Translation as influence: A dialogue between Maurice Blanchot’s literary theory and Lydia Davis’ short fiction

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-101
Author(s):  
María Laura Arce Álvarez
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Literary Space

The intention of this article is to analyse the intertextual influence between the American writer Lydia Davis and the French philosopher and critic Maurice Blanchot. This literary dialogue occurs as a result of Davis’ experience translating Blanchot’s most relevant critical and fictional texts. Davis’ role as a translator influenced her short fiction in which she discusses the limits of the literary space and therefore constantly challenges the genre as a way of fictionalizing Blanchot’s literary theory.

The Many Voices of Lydia Davis

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Evans
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Marcel Proust ◽  
Gustave Flaubert ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Michel Leiris ◽  
The Many

The Many Voices of Lydia Davis shows how translation, rewriting and intertextuality are central to the work of Lydia Davis, a major American writer, translator and essayist. Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2013, Davis writes innovative short stories that question the boundaries of the genre. She is also an important translator of French writers such as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert. Translation and writing go hand-in-hand in Davis’s work. Through a series of readings of Davis’s major translations and her own writing, this book investigates how Davis’s translations and stories relate to each other, finding that they are inextricably interlinked. It explores how Davis uses translation - either as a compositional tool or a plot device - and other instances of rewriting in her stories, demonstrating that translation is central for understanding her prose. Understanding how Davis’s work complicates divisions between translating and other forms of writing highlights the role of translation in literary production, questioning the received perception that translation is less creative than other forms of writing.

Decreation and the Ethical Bind

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoon Sook Cha
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Ethical Obligation ◽  
Novel Treatment ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
Subjective Agency ◽  
Continental Tradition

Decreation and the Ethical Bind identifies a decreative ethics, whereby self-dispossession underwrites an ethical obligation to preserve the other from harm. The author shows how obligation emerges at the conjuncture of competing claims: between the other’s subject affirmation and one’s own dislocation, between what one has and what one has to give, between a demand that asks for too much and the extraordinary demand of asking nothing. In the unfolding and reiteration of themes issuing from the other’s claim upon oneself develops a complex picture of the tensions that sustain the scene of ethical relationality. Just how these tensions both subtend and undercut an other-centered ethics of preservation is the question this book tarries with. By proposing a way to read the distinct ethical charge of the other’s claim not to be harmed, Decreation and the Ethical Bind offers a novel treatment of the concept of decreation in the thought of Simone Weil, putting her work in dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot and Judith Butler. In examining themes of ethical obligation, vulnerability and the force of weak speech, the present study places Weil within a continental tradition of literary theory in which writing and speech are bound up with questions of ethical appeal. It contributes a new and critical voice to the current conversation in theory and criticism that addresses a difficult form of ethics that isn’t grounded in subjective agency and narrative fruition, but in the risks taken to fulfill the claims it makes.

The being of language: The literary theory of Maurice Blanchot

1997 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-322
Author(s):  
W. Large
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Maurice Blanchot

scholarly journals Esta é minha carta ao mundo

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-149
Author(s):  
Fernanda Mourão
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Emily Dickinson ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
American Writer ◽  
The North ◽  
The World ◽  
Poetry Writing

Resumo: A partir da primeira carta de Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) a Thomas Higginson, que então seria seu “preceptor” e interlocutor para sempre, este texto propõe uma leitura da obra da escritora norte-americana a partir do biografema da carta e da ideia de sua obra como “carta ao mundo” – conforme um de seus mais famosos poemas –, com todas as implicações trazidas pelo termo, e à luz das teorias de Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot e Silvina Rodrigues Lopes, entre outros.Palavras-chave: poesia; escrita; carta.Abstract: Departing from the first letter Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote Thomas Higginson, who would forever be her “preceptor” and interlocutor, this text proposes a reading of the North- american writer considering the notion of biografema and the idea of her work as “letter to the world” – according to one of her most famous poems –, with all the implications brought by the term and under the light of the theories of Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot e Silvina Rodrigues Lopes, among others.Keywords: poetry; writing; letter.

scholarly journals Reconsidering The World Republic of Letters: A Qualunque Community of Literatures

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-115
Author(s):  
Hatice Karaman ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
English Edition ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Literary Space ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common

In the preface to the English edition of The World Republic of Letters, Pascale Casanova focuses on the existence of a literary world/universe, which maintains a relative autonomy from the world and its political disparities and restrictions. This suggested ideal of a literary space is an attempt to posit world literature as an alternative chronotope in which literary production can survive and multiply transnationally. My paper will offer a reconsideration of this global literary space, read via a philosophical perspective, shaped by the famous discussion of the common and community as conducted by Giorgio Agamben, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, among others. Within the above theoretical frame, my attempt will be to reread Casanova’s contribution to World Literature as a desired community of literature(s), formed by the coming together of qualunque singularities which co-exist and co-belong without “any representable condition of belonging” (Agamben). Furthermore, the idea of qualunque (whatever) will constitute the starting point for the ethico-political reconsideration and reconceptualisation of the global literary space offered by Casanova, not only without borders but also without hierarchies.

scholarly journals På Vej Mod Short Storyen

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-156
Author(s):  
Aldona Zanko
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Literary Identity ◽  
General Importance ◽  
Critical Perception

ABSTRACT The article derives from the intertextual approach to the notion of literary identity, introduced to the modern literary theory in the 1960’s by Julia Kristeva (born 1941). The main idea behind this approach is that no literary text should be perceived as an isolated unity, but always in relation to other texts, which it refers to. The author applies the intertextual perspective to examine the signs of external literary influences in Lise Andersens minimalist prose collection ”En særlig sommer og andre billeder”, published in 2008. The analysis aims to highlight influences from the American short story genre, which appears as an important source of inspiration not only for Andersen herself, but in fact for most of the Danish writers of minimalist fiction. The analysis provides examples of, how inspiration from the American short story manifests itself in form, narration and structure of the selected stories in the collection. Last but not least, the author draws attention to the general importance of American influences in Danish contemporary short fiction and their role for the critical perception of this literary genre both in Denmark and abroad.

A Future for Theory?

Paragraph ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-153
Author(s):  
Leslie Hill
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
The Future ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Shared Commitment

What is it that guarantees the truth of literary theory? And what is it that testifies to its survival into the future? This paper, intended primarily as a tribute to the work of Malcolm Bowie, examines some of the implications of Bowie's view that literary theory, rigorously applied, as in the case of psychoanalysis, was inseparable from its status as creative, productive, futural, perhaps even fictional performance. The paper considers these questions further in the context of that shared commitment to the neuter or the undecidable that is a striking feature of the writing on literature of Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, and which is also a way of thinking the futural possibilities and possible futures of theory.

scholarly journals Espaços literários e suas expansões

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-220
Author(s):  
Luis Alberto Brandão Santos
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Literary Space ◽  
Representation Of Space

Resumo: Este trabalho define os principais modos segundo os quais a categoria espaço tem sido utilizada em análises literárias. Estes modos são: representação do espaço; espaço como estruturação textual; espaço como focalização; espaço da linguagem. Também aborda algumas tentativas de expandir o conceito de espaço e discute possíveis conseqüências para os Estudos Literários.Palavras-chave: espaço; espaço literário; literatura; teoria da literatura.Abstract: This paper defines the main ways according to which the category space is used in literary analysis. They are: representation of space; space as textual structuration; space as focalization; space of language. Also investigates some attempts to expand the concept of space and discusses possible consequences to Literary Studies.Keywords: space; literary space; literature; literary theory.

scholarly journals The Aesthetic Features and Significance of the Veritism in Garland’s Short Stories - A Study on Main-Travelled Roads

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Neng-wei Fan
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Real Situation ◽  
The Real ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Hamlin Garland ◽  
Urban And Rural Areas ◽  
The Aesthetic

Hamlin Garland, an influential American writer, puts forward his literary theory—Veritism. His collection of short stories-Main-Travelled Roads insists on describing the real situation of Midwest and West rural areas by using “Veritism”, as well as expresses the great humanistic concern and deep thinking about the changes that had taken place between urban and rural areas. By analyzing the figures and plots of Main-Travelled Roads, this paper will reveal humanism and classical sensibility, happy endings, and aesthetic value in it, and let readers understand the theme of the short stories thoroughly, and appreciate the Veritism comprehensively.

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