After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation - Softcover

Steiner, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195020480 ISBN 13: 9780195020489

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1976

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

Review:

"[Steiner's] ideas display even-handedness, seriousness without heaviness, learning without pedantry, and sober charm."--Naomi Bliven, The New Yorker

"Great erudition brought to bear on linguistics...celebrates the beauty and mystery of the subject."--The New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1976
• ISBN 10: 0195020480
• ISBN 13: 9780195020489
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 507