Broadly conceived, literature consists of aesthetic and cultural processes that can be thought of as forms of translation. By the same token, translation requires the sort of creative or interpretive understanding usually associated with literature. Literature as Translation/Translation as Literature explores a number of themes centred on this shared identity of literature and translation as creative acts of interpretation and understanding.

In Literature About Language Valerie Shepherd brings together linguistic theory and literary criticism and examines languages as a theme in a range of literary texts. By looking at the work of writers such as Swift, Joyce and Sontag she discusses the power of story-telling and metaphor to shape our thinking and examines the communicative capacities of non-standard English and the strengths of women's writing in a male language world.

The idea of human rights is not new. But the importance of taking human rights seriously has never been more urgent than it is today. The eighteen essays which comprise Literature and Human Rights are written in a spirit of interdisciplinarity, and are intended to make a significant contribution to this vital and enduring debate.

Poets Before Homer: Collected Essays on Ancient Literature

"What is the most interesting and impressive sort of archaeological object from the ancient Near East? ... I would invite you to think about artifacts recovered by archaeology that are ... more insubstantial even than a lacy papyrus. I refer to things made of words. I am not thinking of texts, exactly, but to the building blocks of which literary texts are made, to traditional metaphors and similes, to traditional topics in poetry and prose, to the devices of form and content which were the stock in trade of poets.

In this book Aaron Hillyer considers the implications of Maurice Blanchot's strange formulation: "Literature is heading to its essence, which is its disappearance." This quest leads Hillyer to stage a dialogue between the works of Blanchot and Giorgio Agamben. Despite being primary points of reference for literary theory, no significant critical work has examined their "literary" writings together. The Disappearance of Literature initiates this new trajectory through readings of Blanchot's The Unavowable Community and Agamben's The Open, two short books that harbor their most enigmatic writings.