Timothy Mathews

Gebundenes Buch

Literature, Art and the Pursuit of Decay in Twentieth-Century France

Beschreibung

In Literature, Art and the Pursuit of Decay, Timothy Mathews examines work by a range of writers and painters working in France in the twentieth century. The well-illustrated book engages with canonical figures - Guillaume Apollinaire, Marguerite Duras and Jean Genet, Roland Barthes, Pablo Picasso and René Magritte - as well as more neglected individuals including Robert Desnos and Jean Fautrier. Mathews draws on psychoanalysis, existentialism and poststructuralism to show how both literature and fine art promote the value of generosity in a culture of anxiety and intolerance. Decay emerges as a surprising ally in this quest because of its ability to undermine intellectual complacency and egoism. Integrating theoretical and material approaches to reading and viewing, Mathews engages with the distinctive features of different literary genres and different types of painting to develop an original history of artistic ambition in twentieth-century France.

Autor

Timothy Mathews is Emeritus Professor of French and Comparative Criticism at University College London. In his writing and translating he explores what relating to art can tell us about relating to people. In addition to Guillaume Apollinaire, he has written widely about twentieth and twenty-first century French Literature, comparative literature, and comparative approaches. He is co-translator with Luce Irigaray of her Everyday Prayers (2004), and with Delphine Grass of Michel Houellebecq, The Art of Struggle (2010). His translations of selected pages from Roland Barthes, Fragments d'un discours amoureux appear in a special issue of CounterText, (2023). His other most recent books are Alberto Giacometti, the Art of Relation (2014), and There and Not Here: Chronicles of Art and Loss (2022). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the Academy of Europe, and Officier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 248
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. April 2015
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 250mm x 175mm x 18mm
• Gewicht: 614g
• ISBN-13: 9780521419703
• ISBN-10: 0521419700
• Artikelnr.: 23182186