The Space of Literature
A Translation of "L'Espace littéraire"
Maurice Blanchot author Ann Smock translator Ann Smock editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University of Nebraska Press
Published:1st Dec '89
Should be back in stock very soon
Blanchot reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention
Explores the process of reading as well as the nature of artistic creativity, all the while considering the relation of the literary work to time, to history, and to death. This work reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention.Maurice Blanchot, the eminent literary and cultural critic, has had a vast influence on contemporary French writers—among them Jean Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. From the 1930s through the present day, his writings have been shaping the international literary consciousness.
The Space of Literature, first published in France in 1955, is central to the development of Blanchot's thought. In it he reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention. Thus he explores the process of reading as well as the nature of artistic creativity, all the while considering the relation of the literary work to time, to history, and to death. This book consists not so much in the application of a critical method or the demonstration of a theory of literature as in a patiently deliberate meditation upon the literary experience, informed most notably by studies of Mallarmé, Kafka, Rilke, and Hölderlin. Blanchot's discussions of those writers are among the finest in any language.
"A series of fascinating, and frequently uncanny, meditations."--Year's Work in English Studies. "Authoritative analysis of the creative act... The translator's introduction is as excellent as the translation itself."--Library Journal.
ISBN: 9780803260924
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 399g
279 pages