Becoming a Self: Reading of Kierkegaard's ""Concluding Unscientific Postscript (History of Philosophy) - Softcover

"Why Manzoni's I promesi sposi and 'Del romanzo storico' - models, respectively, for the writing and the theroretical rejection of historical fiction - should continue to resonate in both the creation of and debates surrounding twentieth-century Italian fiction is a question amply and eloquently answered in Della Coletta's Plotting the Past. A felicitous combination of broad contextual and detailed textual analyses, these readings of Manzoni, Lampedusa, Morante, and Eco animate issues of genre, gender, historiography, literary history, and epistemology, all the while focusing on the construction of what might called an 'ethics of historical fiction.' The relationship of that vexing couple - history and fiction - has rarely been so lucidly scrutinized, nor the reasons for its continuing union so convincingly and gracefully argued. This book is a major achievement." --Rebecca West, University of Chicago . . . Coletta has given us a book that is engaging, challenging, and astute. For its mature historical sense and theoretical refinement, Plotting the Past deserves high praise. CLIO --CLIO Plotting the Past stands out as a serious work marked by sharp analytical skills and an unusual breadth of subject matter encompassing questions of genre and ideology that are central to present-day critical discourses. Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Italian --Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Italian "This is an eminently successful piece of work and just the sort of thing we have come to expect from Merold Westphal. The text is a lucid, lively, humorous, readable, brisk, judicious commentary in American English from which students on many levels will profit." --John D. Caputo

The titles in this series present well-edited basic texts to be used in courses and seminars and for teachers looking for a succinct exposition of the results of recent research. Each volume in the series presents the fundamental ideas of a great philosopher by means of a very thorough and up-to-date commentary on one important text. The edition and explanation of the text give insight into the whole of the oeuvre, of which it is an integral part.