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Henri Meschonnic was a linguist, poet, translator of the Bible and one of the most original French thinkers of his generation. He strove throughout his career to reform the understanding of language and all that depends on it. His work has had a shaping influence on a generation of scholars and here, for the first time, a selection of these are made available in English for a new generation of linguists and philosophers of language.
This Reader, featuring sixteen texts covering the core concepts and topics of Meschonnic's theory, will enrich, enhance and challenge your understanding of language. It explores his key ideas on poetics, the poem, rhythm, discourse and his critique of the sign. Meschonnic's vast oeuvre was continuously preoccupied with the question of a poetics of society; he constantly connected the theory of language to its practice in various fields and interrogated what that means for society. In exploring this fundamental question, this book is central to the study and philosophy of language, with rich repercussions in fields such as translation studies, poetics and literary studies, and in redefining notions such as rhythm, modernity, the poem and the subject.
Pier-Pascale Boulanger
Translated by
Pier-Pascale Boulanger is a Professor at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), where she teaches and researches literary as well as financial translation
Chantal Wright
Translated by
Chantal Wright is Honorary Fellow of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University and Visiting Fellow of the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Ottawa. She studied at the University of Cambridge and the University of East Anglia in the UK, and previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the University of Alberta, and Mount Allison University. Her research interests focus on the theory and practice of literary translation, stylistics, and exophony. In 2012, her translation of Tzveta Sofronieva's poetry collection, A Hand Full of Water, won the inaugural Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation. Chantal Wright has translated some of Germany's best-known children's authors including Milena Baisch, Zoran Drvenkar, and Cornelia Funke. In 2011, her translation of Andreas Steinhöfel's The Pasta Detectives was shortlisted for the Marsh Award for Children's Literature in the UK. From 2005 to 2008, Chantal Wright was the editor of Transcript, a European Union funded, online review of international writing published by Literature Across Frontiers at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales.
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