The Knowledge of Ignorance by Andrew Martin
This highly original study is concerned with the theory of knowledge. It approaches the subject in a new way by exploring the recurrent paradox which equates pure ignorance with perfect knowledge, twin ideals free from the impurities and imperfections of discourse. The author combines the techniques of literary criticism and intellectual history in order to examine the literary, philosophical, theological, and political ramifications of this anxiety about, and ambition to transcend, the limits of the text. Dr Martin begins by tracing a network of interlocking motifs and images - beginning and end, nescience and omniscience, genesis and renascence, savagery and civilization - across a broad spectrum of texts from the Book of Genesis through the Renaissance (in particular the works of Nicholas of Cusa and Erasmus) to Rousseau. The central section of the book translates these temporal oppositions into the spatial antithesis of East and West in the Orientalism of Hugo, Napoleon and Chateaubriand. A final chapter draws together these apparently disparate themes in a consideration of the dichotomy of science and literature in Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires.-
Sartre: Literature and Theory
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Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 17601820
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Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France
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System and Writing in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida
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The Death of Stephane Mallarme
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Literature, Art and the Pursuit of Decay in Twentieth-Century France
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Tradition and Desire
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Flaubert and the Gift of Speech
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Politeness and its Discontents
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French Renaissance Tragedy
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Pascal and the Arts of the Mind
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Subjectivity and Subjugation in Seventeenth-Century Drama and Prose
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Genealogies of the Text
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Proust, the Body and Literary Form
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Reading the French Enlightenment
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Women's Writing in Nineteenth-Century France
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Politics and Narratives of Birth
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Reading Paul Valery
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Pictorialist Poetics
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Poetry and Fable
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Sartre and 'Les Temps Modernes'
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Irony and Ideology in Rabelais
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Flaubert's Characters
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Leo Spitzer
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Baudelaire and Intertextuality
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Corneille, Classicism and the Ruses of Symmetry
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Gender, Rhetoric, and Print Culture in French Renaissance Writing
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The Limits of Narrative
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Mallarme, Manet and Redon
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Baudelaire in 1859
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Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis
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Claude Simon
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History and Ideology in Proust
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The Object of Art
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Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust
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Justice and Difference in the Works of Rousseau
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The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance
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Narration and Description in the French Realist Novel
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Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690-1715
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Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry
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Where Flaubert Lies
'This is an audacious book.. [Martin's] proposition is a compelling one. Although his book is organized chronologically, it is actually a brilliant critical demonstration of the impossibility of solidly based history, of fact, of "truth". A gifted interpreter, Martin is also learned, precise and wonderfully sensitive to the divagations as well as the inherent craziness of the authors he has rightly chosen to highlight. Martin's criticism expresses, as forcefully and brilliantly as can be done, a reticence not just about history and language, but about any direction or coherency at all. In many ways Martin is radically digressive, Shandyan, oblique.' Edward Said, The Times Literary Supplement
'The paradoxical relationship between knowledge and ignorance is inscribed in the most important or influential myth of origin in our culture. It is this relationship which Andrew Martin explores in this unusual and original book, written with great economy, wit, and style. Martin's book is exceedingly clever, at times brilliant, packed with elegant ideas and suggestive insights.' Tony Tanner, The Times Higher Education Supplement
'The paradoxical relationship between knowledge and ignorance is inscribed in the most important or influential myth of origin in our culture. It is this relationship which Andrew Martin explores in this unusual and original book, written with great economy, wit, and style. Martin's book is exceedingly clever, at times brilliant, packed with elegant ideas and suggestive insights.' Tony Tanner, The Times Higher Education Supplement
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780521112482 |
| ISBN 10 | 0521112486 |
| Title | The Knowledge of Ignorance |
| Author | Andrew Martin |
| Series | Cambridge Studies In French |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| Year published | 2009-06-04 |
| Number of pages | 272 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |