Deconstruction's Place in Western Thought: Philosophic and Figurative Language

<p>Deconstructive writing comments on other texts, showing the ways in which the language of those texts turns against itself, usually by playing on the contradictory relationship between the literal and figurative levels of the text. The history of the uneasy relationship between the literal and figurative levels of Western texts is perhaps best understood in terms of the curricular battles which began with Plato’s proposed program of educational reform. The contradictory or “undecidable” relationship between a text’s literal and figurative levels can be explored across disciplines as various as literature, linguistics and philosophy. Theories resulting from the study of narrative, poetry, speech acts, and historiography examine the relationship between literal and figurative levels of meaning in texts. Reading Western texts in an interdisciplinary manner to identify their figurative levels offers new possibilities for textual inquiry and recovers an aspect of the classical Greek education: the rhetorical paideia, or training in two-sided argumentation.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Master's Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Humanities

Year

1999

Author dc:creator

• Smith Harris, Nancy

Contributors dc:contributor

• Aaron Winkelman, OP, PhD
• Philip Novak, PhD

• Humanities
• Arts and Humanities

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.dominican.edu/humanities-print-theses/207

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.dominican.edu:humanities-print-theses-1206