Of Words and the World - Hardcover

Ellison, David R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691069646 ISBN 13: 9780691069647

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1993

Synopsis

Here David Ellison explores the problems encountered by France's best experimental authors writing between 1956 and 1984, when faced with the question: "What should my writing be about?" These years are characterized by the rise of the "new novelists," who questioned the representational function of writing as they created works of imagination that turned in upon themselves and away from exterior reality. It became fashionable at one point to affirm that literature was no longer about the world but uniquely about the words on a page, the signifying surface of the text. Ellison tests this assumption, showing that even in the most seemingly self-referential fictions the words point to the world from which they can never completely separate themselves.

Through close readings Ellison examines the novels and theoretical writings of authors whose works are fundamental to our perception of contemporary French writing and thought: Camus, Robbe-Grillet, Simon, Duras, Sarraute, Blanchot, and Beckett. The result is a new understanding of the link between the referential function of literary language and the problematic of the ethics of fiction.

About this title

About the Author

David R. Ellison is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Miami. He is author of The Reading of Proust (Johns Hopkins) and Understanding Albert Camus (South Carolina).

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691069646
• ISBN 13: 9780691069647
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 220