Author Description

Exercise in Pathetic Criticism, the first in a planned series of literary experiments by writer and translator Kate Briggs, is a one-page reconstruction of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo according to the precepts of 'pathetic criticism'. The exercise materializes a new form of literary criticism dreamt up by Roland Barthes in his last lecture course at the College de France: a mode of affective reading that dares to ruin the literary work in order to make it live.Designed by Lucrezia Russo."