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Updating Roman Jakobson’s ‘Poetic Function’ with Vector Semantics
Read more: Updating Roman Jakobson’s ‘Poetic Function’ with Vector SemanticsKurzynski discusses how poetry extends beyond sound and rhythm and taps into a deeper network of meanings.
Translating ‘The Sorrowful Muslim’s Guide’ – a labour of love
When we first thought about translating The Sorrowful Muslim’s Guide by Hussein Ahmad Amin, it was not just because the book had generated so much heated discussion locally as well as regionally in the Arab world. Nor that the book is…
5 Things You Never Knew About Spinoza
Spinoza: a renegade thinker whose life was far from boring. From stab wounds to spiders, how many of these strange facts did you know about Spinoza?
What Electricity Has Done to Thought: an excerpt from The Life Intense by Tristan Garcia
What Electricity Has Done to Thought: an excerpt from The Life Intense by Tristan Garcia.
Studying sixteenth-century France from inside and outside France
My guest edited special issue of Nottingham French Studies (NFS), explores ‘Text, Knowledge and Wonder in Early Modern France‘, fleshing out new aspects of the sense of wonder that permeates much literature, philosophy, culture, and ritual in the period. As Genevieve…
Rediscovering the Wonder of Philosophy
Wonder is largely absent as a topic of concern to contemporary philosophers. Yet ancient philosophers saw it as the source of what was distinctive in their way of thinking. Plato and Aristotle thought that it was the stirrings of wonder…
OLR 40th Anniversary – Jean-Luc Nancy
In 1963, Jean-Luc Nancy tackled the subject of generational silence in his article ‘A Certain Silence’ (republished in OLR in 2005). Nancy, a well-known French philosophy and writer, wrote ‘A Certain Silence’ only a year after he graduated in Philosophy…
For F’s Sake: Theresa May, Falling Letters and the Philosophy of Signs
At the recent Conservative Party conference in Manchester, Theresa May’s speech turned into the stuff of every presenter’s nightmares, something both ironic and apposite, given that her main theme was the return to the ‘British dream’. I don’t want to…
OLR 40th Anniversary – Maurice Blanchot
Marcel Proust once said, “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Friendship, and the role it plays in life, is an interesting and varied topic explored…
OLR 40th Anniversary – Ann Smock
Welcome to the not-so-sunny days of August where, in the perpetual spirit of celebrating OLR’s 40th anniversary, we are sharing the work of Ann Smock, currently Professor Emerita of French at the University of California. Perhaps best known for her…