This introductory study surveys the entire range of Ricoeur's work, placing it within the context of post-structuralism. Includes a discussion of Time and Narrative and shows how Ricoeur's work links European and American traditions.

S. H. Clark

List of abbreviations; Acknowledgements; 1 Introduction; 2 The existential heritage; Early influences; Husserl and phenomenology; Deferral and eschatology; 3 Finitude and guilt; Fallible man; The primary symbols; Mythology; The recreation of language; 4 Freud and philosophy; The hermeneutics of suspicion; Reading Freud; Lacan and the epistemology of psychoanalysis; Archaeology and teleology; 5 The Hermeneutic turn; Structure; Discourse; Text; Gadamer and Habermas; Ideology and utopia; 6 The rule of metaphor; Structural and semantic approaches; The work of resemblance; Metaphorical reference; Deconstruction and metaphor; Being and act; 7 Time and narrative; Narrativity and order; The aporetics of temporality; Three versions of mimesis; History as narrative and explanation; The limits of narrative; Bibliography; Index;