The Emergence of Literature

The Emergence of Literature is an extension and reworking of a series of significant propositions in philosophy and literary theory: Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthes examination of the concept of the literary absolute; Martin Heideggers destruction and Giorgio Agambens archaeology of the metaphysics of will; Maurice Blanchots delimitation of the space of literature; and Michel Foucaults archaeology of literature. Its core contribution to the history of theory is to understand the literary absolute not simply as philosophical concept, but as a paradigm that delimits the horizon for currents of literary theory through the course of the 20th century where the literary criteria change from the theme of sincerity to the theme of the death of the author. Stretching from Kant to Hegel, from Hlderlin to the Early German Romantics, from John Stuart Mill to New Criticism, from Benjamin to Barthes, The Emergence of Literature examines the relation between continental philosophy and literature in the post-Kantian era.