Blanchot and Literary Criticism [Hardcover]

Blanchot's writings on literature have imposed themselves in the canon of modern literary theory and yet have remained a mysterious presence. This is in part due to their almost hypnotic literary style, in part due to their distinctive amalgam of a number of philosophical sources (Hegel, Heidegger, Levinas, Bataille), which, although hardly unknown in the Anglophone philosophical world, have not yet made themselves fully at home in literary theory.

This book aims to make visible the coherence of Blanchot's critical project. To recognize the challenge that Blanchot represents for literary criticism, one has to see that he always has in view the self-interrogation that characterizes modern literature, both in its theory and its practice. Blanchot's essays study the forms and the paths of this research, its solutions and its impasses; and increasingly, they sketch out the philosophical and historical horizon within which its significance appears. The effect is to revise the terms in which we see the genesis of the modern literary concept, not least of the manifestations of which is literary criticism itself.

Mark Hewson teaches literature and philosophy at the University
of Melbourne, Australia.

&offers erudite analyses of several texts in which Maurice Blanchot approaches works by modern' writers. [&] Hewson's studies are models of good scholarship and often bring great insight, albeit to quite familiar terrain. The individual studies of Blanchot's work on H?lderlin and Mallarm? are extremely welcome additions to the field and provide an excellent resource for scholars seeking to orient themselves in these complex areas. Barnaby Norman, King's College London

AbbreviationsIntroduction: Blanchot and Literary Criticism1. The Modern Age and the Work of Literature2. Poetic Solitude: Two Essays on H?lderlin3. Mallarm? and the Legitimacy of the Modern Poem4. The Ambiguity of the Negative5. Myth and Representation in Blanchot's CriticismlS+