1st Edition

The Singularity of Literature

By Derek Attridge Copyright 2017
246 Pages
by Routledge

246 Pages
by Routledge

246 Pages
by Routledge

The Iliad and Beowulf provide rich sources of historical information. The novels of Henry Fielding and Henry James may be instructive in the art of moral living. Some go further and argue that Emile Zola and Harriet Beecher Stowe played a part in ameliorating the lives of those existing in harsh circumstances. However, as Derek Attridge argues in this outstanding and acclaimed book, none of... Read more

Preface

Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition

1. Introductory

2. Creation and the other

3. Originality and invention

4. Inventive language and the literary event

5. Singularity

6. Reading and responding

7. Performance

8. Form, meaning, context

9. Responsibility and ethics

10. An everyday impossibility

Debts and Directions

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Biography

Derek Attridge is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of York, UK. He is the author or editor of twenty-five books, including Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference from the Renaissance to James Joyce (Routledge, 2004), The Work of Literature (2015) and, with Henry Staten, The Craft of Poetry (Routledge, 2015).

"A deeply important book"—Rob Pope, Language and Literature

"A significant and enduring contribution towards readable, ethically engaged literary criticism" – Justin Neuman, Journal of Postcolonial Writing

"This book constitutes a timely, rigorous and thought-provoking alternative to the exigencies of politicised criticism" – Lucy O’Meara, Textual Practice