Derek Attridge in Conversation

Derek Attridge in Conversation
Author :
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
Total Pages : 116
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781782842477
ISBN-13 : 1782842470
Rating : 4/5 (77 Downloads)

Synopsis Derek Attridge in Conversation by : Derek Attridge

This volume of conversation not only provides a succinct philosophical biography that highlights the wide range of Attridge's interests. It likewise foregrounds his energetic engagements with literary theory, poetics, and stylistics, as well as his reassessments of contemporary philosophy and literary ideas, specifically those pertaining to the work Jacques Derrida, James Joyce, and J. M. Coetzee. Readers will find in this book a wonderful balancing act as Attridge negotiates the dynamics between the orthodoxies of critical practice and the strategic interventions of deconstructive reading. This book, with an appendix of a chronological listing of Attridge's publications, is an accessible and provocative introduction to the ideas of one of the most brilliant critical voices and generous presences in literary studies in the Anglophone world.

The Work of Literature

The Work of Literature
Author :
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Total Pages : 335
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780191047589
ISBN-13 : 0191047589
Rating : 4/5 (89 Downloads)

Synopsis The Work of Literature by : Derek Attridge

What is distinctive about the cultural practice called 'literature'? How does it benefit individuals and society? How do literary works retain their importance and their capacity to give pleasure over decades and centuries? What constitutes responsible criticism? These are some of the questions addressed in this book, which develops the arguments put forward in Derek Attridge's influential study The Singularity of Literature (2004). Beginning with an extended cross-examination in the form of an interview addressing a range of topics relating to the work of literature (understood both as the activity of the writer and as the text itself) and the practices of literary reading and literary criticism, it asks what it means to 'do justice to' a work of literature, provides a full account of the concept of singularity, considers the problematic power of criticism, and advances an account of the role of context in the writing and reading of literary works. In other chapters it explores the issue of cultural difference in responses to literature, discusses the working of metaphor, questions the attribution of knowledge to literary works, and addresses the topics of affect and hospitality. The book follows through the consequences of regarding the singular and inventive work of literature as an event that takes place anew each time it is read, providing an opening to an otherness excluded by prevailing cultural norms and habits of thought and feeling. Although the focus of the book is on literature, the arguments are relevant to all the arts, and engage with the thought of major aesthetic theorists in a number of traditions.

The Experience of Poetry

The Experience of Poetry
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 462
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780198833154
ISBN-13 : 0198833156
Rating : 4/5 (54 Downloads)

Synopsis The Experience of Poetry by : Derek Attridge

An account of the performance of poetry from late Antiquity to the Renaissance that explores the role and importance of poetry in western culture.

Reading and Responsibility

Reading and Responsibility
Author :
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages : 192
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780748642458
ISBN-13 : 0748642455
Rating : 4/5 (58 Downloads)

Synopsis Reading and Responsibility by : Derek Attridge

What is the importance of deconstruction, and the writing of Jacques Derrida in particular, for literary criticism today? Derek Attridge argues that the challenge of Derrida's work for our understanding of literature and its value has still not been fully met, and in this book, which traces a close engagement with Derrida's writing over two decades and reflects an interest in that work going back a further two decades, shows how that work can illuminate a variety of topics.Chapters include an overview of deconstruction as a critical practice today, discussions of the secret, postcolonialism, ethics, literary criticism, jargon, fiction, and photography, and responses to the theoretical writing of Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes, and J. Hillis Miller. Also included is a discussion of the recent reading of Derrida's philosophy as 'radical atheism', and the book ends with a conversation on deconstruction and place with the theorist and critic Jean-Michel Rabate.Running throughout is a concern with the question of responsibility, as exemplified in Derrida's own readings of literary and philosophical texts: responsibility to the work being read, responsibility to the protocols of rational argument, and responsibility to the reader.

The Singularity of Literature

The Singularity of Literature
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 241
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781351697965
ISBN-13 : 135169796X
Rating : 4/5 (65 Downloads)

Synopsis The Singularity of Literature by : Derek Attridge

The Iliad and Beowulf provide rich sources of historical information. The novels of Henry Fielding and Henry James may be instructive in the art of moral living. Some go further and argue that Emile Zola and Harriet Beecher Stowe played a part in ameliorating the lives of those existing in harsh circumstances. However, as Derek Attridge argues in this outstanding and acclaimed book, none of these capacities is distinctive of literature. What is the singularity of literature? Do the terms "literature" and "the literary" refer to actual entities found in cultures at certain times, or are they merely expressions characteristic of such cultures? Attridge argues that this resistance to definition and reduction is not a dead end, but a crucial starting point from which to explore anew the power and practices of Western art. Derek Attridge provides a rich new vocabulary for literature, rethinking such terms as "invention," "singularity," "otherness," "alterity," "performance" and "form." He returns literature to the realm of ethics, and argues for the ethical importance of literature, demonstrating how a new understanding of the literary might be put to work in a "responsible," creative mode of reading. The Singularity of Literature is not only a major contribution to the theory of literature, but also a celebration of the extraordinary pleasure of the literary, for reader, writer, student or critic. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by the author.

James Joyce's Ulysses

James Joyce's Ulysses
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages : 285
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780195158311
ISBN-13 : 0195158318
Rating : 4/5 (11 Downloads)

Synopsis James Joyce's Ulysses by : Derek Attridge

The books that comprise the 'Casebooks in Criticism' series offer edited in-depth readings and critical notes and studies on the most important classic novels. This volume explores Joyce's 'Ulysses'.

The Work of World Literature

The Work of World Literature
Author :
Publisher : ICI Berlin Press
Total Pages : 264
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9783965580114
ISBN-13 : 3965580116
Rating : 4/5 (14 Downloads)

Synopsis The Work of World Literature by : Francesco Giusti

The contentious discourse around world literature tends to stress the ‘world’ in the phrase. This volume, in contrast, asks what it means to approach world literature by inflecting the question of the literary. Debates for, against, and around ‘world literature’ have brought renewed attention to the worldly aspects of the literary enterprise. Literature is studied with regard to its sociopolitical and cultural references, contexts and conditions of production, circulation, distribution, and translation. But what becomes of the literary when one speaks of world literature? Responding to Derek Attridge’s theory of how literature ‘works’, the contributions in this volume explore in diverse ways and with attention to a variety of literary practices what it might mean to speak of ‘the work of world literature’. The volume shows how attention to literariness complicates the ethical and political conundrums at the centre of debates about world literature.

Acts of Literature

Acts of Literature
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 476
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781135965242
ISBN-13 : 1135965242
Rating : 4/5 (42 Downloads)

Synopsis Acts of Literature by : Jacques Derrida

First published in 1992. "Acts of Literature", compiled in close association with Derrida, brings together for the first time a number of Derrida's writings on literary texts on the question of literature. The essays discuss literary figures such as Rousseau, Mallarme, Joyce, Shakespeare and Kafka. Comprising pieces spanning Derrida's career, the collection includes a substantial new interview with him on questions of literature, deconstruction, politics, feminism and history. Derek Attridge provides an introductory essay on deconstruction and the question of literature, and offers suggestions for further reading. These essays examine the place and function of literature in Western culture. They highlight Derrida's interest in literature as a significant cultural institution and as a peculiarly challenging form of writing, with inescapable consequences for our thinking about philosophy, politics and ethics. This book should be of interest to undergraduates and academics in the field of literary theory and criticism and continental philosophy.

Moving Words: Forms of English Poetry

Moving Words: Forms of English Poetry
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 253
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780199681242
ISBN-13 : 0199681244
Rating : 4/5 (42 Downloads)

Synopsis Moving Words: Forms of English Poetry by : Derek Attridge

This book investigates the ways in which poets have exploited the resources of the language as a spoken medium - its characteristic rhythms, its phonetic qualities, its deployment of syntax - to write verse that continues to move and delight.

Theory After 'Theory'

Theory After 'Theory'
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 369
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781136827402
ISBN-13 : 1136827404
Rating : 4/5 (02 Downloads)

Synopsis Theory After 'Theory' by : Jane Elliott

This volume argues that theory, far from being dead, has undergone major shifts in order to come to terms with the most urgent cultural and political questions of today. Offering an overview of theory’s new directions, this groundbreaking collection includes essays on affect, biopolitics, biophilosophy, the aesthetic, and neoliberalism, as well as examinations of established areas such as subaltern studies, the postcolonial, and ethics. Influential figures such as Agamben, Badiou, Arendt, Deleuze, Derrida and Meillassoux are examined in a range of contexts. Gathering together some of the top thinkers in the field, this volume not only speculates on the fate of theory but shows its current diversity, encouraging conversation between divergent strands. Each section places the essays in their contexts and stages a comparison between different but ultimately related ways in which key thinkers are moving beyond poststructuralism. Contributors: Amanda Anderson, Ray Brassier, Adriana Cavarero, Eva Cherniavsky, Rey Chow, Claire Colebrook, Laurent Dubreuil, Roberto Esposito, Simon Gikandi, Martin Hagglünd, Peter Hallward, Brian Massumi, Peter Osborne, Elizabeth Povinelli, William Rasch, Henry Staten, Bernard Stiegler, Eugene Thacker, Cary Wolfe, Linda Zerilli.