At the borders of sleep : on liminal literature / Peter Schwenger.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Schwenger, Peter, 1942-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc.
• Literature.
• Liminality.
• Consciousness.

Physical Description:

xiii, 167 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, [2012]

Summary:

• At the Borders of Sleep is a unique exploration of the connections between literature and the liminal states between waking and sleeping. Delving into philosophy as well as literature, Peter Schwenger investigates the threshold between waking and sleeping as an important and productive state between the forced march of rational thought and the oblivion of unconsciousness.
• While examining literary representations of the various states between waking and sleeping, At the Borders of Sleep also analyzes how writers and readers draw on and enter these states. Schwenger reads a wide range of authors for whom the borders of sleep are crucial, including Marcel-Proust, Stephen King, Paul Valéry, Fernando Pessoa, Franz Kafka, Giorgio de Chirico, Virginia Woolf, Philippe Sollers, and Robert Irwin. Considering drowsiness, insomnia, and waking up, he looks at such subjects as the hypnagogic state, the experience of reading and why it is different from full consciousness, the relationships between insomnia and writing and why insomnia is often a source of creative insight, and the persistence of liminal elements in waking thought. Ultimately arguing that both the reading and writing of literature are liminal experiences, taking place on the edges of consciousness, At the Borders of Sleep suggests new ways to think about the nature of literature and consciousness. Book jacket.

Contents:

• 1 Toward Sleep 1
• Writing Hypnagogia 5
• The Obbligato Effect 22
• Falling Asleep while Reading 36
• Agatha: Or, Sleep 41
• 2 Sleepless 51
• Night 52
• The Insomniac Writer 57
• Night Watch 72
• 3 Leaving Sleep 77
• Waking Up Awry 78
• Lacan's Wake-Up Call 91
• Interminable Waking 95
• 4 Sleepwaking 109
• Disquiet 113
• The Subdrama of Writing 122
• Experiment, Experience 129.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

• 9780816679751
• 0816679754
• 9780816679768
• 0816679762

OCLC:

794272267