Literary Space

Author: Maurice Blanchot
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-01
Features: Maurice Blanchot was a renowned French literary critic, theorist, and novelist of the 20th century. In 1955, he published the literary criticism monograph The Space of Literature. In this monograph, the author explores theoretical topics such as what writing is, what literature is, and what constitutes the "force" or "literary space" of literature by analyzing the works of Mallarmé and Kafka. He argues that writing is the moment or point at which something becomes possible as a "work," and that the literary space is the space of death. In seeking new approaches to the novel and criticism, the author expresses a form of extreme experience—experiencing death as the "ultimate absolute test"—which had a certain influence on later French schools of literary criticism, such as the Semeiotic School, the Geneva School, and the Sociological Criticism School.