A psychoanalyst, semiotician, literary critic, and novelist, Bulgarian-born Julia Kristeva is one of the more dynamic and original intellectual figures of the latter half of the twentieth century. Professor of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII and a practicing psychoanalyst, she is also a permanent visiting professor at Columbia University in New York. She was a founding member of the International Association for Semiotic Studies/Association Internationale de Sémiotique and served as general secretary of that organization. A public figure in France, Kristeva in 1989 accompanied President François Mitterand on a diplomatic journey to her native Bulgaria and has even hosted a French television series, Le Roman européen. In April 1997 she was awarded the prestigious medal of the French Legion of Honor. Her work has been translated into ten languages. As Léon S. Roudiez notes in his introduction to...