Themes and Texts

Themes and Texts. Toward a Poetics of Expressiveness. Foreword by Jonathan Culler.Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,1984.

Alexander  ZHOLKOVSKY

Contents

Preface
Author’s Note
Introduction: A Pre-Poststructuralist Poetics

Part One. An Outline of the Theory

1.  Eisenstein’s Generative Poetics
2.  Deus ex Machina
3. Thematic Invariance and the Concept of “Poetic World”

Part Two. Structure and Derivation

4.  The Somali Tale “A Soothsayer Tested”
5.  Deriving Poetic Structure: A Somali Proverb
6.  Pun and Punishment: “The Structure of a Bertrand Russell Aphorism

Part Three. Thematic Invariance

7.  ‘Window’ in the Poetic World of Boris Pasiernak
8.  Pushkin’s Invariants
9.  Invariants and the Structure of a Text: Pushkin’s “I loved you . . .”
10. Comparing Poetic Worlds

Part Four. Expressive Devices

11. How to Show Things with Words: On the Iconic Representation of Themes by Expression-Plane Means
12. On the Preparation of the Final Prhyming Word: presage and recoil in Rhyming…

Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Works Cited
Index