Flaptekst

"Deconstruction," "psychoanalysis," and "semiotics" have become part of the vocabulary of contemporary culture. Reading Theory introduces the principal texts by Lacan, Derrida, and Kristeva that lie behind these terms and that provide their contexts. This book concentrates its attention on making accessible what these three theorists have written, rather than offering a synthetic
abstraction of the fashionable terminology of theory.

In addition to these detailed readings Michael Payne examines and introduces the manifestos of each writer,' their "readings" of paintings, and provides a systematic response to their critics.

Michael Payne: The author is John P. Crozer Professor and Head of English at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Irony in Shakespeare's Roman Plays and the editor of several volumes of criticism and theory, including the
forthcoming Blackwell Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory.