Literature and Skepticism

by Pablo Oyarzun

Overview

Examines the skeptical foundations of literature in order to reassess the status of fiction.

Literature and Skepticism links the skeptic attitude to the conditions of possibility in (modern) literature-in particular, the narrative form and the essay. Pablo Oyarzun proposes that narrative and the essay document the relationship between literature and skepticism in different but complementary and, at the same time, complicit ways. As the narrative performance reaches the structural limit of the literary-understood as the domain of fiction-a sort of para-discursive reflection critically accompanies this performance, discussing it, ironizing it, feigning to disbelieve it, or overtly belying it. Yet the narrative doubtfully takes distance from itself, surrendering all right to a final truth at the very moment at which truth emerges, essayistic, to the surface. The authors considered-Montaigne, Swift, Lichtenberg, Kleist, Kafka, and Borges-are eminent representatives of one and the other form, and all of the works analyzed are cases of a complex interplay between narrative and essay.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781438486819
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	01/01/2022
Series:	SUNY series, Literature... in Theory
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	230
File size:	844 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Pablo Oyarzun is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chile. He is the author of several books, including Doing Justice: Three Essays on Walter Benjamin (translated by Stephen Gingerich).

Pablo Oyarzun is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chile. He is the author of several books, including Literature and Skepticism, also published by SUNY Press. D. J. S. Cross teaches comparative literature at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction Literature and Skepticism

1. Montaigne: Writing and Skepticism

2. Superb Imposture: Satire, Common Sense, and Skepticism in Swift's A Tale of a Tub

3. On the Insignificant: Figures of Lichtenberg

4. Kleist, the Puppets, and the Vanishing Point of Meaning

5. Kafka and Skepticism: A Note

6. Borges: Essay and Fiction

A Few Words of Conclusion

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is a fine study. Skepticism, as Oyarzun unpacks it, is at once a philosophical sub-tradition and a 'disposition'—a playful and inconclusive address to the truth, reality, knowledge, and authority. But skepticism also predicates a canon (or anti-canon) of subversive texts joined over time by their deployment of philosophical logic and aesthetics in the service of challenging what would otherwise be patent, self-evident, or certain." — Henry Sussman, author of Around the Book: Systems and Literacy

From the Publisher