Late Modernist Style in Samuel Beckett and Emmanuel Levinas

Zusatztext "When he was a war prisoner in Germany! Emmanuel Levinas was entertaining dreams of becoming a famous novelist. Fifield's fascinating study explains why! had he written the novels he was planning! they would have looked more like Beckett's texts than like Proust's: faces letting an infinite otherness shine through them! infinitesimal traces of traces! an 'otherwise than being' conveyed via a syntax of weakness made all the stronger by exaggerating its inability to say anything. Again and again! we are made to share the process of unsaying the said or unwording the word. Fifield provides a beautiful and compelling assessment of the convergence between the master of French phenomenology and the verbal genius of the Irish writer." - Jean-Michel Rabaté! Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities! University of Pennsylvania Informationen zum Autor Peter Fifield is a junior research fellow at St John s College, University of Oxford. Klappentext Beckett and Levinas are of central importance to critical debates about literary ethics. Rather than suggest the preservation of literary and ethical value in the wake of the WWII, this book argues that both launched a sustained attack on the principles of literature, weaving narrative, and descriptive doubt through phenomenology, prose, and drama. Zusammenfassung Beckett and Levinas are of central importance to critical debates about literary ethics. Rather than suggest the preservation of literary and ethical value in the wake of the WWII! this book argues that both launched a sustained attack on the principles of literature! weaving narrative! and descriptive doubt through phenomenology! prose! and drama. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction PART I 1. Writing against Art 2. A Reluctant Poetics PART II 3. "why after all not say without further ado what can later be unsaid" (Company) 4. "begin again all over more or less in the same place or in another" (How It Is) 5. The Turn to Hyperbole Conclusion...

List of contents

Introduction PART I 1. Writing against Art 2. A Reluctant Poetics PART II 3. "why after all not say without further ado what can later be unsaid" (Company) 4. "begin again all over more or less in the same place or in another" (How It Is) 5. The Turn to Hyperbole Conclusion

Report

"When he was a war prisoner in Germany, Emmanuel Levinas was entertaining dreams of becoming a famous novelist. Fifield's fascinating study explains why, had he written the novels he was planning, they would have looked more like Beckett's texts than like Proust's: faces letting an infinite otherness shine through them, infinitesimal traces of traces, an 'otherwise than being' conveyed via a syntax of weakness made all the stronger by exaggerating its inability to say anything. Again and again, we are made to share the process of unsaying the said or unwording the word. Fifield provides a beautiful and compelling assessment of the convergence between the master of French phenomenology and the verbal genius of the Irish writer." - Jean-Michel Rabaté, Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania

Product details

• Authors: P Fifield, P. Fifield, Peter Fifield, Fifield Peter
• Publisher: Palgrave UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 20.03.2013
• EAN: 9781137294074
• ISBN: 978-1-137-29407-4
• No. of pages: 222
• Series: New Interpretations of Beckett in the 21st Century; New Interpertations of Beckett; New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First; New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century; New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century; New Interpretations of Beckett in the 21st Century; New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First; New Interpertations of Beckett
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; B, Fiction & related items, Cultural Studies, Cultural Theory, Fiction, Literature: history & criticism, Literary theory, Culture—Study and teaching, European Literature, Literature, Modern—20th century, Twentieth-Century Literature, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, British literature, British and Irish Literature, Fiction Literature, Palgrave Literature Collection, Literature—Philosophy