Marko Pajević is Professor of German Studies at the University of Tartu. Pier-Pascale Boulanger is a Professor at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), where she teaches and researches literary as well as financial translation Andrew Eastman is maître de conférences in English at the University of Strasbourg John E. Joseph is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh and currently holds a three-year Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. His previous book, Language and Identity (2004) has found a wide readership among sociologists, political scientists, historians, anthropologists and others besides linguists, many of whom will want to read his Language and Politics as its successor and complement. David Nowell Smith is Senior Lecturer in Poetry/Poetics at the University of East Anglia. Marko Pajević is Professor of German Studies at the University of Tartu. Chantal Wright is a literary translator and Associate Professor of Translation as a Literary Practice in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick.

• Introduction, by John E. JosephMeschonnic’s Theory of Rhythm, his Key Concepts and their Relation, by Marko Pajević Meschonnic’s Poetics of Society, by Marko PajevićPrelimary Remarks to this Reader, by Marko PajevićPart 1. Critique of Rhythm Chapter One: Poetics: 'Theoretical Activity, Poetic Activity'Chapter Two: Rhythm: 'What is at Stake in a Theory of Rhythm' Chapter Three: Metrics: 'Pure Metrics or Discourse Metrics' Chapter Four: Sign: 'Not the Sign, but Rhythm'Part 2. Poetry and Poem Chapter Five: 'Rhythm Party Manifesto'Part 3. Rhyme and LifeChapter Six: Life: 'Rhyme and Life'Chapter Seven: Orality: 'Orality, Poetics of the Voice'Chapter Eight: Subject: 'The subject of writing'Part 4. TranslatingChapter Nine: Translating and Society: 'Translating, and the Bible, in the Theory of Language and of Society'Chapter Ten: Translating and the Biblical: 'A Bible Blow to Philosophy'Chapter Eleven: Case study of Poetic Translating: 'The Name of Ophelia'Part 5. ModernityChapter Twelve: 'Modernity is a battle' Part 6. Historicity and SocietyChapter Thirteen: 'For a Poetics of Historicity'Chapter Fourteen: Realism, Nominalism: 'The Theory of Language is a Theory of Society'Annex: Index of Names, Index of Terminology, GlossaryBibliography of Meschonnic’s book publications

Henri Meschonnic, ‘the great Absent of the 21st-century study of language, poetics and translation’, is made vividly and urgently present in this scrupulously prepared selection of thematized extracts. And the contexts of Meschonnic’s thinking are sympathetically explored in introductory essays which ensure that the reader enters the debate fully equipped.