After Babel Aspects of Language and Translation

by Steiner, George

• ISBN13: 9780192828743
• ISBN10: 0192828746
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-04-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

When it first appeared in 1975, After Babel created a sensation, quickly establishing itself as both a controversial and seminal study of literary theory. Indeed, the reactions to the book now constitute a considerable secondary literature themselves. In the long-awaited second edition of this book, George Steiner offers a complete revision, an updated bibliography, and a new preface in which he places his groundbreaking work in the present context of poetics, hermeneutics, and translation studies. In the previous edition, Steiner provided readers with the first systematic investigation since the eighteenth century of the phenomenology and processes of translation both inside and between languages. Taking issue with the principal emphasis of modern linguistics, he finds the root of the "Babel problem" in our deep instinct for privacy and territory, noting that every people has in its language a unique body of shared secrecy. With this provocative thesis he analyzes every aspect of translation from fundamental conditions of interpretation to the most intricate of linguistic constructions. Like the towering figures of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault, Steiner's work is central to current literary thought. After Babel is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the debates raging in the academy today.

Author Biography

About the Author:
George Steiner is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva. His books include The Death of Tragedy, Language in Silence, In Bluebeard's Castle, and On Difficulty and Other Essays.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface to the Second Edition
Understanding as Translation	p. 1
Language and Gnosis	p. 51
Word against Object	p. 115
The Claims of Theory	p. 248
The Hermeneutic Motion	p. 312
Topologies of Culture	p. 436
Afterword	p. 496
Select Bibliography	p. 500
Index of Proper Names and Titles	p. 517
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