This article explores the literary, philosophical, and phenomenological dimensions of neighbor‐love. Phenomenologically speaking, neighborly love must be given, that is, it must be given voluntarily ...through attitudes, actions, or gestures. But whom do we actually acknowledge as our neighbor, and why? Adopting a comparative literary approach, this paper argues that literature is not philosophy's adversary but its creative interlocutor: Ilse Aichinger's poem “Foundling” transcends anthropocentric perspectives, presenting the Neighbor as a being beyond denomination by translating it from human to animal. Doris Lessing's novel The Diary of a Good Neighbour depicts the unpredictable and accidental nature of encounters with the Neighbor, leaving no room for personal choice. Ultimately, Amélie Nothomb's Les catilinaires illustrates how the Neighbor can be a persistent annoyance that both irritates and resists systematic thinking. These literary works outline a nuanced poetics of neighbor‐love and givenness that extends beyond any anthropological, theological, or religio‐ethical concept.
Winner of the ESSE (European Society for the Study of English) Book Award for Literature 2006
Literature and the literary have proved singularly resistant to definition. Derek Attridge argues that ...such resistance represents not a dead end, but a crucial starting point from which to explore anew the power and practices of Western art. In this lively, original volume, the author:
considers the implications of regarding the literary work as an innovative cultural event, both in its time and for later generations;
provides a rich new vocabulary for discussions of literature, rethinking such terms as invention, singularity, otherness, alterity, performance and form ;
returns literature to the realm of ethics, and argues the ethical importance of the literary institution to a culture;
demonstrates 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.
'The clarity and imagination with which the argument is presented make this book capable of reinvigorating the debate about literary form in English study at many levels.' - Oxford Literary Review
'Attridge builds a powerful account of literature and an original account of the relation of literature to ethics. Written accessibly and without jargon, this book will excite old and new readers alike.' - Simon Critchley, New School University, New York, and the University of Essex
'A singular achievement in pushing the challenge of literature to the top of the agenda and opening the objectives of the discipline to debate.' - Kiernan Ryan, Literature and Poetry
'This is a very intelligent book, highly accessible.' – ZAA
Derek Attridge is Professor of English at the University of York and author of acclaimed works on poetry, fiction and literary theory.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Zum Geleit
Academia
Rolf Parr
Lesen als Experiment.
Kultur- und medienwissenschaftliche Perspektiven
Tanja Nusser
Das „atemlose Stocken der Zeit“.
Die Vielfalt akademischer ...Zeit(-lichkeiten) oder das Schrumpfen
der wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Gegenwart
Guillaume van Gemert
Narrentheater, Mördergrube, Verblödungsanstalt?
Vom allmählichen Verschwinden der Alma Mater
aus dem deutschen Universitätsroman
Poetik – Ästhetik – Didaktik
Martin Schubert
Hartmann, Thomas Mann und Oulipo.
Der Gregorius-Stoff im experimentellen Roman
Simone Loleit
Der Sperling, der Schneider und die ‚dürre Moral‘.
Ein Platztausch in den „Kinder- und Hausmärchen“
der Brüder Grimm und seine poetologischen Implikationen ...
Jörg Wesche
Barockpoetik und Übersetzung.
Antwortversuch
„… so träumt sie doch letzthin Revolution“.
Zu Ernst Blochs Unterscheidung von Kitsch und Kolportage ...
Peter Ellenbruch
Rehmann, Klingler & Co. –
oder: die Gebäude der Bundesrepublik
Peter Bekes
Textgenese – Interpretation – Didaktik
Heinrich Böll
Corinna Schlicht
Hate Speech und Antifeminismus.
„Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum“ revisited
Walter Delabar
Misslungene Liebe, schlechter Krieg und die Sinnfrage.
Heinrich Bölls „Wo warst du, Adam?“
Literatur des 17. bis 21. Jahrhunderts
Gaby Herchert
Wenn Vernunft sich verstecken muss.
Verschwörungstheorien in Alessandro Manzonis Roman
„Die Brautleute“
Heinz Eickmans
Flandern als völkischer Mythos im Werk rheinischer Autoren.
Zu den ‚flämischen‘ Romanen „Der Bürger von Gent“
von Theodor Seidenfaden und „Fliegt der Blaufuß?“ von Otto Brües
Erhard Schütz
Städtebund und Stahlhaus.
Erik Regers kritische Revision der Kultur im Ruhrgebiet
Walter Fähnders
Aktionskünstler, Dadaisten, Surrealisten und andere Figuren
der Avantgarde im Gegenwartsroman –
oder: „Was kann die Avantgarde heute sein?“
Elke Reinhardt-Becker
Ein sachlich-romantisches Liebesdurcheinander.
Katrin Hollands Roman „Man spricht über Jacqueline“
Jochen Vogt
Jörg und ich.
Eine Ferienerinnerung
Julia Bertschik
‚Benachbartes und Entferntes‘.
Zu Brigitte Kronauers poetologischen Lektüre –
„Favoriten“ des 19. Jahrhunderts
Hannes Krauss
Poetisches Engagement?
Handke und Jugoslawien
Liane Schüller
Das „Ende der mentalen Privatsphäre“.
Anmerkungen zu Überwachung und Künstlicher Intelligenz
in Ian McEwans „Mashines like me (and people like you)“
Beiträgerinnen und Beiträger
An engaging introduction to contemporary debates in literary theory
In the late twentieth century, the common sense approach to literature was deemed naïve. Roland Barthes proclaimed the death of the ...author, and Hillis Miller declared that all interpretation is theoretical. In many a literature department, graduate students spent far more time on Derrida and Foucault than on Shakespeare and Milton. Despite this, common sense approaches to literature—including the belief that literature represents reality and authorial intentions matter—have resisted theory with tenacity. As a result, argues Antoine Compagnon, theorists have gone to extremes, boxed themselves into paradoxes, and distanced others from their ideas. Eloquently assessing the accomplishments and failings of literary theory, Compagnon ultimately defends the methods and goals of a theoretical commitment tempered by the wisdom of common sense.
The book is organized not by school of thought but around seven central questions: literariness, the author, the world, the reader, style, history, and value. What makes a work literature? Does fiction imitate reality? Is the reader present in the text? What constitutes style? Is the context in which a work is written important to its apprehension? Are literary values universal?
As he examines how theory has wrestled these themes, Compagnon establishes not a simple middle-ground but a state of productive tension between high theory and common sense. The result is a book that will be met with both controversy and sighs of relief.
