Jeffrey Mehlman

Genealogies of the Text

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

In this book, which includes a substantial new introduction and several unpublished essays, Jeffrey Mehlman confronts the politically devastating resonances in the work of several leading French writers. The essays focus on the series of enigmas surrounding the 'Blanchot affair' - a scandal provoked by Mehlman's revelation in 1977 that Maurice Blanchot, one of the tutelary figures of contemporary French thought, had in the 1930s been a prominent fascist journalist. Mehlman takes the issue of Blanchot's forgotten political essays deep into the most revered - and misunderstood - of his novels, Iphigenia 38. Using this affair as a point of departure, Mehlman sheds new light on the question of the usability of psychoanalysis for literary readings (examining, for example, Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Valéry); he also investigates the ideological and political connotations of similar literary and theoretical material. The volume as a whole provides a consistently provocative meditation on literature, ethics, and the experience of the French in World War II.

Table of contents:
1. Introduction; 2. Craniometry and criticism: notes on a Valéryan criss-cross; 3. Literature and hospitality: Klossowski's Hamann; 4. Literature and collaboration: Benoist-Méchin's return to Proust; 5. 'Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote' again; 6. Iphigenia 38: deconstruction, history, and the case of L'Arrêt de mort; 7. Writing and deference: the politics of literary adulation; 8. Perspectives: on Paul de Man and Le Soir; 9. Prosopopoeia revisited; 10. The paranoid style in French prose: Lacan with Léon Bloy; 11. The Holocaust comedies of 'Emile Ajar'; 12. Pour Sainte-Beuve: Maurice Blanchot, 10 March 1942; 13. Flowers of evil: Paul Morand, the collaboration, and literary history; Appendix.

Mehlman confronts the series of enigmas surrounding the 'Blanchot affair', in which one of the leading figures of contemporary French thought was shown to have been a prominent fascist journalist during the 1930s. Using this as a point of departure, Mehlman investigates the ideological and political connotations of similar literary material, shedding new light on the question of the usability of psychoanalysis for literary readings. The volume provides a provocative meditation on literature, ethics, and the experience of the French in World War II.

A provocative meditation on literature, ethics, and the experience of the French in World War II.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 276
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Juli 2012
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 222mm x 145mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 524g
• ISBN-13: 9780521472135
• ISBN-10: 052147213X
• Artikelnr.: 22226684

Autorenporträt

Jeffrey Mehlman, who has taught at Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Harvard Universities, is Professor of French Literature and University Professor at Boston University. He is the author (most recently) of Adventures in the French Trade, Emigré New York, Walter Benjamin for Children and Genealogies of the Text.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Craniometry and criticism: notes on a Valéryan criss-cross
3. Literature and hospitality: Klossowski's Hamann
4. Literature and collaboration: Benoist-Méchin's return to Proust
5. 'Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote' again
6. Iphigenia 38: deconstruction, history and the case of L'Arrêt de mort
7. Writing and deference: the politics of literary adulation
8. Perspectives: on Paul de Man and Le Soir
9. Prosopopeia revisited
10. The paranoid style in French prose: Lacan with Léon Bloy
11. The Holocaust comedies of 'Emile Ajar'
12. Pour Sainte-Beuve: Maurice Blanchot, 10 March 1942
13. Flowers of evil: Paul Morand, the Collaboration and literary history
Appendix
Notes
Index
Series list.