Essays in this volume deal in various ways with the process of semiosis. For St. Augustine, the cardinal issue was in the divinity of sacred texts; for Locke, the philosophical consequences of the semiotic; for Freud, the assignment of tokens to sign systems in psychosis; for Eisenstein, the problem of composition uniting distinct systems in the cinema; for more recent theoreticians--Mukarovksy, Greimas, Lotman, and Kristeva--the natures of semiotics itself.

Though by no means exhausting the subject, the contributions published her do reveal the common concerns of past and present. Toward an understanding of the nature of present-day semiotics, the contributors trace parallel themes in the work of earlier scholars and identify the distinctive ideas of those at work in centers of semiotic study around the world. Originally, this collection was intended for distribution to participants at the International Conference on the Semiotics of Art held at the University of Michigan in May 1978, but the delay in publication has enabled us to publish more finished versions of the papers submitted for that occasion and to include papers that would not otherwise have been available. All but one of them were written especially for this volume; none of them has appeared in English elsewhere.

Contributors (in order of appearance):

Tzvetan Todorov, Elmar Holenstein, Richard W. Bailey, Elizabeth W. Bruss, Wendy Steiner, Neal Bruss, Emery George, Ladislav Matejka, Herbert Eagle, Ann Shukman, Peter Steiner and Bronislava Volek, Thomas G. Winner, Nomi Tamir-Ghez, Teresa de Lauretis, Lawrence Kritzman, J. Feral, James A. Fanto, Walter Mignolo, Irmengard Rauch, Irene Portis Winner

Publisher: Michigan Slavic Publications

Year of Publication: 1980

Location: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

# of Pages: 363

Price: $10.00

ISBN: 0-930042-28-X

Format: Paperback

Series Name / Number: Michigan Slavic Contributions [MSC] / 9