Discourse Analysis as Sociocriticism

In Discourse Analysis as Sociocriticism, Antonio Gomez-Moriana brilliantly applies contemporary literary theory to classical texts of the Spanish Golden Age, including Lazarillo de Tormes, Don Quijote, Tirso de Molina’s Don Juan play, and Columbus’s Diary.

Gomez-Moriana begins by affirming that Saussure had originally intended semiology as a study of signs in social life before proceeding to focus on the study of system and structure. Gomez-Moriana argues that the structuralists subsequently misread Saussure and focused on the synchrony of signs abstacted from the literary text rather than on the historical and social developments represented by philology, the field of study that sheds light on cultural history. In Discourse Analysis as Sociocriticism, Gomez-Moriana fuses history and semiotics.

“Gomez-Moriana’s skillful handling of literary theory is matched by his thorough scholarship and excellent knowledge of history....Whether he is dealing with Foucault to discuss, for example, the changing criteria of verisimilitude in Occidental literary discourse, or with Greimas’s ‘semantic expansion principle,’ or with Lejeune’s notion of the autobiographical pact, or, for that matter, with any other issue of importance to his analysis of a specific text, it is clear that Gomez-Moriana has done his homework.” Nicholas Spadaccini, University of Minnesota