The mysterious barricades : language and its limits / Ann E. Berthoff.

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The Mysterious Barricades criticizes the misconceptions of post-structuralism and then moves on to the reclamation of criticism as a philosophical activity concerned with how words work.

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Responding to the new sociological critical fashion (which "approximates" sociological criticism "in the days before the New Criticism"), Berthoff (Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston) provides a series of essays and concludes "that such resolution will be impossible unless and until we can account for meaning, representation, and interpretation in logical, not merely psychological, terms." The author challenges this complicated subject from a semiotic point of view and especially employs the triadic semiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce. A difficult read, this volume requires familiarity with the works and ideas of the major thinkers in the field--I.A. Richards, F.E.D. Schleiermacher, Edward Sapir, Susanne K. Langer, and Heinrich von Kleist; in the concluding sections, Berthoff analyzes Kleist's discussion of marionette theater and emphasizes "man's destiny--his Fortunate Fall into language." For graduate students, researchers, and faculty. W. B. Warde Jr.; University of North Texas