Maurice Blanchot, the eminent literary and cultural critic, has had a vast influence on contemporary French writers-among them Jean Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. From the 1930s through the present day, his writings have been shaping the international literary consciousness.

The Space of Literature, first published in France in 1955, is central to the development of Blanchot's thought. In it he reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention. Thus he explores the process of reading as well as the nature of artistic creativity, all the while considering the relation of the literary work to time, to history, and to death. This book consists not so much in the application of a critical method or the demonstration of a theory of literature as in a patiently deliberate meditation upon the literary experience, informed most notably by studies of Mallarme, Kafka, Rilke, and Hoelderlin. Blanchot's discussions of those writers are among the finest in any language.

Blanchot reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention

About the Author
Ann Smock's fluent translation retains the tone and sense of the French; her introduction situates Blanchot in the French and American cultural spectrum and outlines the history of his critical concerns. Ann Smock, an associate professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley, also translated Blanchot's The Writing of the Disaster for the University of Nebraska Press in 1986.

Reviews
"A series of fascinating, and frequently uncanny, meditations."--Year's Work in English Studies. "Authoritative analysis of the creative act... The translator's introduction is as excellent as the translation itself."--Library Journal.



Book Information
ISBN 9780803260924
Author Maurice Blanchot
Format Paperback
Page Count 279
Imprint University of Nebraska Press
Publisher University of Nebraska Press
Weight(grams) 399g