The Erotic Bird: Phenomenology in Literature - Hardcover

Maurice Natanson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691012199 ISBN 13: 9780691012193

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1998

Synopsis

How does literature illuminate the way we live? Maurice Natanson, a prominent champion of phenomenology, draws upon this method's unique power to show how fiction can highlight aspects of experience that are normally left unexamined. By exploring the structure of the everyday world, Natanson reveals the "uncanny" that lies at the core of the ordinary. Phenomenology--which involves the questioning of that which we usually take for granted--is for Natanson the essence of philosophy.

Drawing upon his philosophical predecessors Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schutz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Natanson paves his own way with stories and examples that themselves bear witness to how phenomenology occurs in literature. In considering such works as Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Natanson shows how literature opens us to the domain of possibility and how metaphor offers philosophical power when we think about freedom and change.

This book, written by one of the twentieth century's leading phenomenologists, will interest students in philosophy and in literature. They will value the work particularly for its clarification of concepts and terms that frequently emerge in the contemporary intellectual climate.

About this title

About the Author:

Maurice Natanson was Professor of Philosophy at Yale University until his retirement in 1995. He is the author of Anonymity: A Study in the Philosophy of Alfred Schutz. His book Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks won the National Book Award in 1974. The Erotic Bird, his final book, was completed just before his death in 1996.

Review:

"The Erotic Bird . . . artfully weaves phenomenology through interpretations of major literary works in an effort to explore, 'the particular manner in which phenomenology is "in" literature.' One of the most unique aspects of Natanson's book, which makes it most accessible to the reader, is his use of everyday examples to give a context for phenomenological concepts." (Philosophy in Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0691012199
• ISBN 13: 9780691012193
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 169