Reviews for The Muzzled Muse: Literature and Censorship in South Africa

The average rating for The Muzzled Muse: Literature and Censorship in South Africa based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-10-01 00:00:00 Felix J Delatorre This book lays out the various cognitive systems which were developed by philosophers and philologists after Kantian and Hegelian dialectics and before Saussurian structuralism decayed into behaviorist anti-mentalism. Although the different theories vary a bit, they all seem to stem from the abductive synthesis. Meaning emerges as a dialectical process between empirical induction (meaning comes from out there) and rational deduction (meaning comes from our innate powers of reason). So meaning functions like the Hermeneutical circle: meaning becomes a projection of inner experience (through words) that is also tempered and refined by the various semantic inputs which we are exposed to. I read this book in the early 90s, and all the theories have merged in my memory as a proto-Heidegger. But I do remember being impressed at the amount of cognitive system building that went on in the 19th century. However, there is no treatment of grammar per se.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-10-06 00:00:00 Otto Maan such a great book to read...