Literature Suspends Death

Sacrifice and Storytelling in Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot

AvChris Danta

Inbunden, Engelska, 2011

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Beskrivning

This is the first book-length study of how three important European thinkers-Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot-use the Binding of Isaac to illuminate the sacrificial situation of the literary writer. Danta shows that literature plays a vital and heretical role in these three writers' highly idiosyncratic accounts of the Akedah. His claim is twofold: firstly, that all three authors choose to respond to the Genesis narrative by manifesting literature; and, secondly, that each heretically endows literature-or fiction-with the power to suspend the sacrifice.Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac is traditionally read as the story of faith in action. But what does it mean to play the game of not-quite-belief with the story of religious faith? By examining the literary and heretical treatments of Isaac's sacrifice in the work of Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot, this book develops an original account of literature as a form of sacrificial thinking. For each, writing acts, like God's sacrificial demand of Abraham, to suspend the writer's usual relation to his daily and earthly responsibilities.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2011-09-29
Mått:164 x 235 x 17 mm
Vikt:434 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:176
Förlag:Continuum Publishing Corporation
ISBN:9781441139726

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Mer om författaren

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.

Recensioner i media

"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

Innehållsförteckning

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.