Bataille is the first book of its kind-a lucid guide to reading literary and cultural texts in the light of George Bataille's work. It explores the significance of Bataillean notions such as heterology, transgression, and eroticism through detailed readings of Shakespeare and early modern literature, Gothic and postmodernist fiction, and popular movies. Bataillean concepts are situated in relation to the ideas of Lacan, Derrida, Kristeva, Baudrillard, and Deleuze, and the the significance for both contemporary and futural modes of cultural analysis is explored.