| Redeeming Words: Language and the Promise of Happiness in the Stories of Döblin and Sebald Contributor(s): Kleinberg-Levin, David Michael (Author) |
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ISBN: 1438447809 ISBN-13: 9781438447803 Publisher: State University of New York Press OUR PRICE: $35.10 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: July 2014 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | European - German - Philosophy | Aesthetics - Philosophy | Movements - Phenomenology |
| Dewey: 833.912 |
| Series: Suny Series, Intersections: Philosophy & Critical Theory |
| Physical Information: 0.93" H x 5.99" W x 9.12" (1.18 lbs) 384 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In this probing look at Alfred D blin's 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and the stories of W. G. Sebald, Redeeming Words offers a philosophical meditation on the power of language in literature. David Kleinberg-Levin draws on the critical theory of Benjamin and Adorno; the idealism and romanticism of Kant, Hegel, H lderlin, Novalis, and Schelling; and the nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. He shows how D blin and Sebald--writers with radically different styles working in different historical moments--have in common a struggle against forces of negativity and an aim to bring about in response a certain redemption of language. Kleinberg-Levin considers the fast-paced, staccato, and hard-cut sentences of D blin and the ghostly, languorous, and melancholy prose fiction of Sebald to articulate how both writers use language in an attempt to recover and convey this utopian promise of happiness for life in a time of mourning. |