The Object of Literature

A new theory of the relationship between literature and philosophy in the context of the French tradition, first published in 1995.

Pierre Macherey (Author), Michael Sprinker (With)

9780521476782, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 March 1995

256 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.33 kg

"...Macherey's formidable critical intelligence runs through its pages all the same." Vincent P. Pecora, Modern Philology

This 1995 book by Pierre Macherey was his first dealing with literature and theory since his seminal A Theory of Literary Production. Continuing the project of Althusserian theory, Macherey engages in a series of close exegeses of classical texts in French literature and philosophy, from the late eighteenth century down to the 1970s, that explore the historically variable but thematically similar ways in which literary texts represent philosophical ideas. Rejecting the simple notion that literature deploys philosophical topoi in an unmediated manner, Macherey shows the conceptual sophistication - and broad intellectual influence - that literary art has displayed in the modern period. At once a theoretical meditation of great originality and a historical work of scrupulous scholarship, The Object of Literature will entrench Pierre Macherey's already considerable reputation as one of the most significant contemporary theoreticians of literature.

Foreword
1. What is literature thinking about?
Part I. Roads to History: 2. A cosmopolitan imaginary: the literary thought of Mme. de Staël
3. George Sand's Spiridion: a pantheist novel
4. The Hegelian musings of Raymond Queneau
Part II. Into the Depths: 5. On Victor Hugo: figures of the man from below
6. Georges Bataille: materialism inverted
7. A rhetoric of the abyss: Céline's magic metro
Part III. All Must Pass Away: 8. Sade and the order of disorder
9. Flaubert's non-realism
10. Foucault reads Roussel: literature as philosophy
11. Towards a literary philosophy.

Subject Areas: Literary theory [DSA]