Key texts from leading theorists in postwar French literary criticism. In Literary Debate, the second volume in The New Press's Postwar French Thought Series, editors Denis Hollier and Jeffrey Mehlman present a selection of texts, many available in English for the first time, that together offer an illuminating and provocative overview of the last half-century of French literary criticism. Combining examination of literature as an institution and in historical context with pathbreaking interpretations of writing by such authors as Stephan Mallarme and Sigmund Freud, Literary Debate presents the seminal work of figures such as Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Jean-Paul Sartre. These selections represent one of the most fertile periods the field has known. Including original essays by its editors, this volume brings together the important threads of one of the most influential movements in Western intellectual history.

Denis Hollier is professor of French literature at New York University Jeffrey Mehlman is University Professor at Boston University Ramona Naddaff is founding editor of Zone Books and an assistant professor of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley Arthur Goldhammer is a winner of the American Literary Translators Association Outstanding Translation Prize