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Mariana C. Zinni

This exciting new book is the first comprehensive study on mimesis in the work of fray Bernardino de Sahagun. The volume deals with three concepts that cannot be avoided when thinking about the discursive colonization that took place in New Spain: mimesis (and its correlate, mimicry), hermeneusis and narration, and their relationship with a monological and monolithic Christian narrative coming from Europe. This narrative started to tremble because of the heterogeneity of the non-European discourses confronting the Occidental rationality that was arriving with the conquistadors and friars. The author suggests the presence of a narrative pact crystallized in the use of Nahua metaphors with Christian content and of discursive models that don't belong to European rhetoric, i.e., the huehuetlatolli, an ancient form of exhortation and courtly speech, among other rhetorical devices. The primary objective of these textual practices was to reshape the symbolic world of the Nahuas from the inside. But this rhetorical operation would also contaminate Hispanic discourses. This study proposes a reading guided by the concept of "discursive colonization" -paying special attention to the different levels of imagination and narration-, and its hermeneutic ambiguities, in order to analyze the dominant symbolic construction of European modernity, now deeply imbricated with processes of conquest and evangelization.--Publisher.

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Isaiah Berlin

"Isaiah Berlin was deeply admired during his life, but his full contribution was perhaps underestimated because of his preference for the long essay form. The efforts of Henry Hardy to edit Berlin's work and reintroduce it to a broad, eager readership have gone far to remedy this. Now, Princeton is pleased to return to print, under one cover, Berlin's essays on Vico, Hamann, and Herder. These essays on three relatively uncelebrated thinkers are not marginal ruminations, but rather among Berlin's most important studies in the history of ideas. They are integral to his central project: the critical recovery of the ideas of the Counter-Enlightenment and the explanation of its appeal and consequences - both positive and (often) tragic."--BOOK JACKET.

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Paul Ricoeur

Paul Ricoeur is widely regarded as one of the most distinguished philosophers of our time. In The Rule of Metaphor this intellectual giant of our age seeks 'to show how language can extend itself to its very limits, forever discovering new resonances within itself'. Recognizing the fundamental power of language in constructing the world we perceive, Ricoeur reveals the processes by which linguistic imagination creates and recreates meaning through metaphor. Taking further his acclaimed analysis of the power of myth and symbol, Ricoeur invites us to explore the many layers of language in order to rediscover what that meaning might be. A fruitful and insightful study of how language affects how we understand the world, this book is also an indispensable work for all those seeking to retrieve some kind of meaning in uncertain times.

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Wil Arts (ed

"The question this book addresses is whether it is possible to get an almost face-to-face intimacy with various forms of cultural tradition and modernity by using our experiences and our powers of imagination, i.e. our expectations, in a more fruitful way." "The contributors to this book try to give answers to this weighty question by taking as a guideline Erasmus's famous motto, i.e. always go to the sources."--Jacket.