Anti-Mimesis from Plato to Hitchcock

This 2004 book contains revisionary readings of literary texts and theories through analysis of sound, signature, and letters.

This 2004 book contains a series of readings of the work of major writers. Tom Cohen shows how analysis of long-undervalued material elements of writing - sound, signature, letters - exposes the limitations of new historicism and neo-pragmatism, and transforms our understanding of literary texts.The material elements of writing have long been undervalued, and have been dismissed by recent historicising trends of criticism; but analysis of these elements - sound, signature, letters - can transform our understanding of literary texts. In this 1994 book Tom Cohen shows how, in an era of representational criticism and cultural studies, the role of close reading has been overlooked. Arguing that much recent criticism has been caught in potentially regressive models of representation, Professor Cohen undertakes to counter this by rethinking the 'materiality' of the text itself. Through a series of revealing new readings of the work of writers including Plato, Bakhtin, Poe, Whitman and Conrad, Professor Cohen exposes the limitations of new historicism and neo-pragmatism, and demonstrates how 'the materiality of language' operates to undo the representational models of meaning imposed by the literary canon.