- Author / Uploaded
- Edward W Said
Beginnings: Intention and Method
Beginnings Edward W Said What does it mean to "lx-gin" a work of literature, philosophy, or criticism? How is it possibl
2,470 660 18MB
Pages 437 Page size 477.6 x 640.56 pts Year 2011
Recommend Papers
File loading please wait...
Citation preview
Beginnings Edward W Said What does it mean to "lx-gin" a work of literature, philosophy, or criticism? How is it possible to think of "beginnings" at all when, after centuries of human experience, surely everything that can be has been thought and said? How does one even contemplate "beginning" yet again -as every thinker and writer must? It is to these beguiling, troublesome questions that Edward Said, one of America's most widely respected younger critics, addresses himself in Beginnings, a work of extraordinary erudition and profundity. The quest for an understanding of what it means to "begin" takes Edward Said through the masterworks of Western literature, to the cyclical philosophy of Vico (whose thought has never before been so tellingly linked to contemporary consciousness) and on to what is certainly the most brilliant explication of postwar French criticism and philosophy yet written, offering illuminating explications of Levi-Strauss's structuralism, Foucault's archaeology, and Derrida's philosophy of writing. To read Edward Said is to experience at first hand the excitement of a fine mind freely and fully engaged in the definitively human adventure, that of intellectual _/// WOJ ider and discovery. /
/1
«;INN
I~I
,_ r
II\J( ~S
I ntention and Method EDWARD W!SAID ,
Basic Books, Inc" Publishers / New York
B~YE'riSche
Sla8:S J;i~l.othek fviUnchen
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Said, Edward W. Beginnings intention and method. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Literature-History and criticism-Theory, 1. Title. PN441.S3 809 74-78306 ISBN 0-465-00580-2
Copyright© 1975 by Edward W. Said Printed in the United States of America Designed by Vincent Torre 74757677 78 79 109 876 543 2 1
etc.
' "1),
M;II"a,"
W;I