There is no shortage of testimony to literatures puzzling unsettlingintoxicating affecting delighting powers. Nor has there been a shortage ofattempts to define... » 

There is no shortage of testimony to literatures puzzling unsettlingintoxicating affecting delighting powers. Nor has there been a shortage ofattempts to define literature as a concept a body of texts or a culturalpractice. However no definition has been able to pin down the peculiarity ofliterature or to chart our experience of the literary. In this volume DerekAttridge ask us to confront with him the resistance to definition in order toexplore afresh the singularity of literature.In seeking new purchase on the elusive literary the author finds himselfreflecting upon the history of Western art as a practice and as an institution.At its heart he finds a closely linked trinity of crucial issues innovation orinvention the uniqueness or singularity of the artwork and underlyingthese the concept of otherness or alterity. Calling for a type of readingthat does justice to these aspects of the literary work he explores literatureas event or performance and brilliantly retheorizes its place in the realm ofthe ethical. The author acknowledges the impossibility of definition and ratheroffers us an account of his particular livingthrough of the literary in theterms above and invites us to share with him the insights it might offer. Theinsights in this case are invaluable as we are offered not only an originalframework within which to consider texts but a clear case for the ethicalvalue of the literary institution to a culture.Never losing sight of the pleasures and potency of our experience ofliterature The Singularity of Literature is itself a delight to read.Returning to arguments begun in his influential volume PeculiarLanguageDerek Attridge here energizes discussion of the literary by forever shiftingthe terms of debate and offering new perspectives on questions that haunt everyreader. «