Beyond the Ancient Quarrel

Literature, Philosophy, and J.M. Coetzee
Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-0-19-880528-1
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 264 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 552 g

In Plato's Republic, Socrates spoke of an 'ancient quarrel between literature and philosophy' which he offered to resolve once and for all by banning the poets from his ideal city. Few philosophers have taken Socrates at his word, and out of the ancient quarrel there has emerged a long tradition that has sought to value literature chiefly as a useful supplement to philosophical reasoning. The fiction of J.M. Coetzee makes a striking challenge to this
tradition. While his writing has frequently engaged philosophical subjects in explicit ways, it has done so with an emphasis on the dissonance between literary expression and philosophical reasoning. And while Coetzee has often overtly engaged with academic literary theory, his fiction has done so in a way that has
tended to disorient rather than affirm those same theories, wrong-footing the normal processes of literary interpretation.

This volume brings together philosophers and literary theorists to reflect upon the challenge Coetzee has made to their respective disciplines, and to the disciplinary distinctions at stake in the ancient quarrel. The essays use his fiction to explore questions about the boundaries between literature, philosophy, and literary criticism; the relationship between literature, theology, and post-secularism; the particular ways in which literature engages reality; how literature interacts with the
philosophies of language, action, subjectivity, and ethics; and the institutions that govern the distinctions between literature and philosophy. It will be of importance not only to readers of Coetzee, but to anyone interested in the ancient quarrel itself.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hayes, Patrick

Wilm, Jan

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Prosaautoren

Über Autor(innen)

Patrick Hayes is Associate Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, and a Fellow of St John's College. He is the author of Philip Roth: Fiction and Power (OUP, 2014) and J. M. Coetzee and the Novel: Writing and Politics after Beckett (OUP, 2010).

Jan Wilm is a Lecturer in English Literature at Goethe University. He is co-editor, with Mark Nixon, of Samuel Beckett und die deutsche Literatur (Transcript, 2013) and author of The Slow Philosophy of J. M. Coetzee (Bloomsbury, 2016). He also works as a literary critic and a literary translator.