Graham Roberts: The Last Soviet Avant-Garde: OBERIU – Fact, Fiction, Metafiction (1997)

“This is the first comprehensive study of the group of avant-garde Soviet writers who styled themselves OBERIU, “The Association for Real Art”. Graham Roberts reexamines commonly-held assumptions about OBERIU, its identity as a group, its aesthetics, its relationship to the formalists and the Bakhtin circle, and its place within Russian and European literary traditions. Roberts concludes by showing how the self-conscious literature of OBERIU–its metafiction–occupies an important transitional space between modernism and postmodernism.

– A comprehensive study of important Soviet avant-garde group
– Sets the work of OBERIU in aesthetic and theoretical context of formalism and the Bakhtin circle
– Provides insights into the relationship between modernism and postmodernism”

Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1997
Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature
ISBN 0521482836, 9780521482837
274 pages

Oberiu on Wikipedia
Publisher

PDF (6 MB, updated on 2016-12-23)

Barry B. Powell: Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet (1991)

“What caused the invention of the Greek alphabet? Who did it, and why? The purpose of this challenging book is to inquire systematically into the historical causes that underlay the radical shift from earlier and less efficient writing-systems to the use of alphabetic writing. The author declares his conclusion to be a possibly surprising one–that a single man, perhaps from the island of Euboea, invented the Greek alphabet specifically in order to record the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer.”

Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1991
ISBN 0521371570
280 pages

Review: Mabel L. Lang (Bryn Mawr Classical Review)

PDF (10 MB, updated on 2014-3-8)

Michel Foucault: The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (1966–) [FR, IT, ES, EN, SH, DE, RU, PT, GR, TR, RO, ZH, CZ]

“When one defines “order” as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology in The Order of Things, possibly one of the most significant, yet most overlooked, works of the twentieth century. Eclipsed by his later work on power and discourse, nonetheless it was The Order of Things that established Foucault’s reputation as an intellectual giant. Pirouetting around the outer edge of language, Foucault unsettles the surface of literary writing. In describing the limitations of our usual taxonomies, he opens the door onto a whole new system of thought, one ripe with what he calls “exotic charm”. Intellectual pyrotechnics from the master of critical thinking, this book is crucial reading for those who wish to gain insight into that odd beast called Postmodernism, and a must for any fan of Foucault.”

Publisher Gallimard, Paris, 1966
ISBN 2070224848
404 pages

English edition
With Foreword to the English edition by Michel Foucault
First published by Tavistock Publications, 1970
Publisher Routledge, London/New York, 1989/2005
ISBN 0415267366
422 pages

interview with the author (video, 14 min, 1966, in French)
wikipedia (FR)
wikipedia (EN)

Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines (French, 1966)
Le parole e le cose. Un’archeologia delle scienze umane (Italian, trans. Emilio Panaitescu, 1967)
Las palabras y las cosas. una arqueología de las ciencias humanas (Spanish, trans. Elsa Cecilia Frost, 1968)
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (English, trans. unknown, Pantheon Books, 1971, no OCR)
Riječi i stvari. Arheologija humanističkih znanosti (Serbocroatian, trans. Sreten Marić, 1971)
Die Ordnung der Dinge. Eine Archäologie der Humanwissenschaften (German, trans. Ulrich Köppen, 1971/74, 14 MB, no OCR)
Слова и вещи. Археология гуманитарных наук (Russian, trans. В. П. Визгин and Н. С. Автономова, 1977/94)
As Palavras e as Coisas: Uma arqueologia das ciências humanas (Portuguese, trans. Salma Tannus Muchail, 8th ed., 1981/2000)
Οι λέξεις και τα πράγματα. Μια αρχαιολογία των επιστημών του ανθρώπου (Greek, trans. Κωστής Παπαγιώργης, 1986)
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (English, trans. unknown, Vintage Books, 1971/1994, PDF), EPUB
Kelimeler ve şeyler. Insan bilimlerinin bir arkeolojisi (Turkish, trans. Mehmet Ali Kılıçbay, 2nd ed, 1994/2001)
Cuvintele și Lucrurile, o arheologie a științelor umane (Romanian, trans. Boghdan Ghiu and Mircea Vasilescu, 1996)
词与物 (Chinese, trans. unknown, 2002)
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (English, trans. unknown, Routledge, 1970/2005)
Slova a věci (Czech, trans. Jan Rubáš, 2007, 51 MB)