The Object of Literature

A new theory of the relationship between literature and philosophy in the context of the French tradition, first published in 1995.

This 1995 book is Pierre Macherey's first on literature and theory since A Theory of Literary Production. It offers both a new theory of the relationship between literature and philosophy, and a series of speculations on important texts and problems in the French literary tradition.This 1995 book by Pierre Macherey was his first dealing with literature and theory since his seminal A Theory of Literary Production. Continuing the project of Althusserian theory, Macherey engages in a series of close exegeses of classical texts in French literature and philosophy, from the late eighteenth century down to the 1970s, that explore the historically variable but thematically similar ways in which literary texts represent philosophical ideas. Rejecting the simple notion that literature deploys philosophical topoi in an unmediated manner, Macherey shows the conceptual sophistication - and broad intellectual influence - that literary art has displayed in the modern period. At once a theoretical meditation of great originality and a historical work of scrupulous scholarship, The Object of Literature will entrench Pierre Macherey's already considerable reputation as one of the most significant contemporary theoreticians of literature.