Full Description
Anyone who has heard of chiasmus is likely to think of it as no more than a piece of rhetorical playfulness, at times challenging, though useful for supplying a memorable sententious note or for performing a pirouette of syntax and thought. Going beyond traditional rhetoric, this volume is concerned with the possibility of using the figure of chiasmus to model a broad array of phenomena, from human relations to artistic creation. In the process, it provides the first book-length study not of chiasmus, the rhetorical figure, but of chiastic thought. The contributors are concerned with chiastic inversion and its place in social interactions, cultural creation, and more generally human thought and experience.They explore from a variety of angles what the unsettling logic of chiasmus (from the Greek meaning "cross-wise"), has to tell us about the world, human relations, cultural patterns, psychology, and artistic and poetic creation.
Contents
Introduction
Anthony Paul and Boris Wiseman
PART I: THE PATHOS OF CHIASMUS
Chapter 1. From stasis to ek-stasis: four types of chiasmus
Anthony Paul
Chapter 2. What is a Chiasmus? Or, Why the Abyss Stares Back
Robert Hariman
Chapter 3. Chiasmus and Metaphor
Ivo Strecker
PART II: EPISTEMOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON CHIASMUS
Chapter 4. Chiasm in Merleau-Ponty, metaphor or concept?
Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel
Chapter 5. Chiasmi figuring difference
Stephen Tyler
Chapter 6. Forking: Rhetoric χ Rhetoric
Phillipe-Joseph Salazar
PART III: SENSUOUS EXPERIENCE MEDIATED BY CHIASMUS
Chapter 7. Chiasm in suspense in psychoanalysis
Alain Vanier
Chapter 8. Quotidian Chiasmus in Montaigne
Phillip John Usher
Chapter 9. 'Travestis, Michês' and Chiasmus
Ben Bollig
PART IV: CHIASTIC STRUCTURES IN RITUAL AND MYTHO-POETIC TEXTS
Chapter 10. Parallelism and Chiasmus in Ritual Oration
Douglas Lewis
Chapter 11. Chiasmus, mythical creation and H.C. Andersen's The Shadow followed by a "Response" from Lucien Scubla
Boris Wiseman
Bibliography
Index
