Bergson as Writer: Literature in Philosophy

(Hardback)

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Henri Bergson was awarded The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927. However, literary writers do not consider him - and in fact never cite him - as one of their own. Bruno Clment reads Henri Bergson as a writer whose thought is inseparable from a tireless reflection on the question of his written expression.

Clment adds new insights into Bergson's philosophical achievements through an analysis of the literary techniques he develops to express his theoretical insights. This close analysis of rhetorical technique analyses the effect on Bergson's philosophical texts. Reading all of Bergson's philosophical texts with the tools of literature, to systematically consider the theoretical consequences, he reveals that Bergson was not only a philosopher but a highly skilled and innovative writer.

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Focusing on Bergson's concept of expression, Clment dispels the idea that he was a littrateur whose belletristics compensated for defects in philosophy. This extraordinarily lucid and innovative book restores the genius of Bergson seen as a poietic inventor not only of his discourse but also of his language.--Jean-Michel Rabat, University of Pennsylvania, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Author Bio

Bruno Clment is Emeritus Professor of Literature, Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis and is former President of the International College of Philosophy (2004-2007). He is a well-known literary critic and theorist who studies the links between literature and philosophy. He has contributed to Journal of Beckett Studies and The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf. He is the author of many books in French including L'OEuvre sans qualits, rhtorique de Samuel Beckett, prface de Michel Deguy ("Logique de la figure"), 442 p., Paris, Seuil, 1994 (traduction en espagnol en cours); Le Lecteur et son modle, coll. "criture", 272 p., P.U.F., 1999; La Tragdie classique, Seuil, "Mmo" 100 p., 1999 [ce livre a t traduit en roumain (2000) et en coren (2002)]; L'Invention du commentaire, Augustin, Jacques Derrida, 175 p., P.U.F., 2000; Le Rcit de la mthode, Seuil (collection Potique ), 2005; La Voix verticale - essai sur la prosopope, Belin ( L'extrme contemporain ); Henri Bergson, Prix nobel de littrature, Lagrasse, Verdier, 2021. Anthony Uhlmann is Distinguished Professor in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, Australia. He is the author of Beckett and Poststructuralism (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Thinking in Literature: Joyce, Woolf, Nabokov (Bloomsbury, 2011), J. M. Coetzee, Truth, Meaning, Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2020). He was the Managing Editor of the Journal of Beckett Studies (Edinburgh University Press). He has translated a number of essays from French into English, including, The Exhausted by Gilles Deleuze.