The Triangle of Representation

by Christopher Prendergast

Overview

Moving deftly among literary and visual arts, as well as the modern critical canon, Christopher Prendergast's book explores the meaning and value of representation as both a philosophical challenge (What does it mean to create an image that "stands for" something absent?) and a political issue (Who has the right to represent whom?).

The Triangle of Representation raises a range of theoretical, historical, and aesthetic questions, and offers subtle readings of such cultural critics as Raymond Williams, Paul de Man, Edward Said, Walter Benjamin, and Hélène Cixous, in addition to penetrating investigations of visual artists like Gros, Ingres, and Matisse and significant insights into Proust and the onus of translating him. Above all, Prendergast's work is a striking display of how a firm grounding in theory is essential for the exploration of art and literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231120913
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	09/26/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	123
Product dimensions:	6.03(w) x 9.01(h) x 0.57(d)
Lexile:	1570L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Christopher Prendergast is professor of French literature at Cambridge University and a fellow of the British Academy. His six previous books include The Order of Mimesis and Writing the City: Paris and the Nineteenth Century.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. The Triangle of Representation
2. Blurred Identities: Representing Modern Life
3. Foundations and Beginnings: Raymond Williams and the Grounds of Cultural Theory
4. Circulating Representations: New Historicism and the Poetics of Culture
5. Representing (Forgetting) the Past: Paul de Man, Fascism and Deconstruction
6. Representing Other Cultures: Edward Said
7. Representation or Embodiment? Walter Benjamin and the Politics of Correspondances
8. God's Secret: Reflections on Realism
9. Visuality and Narrative: The Moment of History Painting
10. Literature, Painting, Metaphor: Matisse/Proust
11. English Proust
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

David Bell

A valuable chronicle of some of the most important moments in cultural criticism over the past decade. The essays... conceptualize very complex philosophical problems in an energetic, interesting, and direct way.

— David Bell, Duke University

Editorial Reviews

Christopher Pendergast has produced an excellent set of studies collected in the work at hand... the volume is to be recommended for its detailed, nuanced, historical analyses of the concept of representation.

SubStance - Lawrence Schehr

Christopher Pendergast has produced an excellent set of studies collected in the work at hand... the volume is to be recommended for its detailed, nuanced, historical analyses of the concept of representation.

— Lawrence Schehr

SubStance

Prendergast (literary scholar; academic affiliation not provided) takes up the question of foundations by way of themes and problems in Marxist cultural theory. He then discusses responses to Paul de Man's wartime journalism in occupied Belgium; the work of Edward Said on how one represents other cultures; the distinction between representation and embodiment; and representation in terms of certain transactions and translations across the boundaries of medium, genre, and language. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews