Digressions in European Literature: From Cervantes to Sebald

by A. Grohmann (Editor), C. Wells (Editor)

Overview

With studies of, amongst others, Miguel de Cervantes, Anton Chekhov, Charles Baudelaire and Henry James, this landmark collection of essays is a unique and wide-ranging exploration and celebration of the many forms of digression in major works by fifteen of the finest European writers from the early modern period to the present day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349320295
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/2011
Edition description:	1st ed. 2011
Pages:	213
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x (d)

About the Author

CORINNE BANCROFT Independent Scholar IAN F. A. BELL Professor of American Literature, University of Keele, UK ROSS CHAMBERS former Marvin Felheim Distinguished University Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, USA FLORE COULOUMA Lecturer in English Linguistics, University of Paris Ouest Nanterre, France SAMUEL FREDERICK Assistant Professor of German and Film, Clemson University, USA JUDITH HAWLEY Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK J. J. LONG Professor of German, Durham University, UK LAURA MARCUS Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford, UK PETER J. RABINOWITZ Professor of Comparative Literature, USA JEREMY ROBBINS Forbes Professor of Hispanic Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK OLIVIA SANTOVETTI Lecturer in Italian Literature, University of Leeds, UK EDMUND SMYTH Reader in French, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK JEREMY TAMBLING Professor of Literature, University of Manchester, UK MARGARET TOPPING Reader in French, Cardiff University, UK DAVID WALKER Professor of French, University of Sheffield, UK

Table of Contents

Foreword; R.Chambers Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Introduction The Twists and Turns of Life: Cervantes's Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda ; J.Robbins Digressive and Progressive Movements: Sympathy and Sexuality in Tristram Shandy ; or, Plain Tales; J.Hawley Little Dorrit : Dickens, Circumlocution, Unconscious Thought; J.Tambling Concerning Metaphor, Digression and Rhyme (Fetish Aesthetics and the Walking Poem); R.Chambers Henry James, in Parenthesis; I.F.A.Bell A Slice of Watermelon: The Rhetoric of Digression in Chekhov's The Lady with the Dog ; P.J.Rabinowitz & C.Bancroft 'Let's forget all I have just said': Diversions and Digressions in Gidean Narratives; D.Walker Errant Eyes: Digression, Metaphor and Desire in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time ; M.Topping Virginia Woolf and Digression: Adventures in Consciousness; L.Marcus Stealing the Story: Robert Walser's Robber -Novel; S.Frederick Negotiating Tradition: Flann O'Brien's Tales of Digression and Subversion; F.Coulouma 'Going On': Digression and Consciousness in The Beckett Trilogy ; E.J.Smyth Straight Line or Aimless Wandering? Italo Calvino's Way to Digression; O.Santovetti Roving with a Compass; Digression, the Novel and the Creative Imagination in Javier Marías; A.Grohmann The Sense of Sebald's Endings...and Beginnings; J.J.Long Index

Editorial Reviews

'Digressions is a collection that works on two levels. As a collection of individual essays it provides much that will interest, while as an extended meditation on digression it offers a collection of material that is hugely suggestive, if not conclusive, and which invites the reader into a pleasantly open-ended and wilfully wayward discussion.' Modern Literary Review

'...the volume contains some fascinating new perspectives on the function of digressivity in literature. It is certainly a welcome resource for scholars working in the field of narratology, and should open the way for further academic exploration of the topic.' - French Studies

From the Publisher