Blanchot and the Outside of Literature

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Maurice Blanchots writings have played a critical role in the development of 20th-century French thought, but the implicit tension in this role has rarely been addressed directly. Reading Blanchot involves understanding how literature can have an effect on philosophy, to the extent of putting philosophy itself in question by exposing a different and literary mode of thought. However, as this mode is to be found most substantially in the peculiar density of his fictional writings, rather than in his theoretical or critical works, the demand on readers to grasp its implications for thought is rendered more difficult. Blanchot and the Outside of Literature provides a detailed and far-reaching explication of how Blanchot's works changed in the postwar period during which he arrived at this complex and distinctive form of writing.

Reviews

Fascinating ... Allen shows throughout that a profound and rigorous engagement with Blanchot's enigmatic work can be as lucid as it is respectful of this work's density and difficulty. * The French Review *
In earlier books on Hlderlin and Heidegger, Adorno and Blanchot, and, more recently, the Marquis de Sade, William Allen has shown himself to be an exceptionally tough-minded, scrupulous, and resourceful commentator, given to elucidating some unusually challenging material with probing independence of view. This absorbing and thought-provoking new book is no different. Building on the arguments set out in Allens previous volumes, it deploys a lucid and incisive intelligence in attending to the distinctive qualities of Blanchots fictional and philosophical writings. It is a work all readers of modern philosophy and literature will ponder at length. * Leslie Hill, Emeritus Professor of French Studies, University of Warwick, UK *

Author Bio

William S. Allen (PhD, University at Warwick) is an independent researcher and a librarian at the University of Southampton, UK. He is the author of Ellipsis: Of Poetry and the Experience of Language after Heidegger, Hlderlin, and Blanchot (2007), Aesthetics of Negativity: Blanchot, Adorno, and Autonomy (2016), and Without End: Sades Critique of Reason (Bloomsbury, 2017).