The Writer Writing Philosophic Acts in Literature [Hardcover]

In an age of authorless, contextless, deconstructed texts, Francis-No?l Thomas argues that it is time to re-examine a fundamental but neglected concept of literature: writing is an action whose agent is an individual. Addressing both general readers and scholars, Thomas offers two cases, Bernard Shaw'sSaint Joanand Marcel Proust'sA la recherche du temps perdu, read against the background of the authors' large, eccentric, and surprisingly similar claims about their texts as acts. He examines what happens when we take these claims seriously enough to find out why the authors made them in the first place and what bearing they have on the texts themselves.

Originally published in 1993.

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This lucid, vigorously written book is a refreshing demonstration of the sophistication of common sense.The Writer Writingmakes a persuasive case for the reinstatement of the writer's intention, the living author, and the stubborn individuality of the particular literary text, at the heart of interpretation. Francis-No?l Thomas is an important new voice in the rising chorus of objections to the critical orthodoxies that have dominated academic literary studies over the past quarter-century. Robert Alter, University of California, Berkeley In this deeply original book, Francis-No?l Thomas engages the actions of writers writing. He has allowed the artists themselves, not a theory that supersedes them, to yield access to divlS^