Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003), one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century French literature, produced a wide variety of essays and fictions that reflect on the complexities of literary work. His description of writing continually returns to a number of themes, such as solitude, passivity, indifference, anonymity, and absence-forces confronting the writer, but also the reader, the text itself, and the relations between the three. For Blanchot, literature involves a movement toward disappearance, where one risks the loss of self; but such a sacrifice, says Blanchot, is inherent in the act of writing. "Approaching Disappearance" explores the question of disappearance in Blanchot's critical work and then turns to five narratives that offer a unique reflection on the threat of disappearance and the demands of literature-work by Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Louis-Ren? Des For?ts, and Nathalie Sarraute.

About the Author
Anne McConnell is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at West Virginia State University. She completed her graduate work in Comparative Literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2006, specializing in twentieth-century European and Hispanic literature and literary theory. She currently teaches world literature, literary criticism, and writing at West Virginia State University.


Book Information
ISBN 9781564788085
Author Anne McConnell
Format Paperback
Page Count 223
Imprint Dalkey Archive Press
Publisher Dalkey Archive Press
Weight(grams) 272g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 139mm * 15mm