This book rescues Joubert from the ranks of minor French moralistes and by tracing the development of his thought, from his time as secretary to Diderot through to the period of his association with Chateaubriand, demonstrates that he was a writer on aesthetics of considerable sensitivity. Examination of his manuscripts and of his annotation to books in his library shows that Joubert's primary concern, during the period that witnessed the gradual but profound change from the intellectual values of the Enlightenment to those of the Romantic period, was to establish the status and nature of art and poetry. Reading widely among philosophers and poets from Plato and Homer to Kant and Andre Chenier, Joubert consigned his thoughts and perceptions to a series of Carnets which form the basis of this study and bear witness to an unusually eclectic and enquiring mind. Joubert's significance is not confined to the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. He is unique among writers of his day in the way that his own interrogation of the very act of writing anticipates the aesthetic of later, highly influential writers such as Stephane Mallarme.

Tracing the development of Joubert's thought, from his time as secretary to Diderot to his association with Chateaubriand, this study argues that he was a writer of considerable sensitivity on aesthetics.

The diary as a genre is found in all literate societies, and these autobiographical accounts are written by persons of all ranks and positions. The Diary offers an exploration of the form in its social, historical, and cultural-literary contexts with its own distinctive features, poetics, and rhetoric. The contributors to this volume examine theories and interpretations relating to writing and studying diaries; the formation of diary canons in the United Kingdom, France, United States, and Brazil; and the ways in which handwritten diaries are transformed through processes of publication and digitization. The authors also explore different diary formats, including the travel diary, the private diary, conflict diaries written during periods of crisis, and the diaries of the digital era, such as blogs. The Diary offers a comprehensive overview of the genre, synthesizing decades of interdisciplinary study to enrich our understanding of, research about, and engagement with the diary as literary form and historical documentation.

For lovers of words and seekers of wisdom, here is a lively history of aphorisms--the oldest written art form--and the intriguing people who have penned them, from the Buddha to Emily Dickinson.

Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu is a hybrid, a novel-essay, a capacious work of fiction containing a commonplace-book. It might, as Roland Barthes has suggested, be thought of as the product of profound and cherished indecision, Proust's indecision between two styles of writing, themoralistic and the fictive/novelistic/romanesque. Structure and Science is an exploration of this indecision.The shorter Proust, Proust the moraliste, is a prolific writer of maxims, from the laws of the passions to the aesthetic manifesto of the Temps retrouve to the [?rapacious] teeming/fertile/spawning/exuberant/luxuriant reflection(s) on sexuality, politics, society. Yet these maxims, whose grammarlays claim to timelessness, are bound up in narrative, the story of their evolution. And disintegration. Proust's moralizing exposes our affective relationship with law statements, with authority, and it is this question that engages A la recherche in an epistemological debate which crosses theboundaries between the two cultures, art and science. What might be called the epistemological alertness of Proust's text is explored at this interface between 'modernist' science and literature.

Translation and Opposition is an edited volume that brings together cultural and sociological perspectives by examining translation through the prism of linguistic/cultural hybridity and inter/intra-social agency. In a collection of diverse case studies, ranging from the translation of political texts to interpreting in concentration camps, the book explores issues of power struggle, ideology, censorship and identity construction. The contributors to the volume show how translators, interpreters and subtitlers as mediators put their specific professional and ethical competences to the test by treading the dividing lines between constellations of ‘in-groups’ and cultural or political ‘others’.