Thinking with Words

Thinking with Words: A Literary Groundwork provides a unique foundational introduction to the depths and glories of literature and its study. Essential reading for anyone interested in not just literature but in art, culture, and language.

Brett Bourbon is Professor of English Literature at the University of Dallas. He is also a Visiting Professor in The Program of Literary Theory, University of Lisbon. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard, and was a professor at Stanford. He was awarded a Mellon post-doctoral fellowship and a Fulbright Award. He has published many essays and three books, Finding a Replacement for the Soul: Meaning and Mind in Literature and Philosophy (2004), Everyday Poetics: Ethics, Love, and Logic (2022), and Jane Austen And the Ethics of Life (2022). Miguel Tamen is Professor of Literary Theory at the University of Lisbon. Between 2000 and 2014, he also held a regular visiting appointment at the University of Chicago. He was a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, and at the National Humanities Center. He is the author of Friends of Interpretable Objects (2001), What Art Is Like (2012), and Closeness (2021), among other books.

Introduction PART I LANGUAGE 1. Use and Mention 2. Words and Sentences 3. Meaning and Meaningfulness 4. Propaganda and Ambiguity PART II LITERATURE 5. Mimesis and Catharsis 6. Character and Character 7. Fictions and Stop Signs 8. Poems and Particularity PART III READING 9. Familiar and Unfamiliar 10. Attitudes and Words 11. Paraphrase and Example 12. Persons and Life PART IV ART 13. Poems and Eyes 14. Making and Finding 15. Actions and Art 16. Closeness and Distance PART V CULTURES 17. Actions and Events 18. Context and Text 19. Us and Them 20. Thinking with Words