Life After Literature

Perspectives on Biopoetics in Literature and Theory

Zoltán Kulcsár-Szabó editor Tamás Lénárt editor Attila Simon editor Roland Végsö editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Published:25th Apr '21

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Life After Literature cover

This book offers innovative investigations of the concept of life in art and in theory. It features essays that explore biopoetics and look at how insights from the natural sciences shape research within the humanities. Since literature, works of art, and other cultural products decisively shape our ideas of what it means to be human, the contributors to this volume examine the question of what literature, literary and cultural criticism, and philosophy contribute to the distinctions (or non-distinctions) between human, animal, and vegetal existence.

Coverage combines different methodological aspects and addresses a wide field of comparative literary studies. The essays consider the question of language (as a distinctive feature of human existence) in a number of different contexts, which range from Aristotle’s works, through several historical layers of the philosophical discourse on the origins of speech, to modern anthropology, and 20th century continental philosophy. In addition, the volume includes concrete case studies to the current post-humanism debate and provides literary, art historian, and philosophical perspectives on animal studies.

The historical multiplicity of the various cultural representations of biological existence (be that human, animal, vegetal, or mixed) might serve as a productive foundation for discussing the nature and forms of literature’s critical contributions to our understanding of these fundamental categories. This volume opens up this subject to students and scholars of literature, art, philosophy, ethics, and cultural studies, and to anyone with a theoretical interest in the questions of life.


ISBN: 9783030337407

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

284 pages

1st ed. 2020