Contemporary European thought B: literature and negativity
Proposed to be offered next in 1996
K Hart
8 or 12 points * 2 hours per week * Second semester * Clayton * Prerequisites: PHL3750 and another second or third-year course in European thought
Negativity has been a durable theme of modern thought and writing, and in recent years it has become of considerable structural interest. The notion is variously defined, usually with reference to one or more of philosophy, psychoanalysis and theology. When brought into literary studies it assumes a wide range of guises: difference, interpretation, nothingness, reading, repression, the unsayable and writing. This seminar seeks to analyse `negativity' in the work of two modern writers, Franz Kafka and Maurice Blanchot, and it will do so with the help of a range of critical theorists, including Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Harold Bloom, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva.
Assessment
Written (6000 words)
Prescribed texts
Blanchot M The space of literature U Nebraska P
Blanchot M The one who was standing apart from me Station Hill
Blanchot M Thomas the obscure Station Hill
Kafka F The trial Schocken
Kafka F Collected stories Schocken
Scholem G Correspondence: Benjamin and Scholem 1932-1940 Harvard UP