Recognition and ethics in world literature : religion, violence, and the human / Vincent Van Bever Donker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Van Bever Donker, Vincent, 1983-

Series:

Studies in world literature ; v. 2.

Studies in world literature ; v. 2

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Criticism--Moral and ethical aspects.

Criticism.

Physical Description:

vii, 269 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Stuttgart : Ibidem-Verlag, 2016.

Summary:

Recognition and Ethics in World Literature is a critical comparative study of contemporary world literature, focused on the importance of the ethical turn (or return) in literary theory. It considers the shape and development of the ethical engagement of the novels of Amitav Ghosh, Chimarnanda Adichie, Caryl Philips, Kazuo Ishiguro, Zadie Smith, and J.M. Coetzee, exploring the overlaps and divergences between Levinasian/Derridean and Aristotelian ethics as they are brought to bear on literature. The characters' recognitions and emotional responses in these texts are Integral to the unfolding of their ethical concerns, and the ethics thus explored is often marked by the complexity and Impurity characteristic of the tragic. A view of recognition is advanced that shifts it from the more usual political understanding in the field towards seeing it as a formal device used to untold an ethical knowledge peculiar to fictional narrative, and particularly suitable for the concerns of world literature authors in its interconnection of the universal and the particular-a binary that has been crucial in postcolonialism and remains Important for the wider field of world literature. The analysis unfolds with a focus on three broad ethical themes-religion, the memory of violence, and the human-eliciting the novelists' contributions to these debates through the investigation of the functioning of moments of recognition in their novels. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Anagnorisis and the Clash of Values 49

Chapter 2 Religion and the Ethics of Remembrance 85

Chapter 3 The Failure of Recognition 133

Chapter 4 The Beauty of the Mortal Human 203.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-265) and index.

ISBN:

9783838208671

3838208676

OCLC:

927400975

Publisher Number:

99969567596