Microcredit programmes, long considered efficient development tools, now face unprecedented crises in a number of countries. Is this the end of microcredit or rather an essential step in its expansion? Should we stop microcredit altogether or rethink the way it is implemented?Drawing on extensive empirical research conducted in various parts of the world - from Morocco to Senegal to India - this important volume examines the whole chain of microcredit to provide the answers to thes...

As a transformative thinker of the twentieth century, whose work spanned all branches of the humanities, Michel Foucault had a complex and profound relationship with literature. And yet this critical aspect of his thought, because it was largely expressed in speeches and interviews, remains virtually unknown to even his most loyal readers. This book brings together previously unpublished transcripts of oral presentations in which Foucault speaks at length about literature and its links to ...

Since its first publication in English in 1985, Mieke Bal's Narratology has become an international classic and the comprehensive introduction to the theory of narrative texts, both literary and non-literary. Providing insights into how readers interpret narrative text, the fourth edition of Narratology is a guide for students and scholars seeking to analyze narratives of any language, period, and region with clear, systematic, and reliable concepts.With the addit...

For more than a decade, Clear and Simple as the Truth has guided readers to consider style not as an elegant accessory of effective prose but as its very heart. Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner present writing as an intellectual activity, not a passive application of verbal skills. In classic style, the motive is truth, the purpose is presentation, the reader and writer are intellectual equals, and the occasion is informal. This general style of presentation is at home everywhe...

A book which should appeal to both literary theorists and to readers of the novel, this study invites the reader to consider how the plot reflects the patterns of human destiny and seeks to impose a new meaning on life.

The deconstruction bombshell that rocked the Anglophone world.Jacques Derrida’s revolutionary approach to phenomenology, psychoanalysis, structuralism, linguistics, and indeed the entire European tradition of philosophy—called deconstruction—changed the face of criticism. It provoked a questioning of philosophy, literature, and the human sciences that these disciplines would have previously considered improper. Forty years after Of Grammatology first appea...

Are great works of art, literature and music 'creations' or 'inventions'? Does the mathematician 'invent' or 'discover'? Exploring an often neglected field, this book asks whether the current revolutions in our means of communication and in the biological sciences, may bring with them radical changes in the concept of individual creation and of poetic and philosophical invention. Are we returning to ancient anonymities and collectivities in aesthetic and intellectual experience? Are music ...

The translated, complete text of Derrida's 1997 ten-hour address, "The Autobiographical Animal," focusing on the industrialized treatment of animals.The Animal That Therefore I Am is at once an affectionate look back over the multiple roles played by animals in Derrida's work and a profound philosophical investigation and critique of the relegation of animal life that takes place as a result of the distinction?dating from Descartes?between man as thinking a...

In this collection of essays, consummate poet Wallace Stevens reflects upon his art. His aim is not to produce a work of criticism or philosophy, or a mere discussion of poetic technique. As he explains in his introduction, his ambition in these various pieces, published in different times and places, aimed higher than that, in the direction of disclosing "poetry itself, the naked poem, the imagination manifesting itself in its domination of words." Stevens proves himself as eloquent and s...

Essential essays on language and speech from two influential philosophers of the 18th century—"These texts are fundamental for modern critical theory" (W. J. T. Mitchell, University of Chicago).In the latter half of the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder each composed an essay on a fundamental question about human language. Rousseau's "Essay on the Origin of Languages" is concerned with the development of languages in their divers...

'This brilliant collection of essays should be a feast for his admirers, as well as for those who approach his dazzling oeuvre for the first time-Calvino is not only constantly and supremely intelligent; he is constantly and supremely faithful to his narrative imagination' Guardian

"Shattuck leaves us not only with a deepened appreciation of Proust's great work but of all great literature as well."—Richard Bernstein, New York TimesFor any reader who has been humbled by the language, the density, or the sheer weight of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Roger Shattuck is a godsend. Winner of the National Book Award for Marcel Proust, a sweeping examination of Proust's life and works, Shattuck now offers a useful and eminently readable gu...