Research Catalog

Title

The writer writing : philosophic acts in literature / Francis-Noël Thomas.

Author

Thomas, Francis-Noël, 1943-

Publication

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1992.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxviii, 183 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

• In an age of authorless, contextless, deconstructed texts, The Writer Writing offers an inquiry into the rich and complex phenomenon of understanding the written word by reconsidering a fundamental concept about agency: writing is an action whose agent is an individual writer. On the most local level, this book offers parallel analyses of Marcel Proust and Bernard Shaw, two writers who made insistent and oddly similar claims about their texts as acts, two contemporaries whose fundamental similarities have been masked by critical technology.
• On the most global level, it examines the philosophic act of explanation, showing that it is both a constitutive human activity - part of everyday life - and an activity that connects texts as diverse as Saint Joan and A la recherche du temps perdu. It separates for analysis writers' philosophic acts of explanation from their rhetorical acts of persuasion and their poetic acts of representation. The Writer Writing presents a timely and systematic case for reconsidering the genuine originality of individual writers' conceptions of writing as a human activity.

Subject

• Criticism
• Literature, Modern > History and criticism
• Literature > Philosophy
• literary criticism
• criticism
• Literature, Modern
• Auteurschap
• Letterkunde

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Foreword / Wayne C. Booth -- Ch. 1. The Writer Writing -- Ch. 2. 'Intentions' and 'Purposes'. Interpretation and Actions. Intention and Historical Interpretation. Purpose and Literary Art -- Ch. 3. 'Parody' or the Imitation of Disciplines -- Ch. 4. Explanations. "Scientific" Explanation. "Processive" Explanation -- Ch. 5. Bernard Shaw: Historical Explanation. "A Frankly Doctrinal Theatre" G.B.S. G.B.S. in the Theater. G.B.S. as Historian. Saint Joan: The Argument and Function of the Preface. The Scope of the Play. The Play of Saint Joan: Structure and Mechanism. The Epilogue -- Ch. 6. Marcel Proust: Psychological Explanation. The Book and the Man. "Psychology in Space and Time" The Syllabus of Errors. The Triumph of the Will.

ISBN

• 0691069557
• 9780691069555

LCCN

92014220

OCLC

• ocm25746650
• 25746650
• SCSB-1969440

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library