Literary Silences in Pascal, Rousseau, and Beckett [Hardcover]

To explore literary silence is to explore the relationships between literary texts and the silence of the ineffable. Philosophical and critical accounts tend to operate with a dualistic understanding of silence as the negative other of text. This study, however, seeks to place silence within the literary text. Central to this theoretical endeavor are thinkers like Blanchot, Derrida, Gadamer and Vattimo, and the result is a fundamental challenge to our ideas of silence and text.

Introduction
1. Moving towards literary silence
2.Thinkingliterary silence - a theoretical exploration
3. The behaviour of literary silence: repetition, aporia, implosion
4. Literary silence in Pascal'sPens??es
5. Literary silence in Rousseau'sR??veries
Interlude: From Rousseau to Beckett - the opening of the 'third mode' of language
6. Literary silence in Beckett's trilogy
Conclusion
Bibliography