Speculative Formalism: Literature, Theory, and the Critical Present (Diaeresis)

(By Tom Eyers)

Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon
Download PDF Read Ebook

Note: If you encounter any issues while opening the Download PDF button, please utilize the online read button to access the complete book page.

×


Size 24 MB (24,083 KB)
Format PDF
Downloaded 626 times
Status Available
Last checked 11 Hour ago!
Author Tom Eyers

“Book Descriptions: Speculative Formalism engages decisively in recent debates in the literary humanities around form and formalism, making the case for a new, nonmimetic and antihistoricist theory of literary reference. Where formalism has often been accused of sealing texts within themselves, Eyers demonstrates instead how a renewed, speculative formalism can illuminate the particular ways in which literature actively opens onto history, politics, and nature, in a connective movement that puts formal impasses to creative use.
 
Through a combination of philosophical reflection and close rhetorical readings, Eyers explores the possibilities and limits of deconstructive approaches to the literary, the impact of the “digital humanities” on theory, and the prospects for a formalist approach to “world literature.” The book includes sustained close readings of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Yeats, and Wallace Stevens, as well as Alain Badiou, Paul de Man, and Fredric Jameson.