The Sense of a Beginning is the first comprehensive exploration of the openings of novels. With a title that deliberately echoes Frank Kermode's famous book on

Comprising some 4000 terms, defined and illustrated, "Gradus" calls upon the resources of linguistics, poetics, semiotics, socio-criticism, rhetoric, pragmatics

The total meaning of a work of literature derives not only from what the words mean, but from what the text looks like. This stuff of literature, graphic substa

Prior to the Civil War, publishing in America underwent a transformation from a genteel artisan trade supported by civic patronage and religious groups to a thr