Regard for the other : autothanatography in Rousseau, De Quincey, Baudelaire, and Wilde / E.S. Burt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Burt, E. S.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900.

De Quincey, Thomas, 1785-1859.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778.

Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867.

Authors--Biography--History and criticism.

Authors.

Authors--Biography.

Autobiography.

Other (Philosophy) in literature.

Self in literature.

Identity (Psychology) in literature.

Death in literature.

Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867--Criticism and interpretation.

Baudelaire, Charles.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778--Criticism and interpretation.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques.

De Quincey, Thomas, 1785-1859--Criticism and interpretation.

De Quincey, Thomas.

Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900--Criticism and interpretation.

Wilde, Oscar.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

ix, 268 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2009.

Summary:

Although much has been written on autobiography, the same cannot be said of autothanatography, the writing of one's death. This study starts from the premise that autobiography is aporetic, nor or not only a matter of a subject's strategizing with language to produce an exemplary identity but a matter also of its responding to an exorbitant call to write his death. The I-dominated representations of particular others and of the privileged other to whom a work is addressed must therefore be set again an alterity plaguing the I from within or shadowing it from without.

Baudelaire emerges as a central figure of this understanding of a autobiography as autothanatography through his critique of the narcissism of a certain Rousseau; his translation of De Quincey's confessions; his artistic practice of self-conscious, through going doubleness; and his service to Wilde as model for an aporetic secrecy.

The book makes a strong intervention in the debate over one of the most-read genres of our time.

Contents:

I Autobiography Interrupted

1 Developments in Character: "The children's Punishment" and the "the Broken Comb" 33

2 Regard for the other: Embarrassment in the Quatrim̈e promenade 61

3 The shape before the Mirror: Autobiography and the Dandy in Baudelaire 83

II Writing Death, with Regard to The Other

4 Hospitality in Autobiography: Levinas chez De Quicey 109

5 Eating with the other in Les Paradis artificels 140

6 Secrets Can Be Murder: How to Write the Secret in De Profundis 185.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780823230907

0823230902

9780823230914

0823230910

OCLC:

314378131