The Writer Writing (ebook)

Argumento de The Writer Writing (ebook)

In an age of authorless, contextless, deconstructed texts, Francis-Noël Thomas argues that it is time to re-examine a fundamental but neglected concept of literature: writing is an action whose agent is an individual. Addressing both general readers and scholars, Thomas offers two cases, Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan and Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, read against the background of the authors' large, eccentric, and surprisingly similar claims about their texts as acts. He examines what happens when we take these claims seriously enough to find out why the authors made them in the first place and what bearing they have on the texts themselves.

Originally published in 1993.

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"This lucid, vigorously written book is a refreshing demonstration of the sophistication of common sense. The Writer Writing makes a persuasive case for the reinstatement of the writer's intention, the living author, and the stubborn individuality of the particular literary text, at the heart of interpretation. Francis-Noël Thomas is an important new voice in the rising chorus of objections to the critical orthodoxies that have dominated academic literary studies over the past quarter-century."--Robert Alter, University of California, Berkeley

"In this deeply original book, Francis-Noël Thomas engages the actions of writers writing. He has allowed the artists themselves, not a theory that supersedes them, to yield access to diverse experiences that could not have been predicted by even the shrewdest of theorists. In his hands, the `old-fashioned' notion that art works are individual projects of individual artists inviting us into diverse worlds feels refreshingly new."--adapted from the foreword0List of Illustrations Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Ch. 1 The Writer Writing 3 Ch. 2 'Intentions' and 'Purposes' 19 Interpretation and Actions 19 Intention and Historical Interpretation 27 Purpose and Literary Art 36 Ch. 3 'Parody' or the Imitation of Disciplines 46 Ch. 4 Explanations 57 "Scientific" Explanation 59 "Processive" Explanation 63 Ch. 5 Bernard Shaw: Historical Explanation 72 "A Frankly Doctrinal Theatre" 72 G.B.S. 75 G.B.S. in the Theater 79 G.B.S. as Historian 83 Saint Joan: The Argument and Function of the Preface 86 The Scope of the Play 91 The Play of Saint Joan: Structure and Mechanism 93 The Epilogue 102 Ch. 6 Marcel Proust: Psychological Explanation 104 The Book and the Man 104 "Psychology in Space and Time" 110 The Syllabus of Errors 113 The Triumph of the Will 121 The Historical Author, the Narrator, and Their Books 126 Ch. 7 Historical Interpretation: The Face of the Muse and the Baker's Daughter 133 Notes 155 Index 175