The Idea of the Literary, Nicholas Harrison (éd.)

The Idea of the Literary
Edited by Nicholas Harrison
July 2005 145pp 0 7486 2315 9 Pb £18.95 Paragraph 28:2

As traditional assumptions about the value of Great Works of Literature have crumbled, many critics (and some university managers) have apparently come to view literature in general with suspicion. Against this backdrop there has been a powerful resurgence of interest in the idea of the literary and its peculiar capacities. This collection features work by some of the most important thinkers and writers in the field, including Derek Attridge, Alain Badiou, Jean Bessière, Assia Djebar, Benita Parry and Jacques Rancière. Together they force readers to reconsider the relations between the literary, the aesthetic, the ethical and the political, and demonstrate the reach and vitality of a renewed critical debate in which the literary is once more central to literary theory.

Contents:

Preface (Nicholas Harrison)

Who needs an idea of the literary? (Nicholas Harrison)

Performing metaphors: the singularity of literary figuration (Derek Attridge)

Qu'est-ce que la littérature pense? (Alain Badiou)

The facticity of the literary work (Jean Bessière)

Musical thinking: Hegel and the phenomenology of prosody (Simon Jarvis)

Reflections on the excess of empire in Tayeb Salih's season of migration to the north' (Benita Parry)

Literary misunderstanding (Jacques Rancière)

A defence of tautology: repetition and difference in Wordsworth's note to the thorn' (Corinna Russell)

Ecrire/writing (Assia Djebar)

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