Description
Book SynopsisNew essays examining the intellectual allegiances of Coetzee, arguably the most decorated and critically acclaimed writer of fiction in English today and a deeply intellectual and philosophical writer. Arguably the most decorated and critically acclaimed writer of today, J. M. Coetzee is a deeply intellectual writer. Yet while just about everyone who comes to Coetzee's writing is aware that the visible superstructure of his works is moved from below by a vast substructure of ideas, we are still far from grasping Coetzee's intellectual allegiances as a whole. This book sets out to examine these allegiances in ways not attempted before, by bringing leadingfigures in the philosophy of literary fiction and ethics together with leading Coetzee scholars. The book is organized into three parts: the first part evaluates Coetzee with respect to notions of truth and justification. At issue is how the reader is to understand the ground on which Coetzee builds his ethical commitments. The second part considers the problem of language, in which ethics is rooted and on which it depends. The chapters of the third partposition Coetzee's writing with respect to notions of social and moral solidarity, where, in regard to literature as such or experience as such, philosophy and literature together exercise an unrivaled right to be heard. Contributors: Elisa Aaltola, Derek Attridge, David Attwell, Maria Boletsi, Carrol Clarkson, Simon During, Patrick Hayes, Alexander Honold, Anton Leist, Tim Mehigan, Christian Moser, Robert B. Pippin, Robert Stockhammer, Markus Winkler, Martin Woessner. Tim Mehigan is Deputy Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. Christian Moser is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Bonn.
Trade ReviewGathers together some of the world's leading Coetzee scholars and philosophers in an attempt to explore not just the influence but the mechanics of the influence that Coetzee's reading has had on his work...This is a collection that those who are interested in the work of Coetzee should read. The essays are excellent [and] ultimately remind the reader that the key to unfolding the difficult, elliptical, bewildering moments of Coetzee's fiction might lie in the conversations that it holds with the works of others. * WASAFIRI *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Coetzee's Intellectual Landscapes - Tim Mehigan and Christian Moser J. M. Coetzee on Truth, Skepticism, and Secular Confession in "The Age We Live In" - Tim Mehigan Social Order and Transcendence: J. M. Coetzee's Poetics of Play - Christian Moser Autobiography and Romantic Irony: J. M. Coetzee and Roland Barthes - Patrick Hayes The Semantics of Barbarism in J. M. Coetzee's Novel Waiting for the Barbarians - Markus Winkler In the Heart of the Empire: Coetzee and America - Martin Woessner Faith, Irony, Salt and Possible Impossibilities: J. M. Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus in Conversation with Zbigniew Herbert's "From Mythology" - Maria Boletsi Coetzee's Ethics of Language(s) - Robert Stockhammer Force Fields - Carrol Clarkson The Reading of Don Quixote: Literature's Migration into a New World - Alexander Honold The Lives of Animals: From Rational Language to Speaking (of) Lions - Elisa Aaltola Coetzee as Academic Novelist - Simon During Character and Counterfocalization: Coetzee and the Kafka Lineage - Derek Attrige J. M. Coetzee's South African Intellectual Landscapes - David Attwell Philosophical Fiction? On J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello - Robert B. Pippin Cosmpolitanism, the Range of Sympathy, and Coetzee - Anton Leist Index
