The Work of Fire (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) - Hardcover

Blanchot, Maurice

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804724326 ISBN 13: 9780804724326

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 1995

Inhaltsangabe

Since the middle of the twentieth century, Maurice Blanchot has been an extraordinarily influential figure on the French literary and cultural scene. He is arguably the key figure after Sartre in exploring the relation between literature and philosophy.

Blanchot early developed a distinctive, limpid firm of essay writing, and, apart from his fiction, his main work has appeared as collections of essays. His essays, in form and substance, unmistakably left their imprint on the work of the most inluential of French theorists. The writings of Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida, for example, are hardly imaginable without Blanchot, and, indeed, all three have generously paid tribute to him.

Published in French in 1949, The Work of Fire is a collection of 22 essays originally issued as review essays in literary journals. Certain themes return again and again: the relation of literature and language to death; the sigificance of repetition; the historical, personal, and social function of literature; and perhaps most important, simply the question, What is at stake in the fact that something such as art or literature exists?

Within each essay, Blanchot raises anew these central themes in the context of a particular work or a particular author. He has read, it appears, practically everything, and an essay on a given writer or work will bristle with apposite references to other authors and works. Among the authors discussed in The Work of Fire are Kafka, Mallarme, Holderlin, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Sartre, Gide, Pascal, Valery, Hemingway, Henry Miller, and such lesser figures as Benjamin Constant and Jean Paulhan. The essays demonstrate Blanchot's ability to pose the most lucid questions about the essence of literature while saying something new and probing about the author or work in question.

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Charlotte y Peter Fiell son dos autoridades en historia, teoría y crítica del diseño y han escrito más de sesenta libros sobre la materia, muchos de los cuales se han convertido en éxitos de ventas. También han impartido conferencias y cursos como profesores invitados, han comisariado exposiciones y asesorado a fabricantes, museos, salas de subastas y grandes coleccionistas privados de todo el mundo. Los Fiell han escrito numerosos libros para TASCHEN, entre los que se incluyen 1000 Chairs, Diseño del siglo XX, El diseño industrial de la A a la Z, Scandinavian Design y Diseño del siglo XXI.

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“A signal event for literary and cultural studies in the English-speaking world. As crucial essays on individual authors, as a major work of literary theory, as an important means of access to the 1940s in French culture, as an exemplary work combining reading and theory—it is of great importance to us today.”—J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
“This collection of essays and reviews from the 1940s is about the ‘fiery part’ of literary language that burns through the aesthetic illusions and the easy referentiality of everyday language. . . . This collection is indepensable to any attempt to understand the years between Heidegger/Benjamin and Derrida/Man.”—Choice

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1995
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804724326
• ISBN 13: 9780804724326
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 362
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar