most appropriate for describing specific text types or genres as cultural memory? What have been the pragmatic uses and the ethical merits of the stability and continuity that literature has often provided for European, American, Asian and African cultures? What are the dilemmas they create for our teaching at the end of the twentieth century? To all these questions, a wide range of scholars here tries to find answers. In thorough and highly original contributions, they not only address theoretical problems, but also engage themselves in practical analyses of specific works.