Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel: From Leavis to Levinas

by Andrew Gibson

Overview

In Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel Andrew Gibson sets out to demonstrate that postmodern theory has actually made possible an ethical discourse around fiction.
Each chapter elaborates and discusses a particular aspect of Levinas' thought and raises questions for that thought and its bearing on the novel. It also contains detailed analyses of particular texts. Part of the book's originality is its concentration on a range of modernist and postmodern novels which have seldom if ever served as the basis for a larger ethical theory of fiction.
Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel discusses among others the writings of Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Jane Austen, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust and Salman Rushdie.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415198967
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/17/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Andrew Gibson is Dircetor of the MA in Postmodernism, Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Table of Contents

Introduction PART I Dissolutions 1 Narrative and alterity 2 Ethics and unrepresentability 3 Ethics and ‘the dissolution of the novel’ PART II Events 4 Proustian ethics 5 Ethics of the event: Beckett PART III Responses 6 Sensibility 7 Reception and receptivity

Editorial Reviews

'There is a level of mastery in these discussions, and indeed a range of it, that is consistently stimulating, both in the handling of novelists and theorists.' - David Rudrum, European Journal of English Studies

'This is a provocative and highly ambitious project.' - Simon Malpas and Kate McGowan, Years Work in Critical Cultural Theory

From the Publisher