The Work of Fire - Paperback

by Maurice Blanchot (Author), Charlotte Mandell (Translator)

Maurice Blanchot is arguably the key figure after Sartre in exploring the relation between literature and philosophy. Blanchot developed a distinctive, limpid form of essay writing; these essays, in form and substance, left their imprint on the work of the most influential French theorists. The writings of Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida are unimaginable without Blanchot.

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A signal event for literary and cultural studies in the English-speaking world. As crucial essays on individual authors, as a major work of literary theory, as an important means of access to the 1940s in French culture, as an exemplary work combining reading and theory--it is of great importance to us today.--J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
"This collection of essays and reviews from the 1940s is about the 'fiery part' of literary language that burns through the aesthetic illusions and the easy referentiality of everyday language. . . . This collection is indepensable to any attempt to understand the years between Heidegger/Benjamin and Derrida/Man."--Choice