The space of literature / Maurice Blanchot ; translated, with an introduction, by Ann Smock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Blanchot, Maurice, author.

Contributor:

Smock, Ann, translator, author of introduction, etc.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature--Philosophy.

Literature.

Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (206 p.)

Place of Publication:

Lincoln, [Nebraska] ; London, [England] : University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Maurice Blanchot, the eminent literary and cultural critic, has had a vast influence on contemporary French writers--among them Jean Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. From the 1930s through the present day, his writings have been shaping the international literary consciousness. The Space of Literature , first published in France in 1955, is central to the development of Blanchot's thought. In it he reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention. Thus he explores the process of reading as well as the nature of artistic creativity, all the while considering the relation of the literary work to time, to history, and to death. This book consists not so much in the application of a critical method or the demonstration of a theory of literature as in a patiently deliberate meditation upon the literary experience, informed most notably by studies of Mallarmé, Kafka, Rilke, and Hölderlin. Blanchot's discussions of those writers are among the finest in any language.

Contents:

""Half Title Page""; ""Title Page""; ""Copyright Page""; ""Contents""; ""Translator's Introduction""; ""I The Essential Solitude""; ""II Approaching Literature's Space""; ""Mallarmé's Experience""; ""III The Work's Space and Its Demand""; ""The Work and the Errant Word""; ""Kafka and the Work's Demand""; ""IV The Work and Death's Space""; ""Death as Possibility""; ""The Igitur Experience""; ""Rilke and Death's Demand:""; ""1. The Search for a Proper Death""; ""2. Death's Space""; ""3. Death's Transmutation""; ""V Inspiration""; ""The Outside, the Night""; ""Orpheus's Gaze""

""Inspiration, Lack of Inspiration""""VI Communication and the Work""; ""Reading""; ""Communication""; ""VII Literature and the Original Experience""; ""The Future and the Question of Art""; ""Characteristics of the Work of Art""; ""The Original Experience""; ""Appendixes""; ""The Essential Solitude and Solitude in the World""; ""The Two Versions of the Imaginary""; ""Sleep, Night""; ""Hölderlin's Itinerary""; ""Index""; ""Back Cover""

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed November 13, 2015).

ISBN:

0-8032-7877-2