What Is There to Say?
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: March 1, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9780803242982
Subjects: Literary studies: general; Literature, Modern; History and criticism; Criticism and interpretation; Literary Collections; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Literary Criticism; Letters; European - French; General; Semiotics & Theory; Contributions in criticism; Literary Criticism & Collections / General; Blanchot, Maurice; 19th century; 20th century
Description: "Herman Melville's Bartleby, asked to a account for himself, "would prefer not to." Tongue-tied Billy Budd, urged to defend his innocence, responds with a murderous blow. The Bavard, by Louis-Rene des Forets, concerns a man whose power to speak is replaced by an inability to shut up. In these and other literary examples a call for speech throws the possibility of speaking into doubt.

What Is There to Say? uses the ideas of Maurice Blanchot to clarify puzzling works by Melville, des Forets, and Samuel Beckett. Ann Smock's enegetic readings of texts about talking, listening, and recording cast an equally welcome light on Blanchot's paradoxical thought."--BOOK JACKET.