Demonstrates how form in language helps determine the meaning of texts by describing verse and prose as structures, the components of which are primarily linguistic, and by seeing the form of those components as part of the content. Continues Shapiro's (Slavic languages, Brown U.) general line of research contributing to the cognitive study of representative texts and examples from Russian, English, Romance, Japanese, and ancient Greek literature. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

The Sense of Form in Literature and Language (Semaphores and Signs)

Literature & Fiction

Shapiro, Marianne

Shapiro, Michael

History & Criticism

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

Seeks to evaluate in just measure the material, bodily, erotic, and aesthetic aspects of the intellectual foundations of the Commedia.

Dante and the Knot of Body and Soul

Reference

"We live in image worlds that do not merely reflect the empirically given but rather produce it in accordance with our symbol-making capacity," write the authors of Figuration in Verbal Art. The process of figuration has created language, myth, and culture; situated at the deepest level of human interaction with the world, it is of prime importance for theories of cognition and meaning. Applying a unified theoretical framework to a diverse range of subject matter, especially in Russian and Italian literature, Michael and Marianne Shapiro illustrate the centrality of figuration to imaginative art. In so doing, they carry out a sustained critique of contemporary literary criticism, particularly Deconstruction.
 The book draws from several disciplines; rhetoric, philosophy of language, linguistics, stylistics, semiotics, epistemology, and literary history are those most directly involved in its argument. The conceptual section of the work and the readings show relations between the inherently tropological nature of language as a system and the tropological nature of style as a means for organizing perception. One of the distinctive contributions of Figuration in Verbal Art is the thorough integration of the theory of signs of Charles Sanders Peirce with the structuralism of Roman Jakobson. Another contribution is the emphasis on historical and cultural questions as an inalienable part of any analysis of texts.

Figuration in Verbal Art

Princeton Univ Pr

Written in 1303-05, when Dante was in political exile from his native Florence, De vulgari eloquentia addresses the problem of how to raise the Italian language to the status of Latin in the esteem of the literate public. It is the fullest and most important document concerning vernacular writing in the Middle Ages—indeed, the earliest work of literary criticism dealing with a vernacular language. Marianne Shapiro offers the most detailed discussion in English of De vulgari eloquentia, whose form and spirit reflect Dante's political unrest and alienation. Hers is the first work in any language to analyze and explain the meaning of the grammatical and rhetorical terminology that Dante used in his treatise. And because her translation—included here—is based on a thorough exegesis of that terminology, it will be recognized as definitive. 
Shapiro’s translation will be of special interest to medievalists and to serious readers of The Divine Comedy. In a later section, she considers the less precursors of Dante as a writer of the “Romance idiom” and their influence on him. Then she concentrates on the least studied aspects of the treatise in order to reveal its profound affiliations with late medieval grammatical investigations—it is possible to see in Dante “a grammarian beneath the poet.” Her conclusion summarizes the apparent textual contradictions and the significance. Thus, this book provides a thorough historical, philosophical, and rhetorical context for De vulgari eloquentia and a new English translation that is enriched by that scholarship.

De Vulgari Eloquentia: Dante's Book of Exile (Modern Scandinavian Literature in Translation)

Literary

University Of Nebraska Press

Woman Earthly and Divine in the "Comedy" of Dante (Studies in Romance Languages)

University Press of Kentucky

This study examines all the characterizations of the female personality in the Divine Comedy, including representations of things traditionally categorized as feminine. Marianne Shapiro treats different traditional feminine roles such as wife, lover, and mother, and places Beatrice in the latter group. The problem of woman is studied within the general context of medieval literature. Shapiro's conclusions center largely upon Dante's adherence to a generally misogynistic tradition. While in his earlier works his concept of woman was as a comprehensive whole encompassing good and evil, in the Comedy polarities are established and affirmed.

Woman Earthly and Divine in the Comedy of Dante (Studies In Romance Languages)

Shapiro, Marianne, Poetics Of Ariosto, The

The Poetics of Ariosto

Wayne State Univ Pr

This book comprises twenty-two chapters, including previously unpublished material, written over the entire span of Marianne Shapiro’s working life. Its opening section on the European heritage begins with a long essay on the Aeneid that breaks new interpretative ground by examining the epic from the perspective of Virgil’s implicit prescriptions for leaders and leadership. Chapters on Dante add to the store of knowledge on his minor works as well as the Comedy, and are followed by close readings of Petrarch and Provençal poetry. The American and comparative literature section features an analysis of John Ashbery’s New Spirit and a page-by-page commentary on Nabokov’s Lolita and Pnin. The book is rounded out by three chapters in a semiotics section, the highlight of which is an analysis of the Christian Trinity based on a deep understanding of Peirce’s sign theory.

From the Critic’s Workbench: Essays in Literature and Semiotics (Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics)

United States

Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers

Eleven essays on literature (poetry and prose fiction), versification, and language, including analyses of Shakespeare's Sonnets and Dostoevsky's novels.

The Sense of Form in Literature and Language

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shapiro, Marianne. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Shapiro, Marianne

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shapiro, Marianne. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Sense of Form in Literature and Language (Semaphores and Signs)

Dante and the Knot of Body and Soul

Dante and the Knot of Body and Soul

Figuration in Verbal Art

De Vulgari Eloquentia: Dante's Book of Exile (Modern Scandinavian Literature in Translation)

Woman Earthly and Divine in the "Comedy" of Dante (Studies in Romance Languages)

Woman Earthly and Divine in the Comedy of Dante (Studies In Romance Languages)

The Poetics of Ariosto

From the Critic’s Workbench: Essays in Literature and Semiotics (Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics)

The Sense of Form in Literature and Language