This volume explores a theme that has become central in our time, as 'the death of God' is widely seen to be succeeded by 'the death of Man'.

List of illustrations; List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Frontispiece; Editor's introduction: purloined letters: searching for the self; Part I. Representations of the Self: 1. Representations of the self, singular and collective, from Kleist to Ernst Jünger J. P. Stern; 2. Not I Michael Edwards; 3. The commerce of the self Peter France; 4. From persona to the split subject Raman Selden; 5. Unlocking the diary Roger Cardinal; 6. René Girard and the revisionist view of narcissism, with illustrations Stephen Bann; 7. Tangled hierarchies: self-reference in philosophy, anthropology and critical theory Jean-Pierre Dupuy; 8. Persona and generic conventions in medieval Persian lyric, with illustration Julie Scott Meisami; 9. Representations of the self: a phenomenological approach to Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir David James; Part II. Literature and Translation: 10. 'Writing (to) One's Self': a selection of Strindberg's letters August Strindberg; Translated and with an introduction 'Strindberg the letter-writer' Michael Robinson; 11. 'The Graveyard by the Sea' Paul Valéry; Translated Alistair Elliot; 'Palm Tree' and other poems, translated James Greene; 12. 'Portrait of the Yellow Apricot Tree': a short story Norman Manea; Translated from the Romanian with an introduction note and 'Selected writings' Rosalind Belben; 13. On fathers, wet-nurses, and wars; 'The Poet and the Angel', from Croquis dans les ténèbres, a prose poem Stefan Themerson; Translated Barbara Wright; Introduction Nicholas Wadley; Illustrations Franciszka Themerson and Stefan Themerson; Part III. 14. Power dressing: on Greenblatt's Shakespearean Negotiations A. D. Nuttall; 15. Hölderlin's wager on transcendence: a review of S. Corngold, The Fate of the Self and D. Constantine, Hölderlin Mark Ogden; 16. The Chinese presence in Europe: a review of Etiemble, L'Europe chinoise I and II Gregory Blue; Part IV. Bibliographies: 17. Books and periodicals received Mark Ogden; 18. Bibliography of comparative literature in Britain and Ireland 1987 Joseph Th. Leerssen; 19. Special bibliography: 'Bibliography is my biography, the rest is irrelevant': A bibliography of Stefan Themerson Joseph Th. Leerssen