Literature Suspends Death

Chris Danta is an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English, Media and Performing Arts at the University of New South Wales. He has published essays in New Literary History, Textual Practice, Modernism/Modernity, Sub-Stance and Literature and Theology.

"With exemplary precision Literature Suspends Death demonstrates how the enigmatic account of the ‘binding of Isaac' in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling spurs a series of radical reflections on the interconnection among narrative, sacrifice, and mortality. Danta identifies a blind-spot in Kierkegaard's work that Kafka and Blanchot do not so much illuminate as make into the ethical content of literature." -- Peter Fenves, Joan and Sarepta Harrison Professor of Literature, and Professor of German, Comparative Literary Studies, and Jewish Studies, Northwestern University, USA

• Acknowledgments; 1. Testing the Tested; 2. The Melancholic Imagination: Kierkegaard's Abraham; 3. Sarah's Laughter: Kafka's Abraham; 4. "The absolutely dark moment of the plot": Blanchot's Abraham; 5. Coda: Agnes and the Merman; Works Cited; Index.