Ignorance: Literature and Agnoiology by Andrew Bennett (English) Paperback Book

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This study argues that ignorance is a part of the narrative and poetic force of literature and is an important aspect of its thematic focus: ignorance is what literary texts are about. It sees that the dominant conception of literature since the Romantic period involves an often unacknowledged engagement with the experience of not knowing.

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

This study argues that ignorance is a part of the narrative and poetic force of literature and is an important aspect of its thematic focus: ignorance is what literary texts are about. It sees that the dominant conception of literature since the Romantic period involves an often unacknowledged engagement with the experience of not knowing. From Wordsworth and Keats to George Eliot and Charles Dickens, from Henry James to Joseph Conrad, from Elizabeth Bowen to Philip Roth and Seamus Heaney, writers have been fascinated and compelled by the question of ignorance, including their own. There is a politics and ethics as well as a poetics of ignorance: literature's agnoiology, its acknowledgement of the limits of what we know both of ourselves and of others, engages with the possibility of democracy and the ethical, and allows us to begin to conceive of what it might mean to be human.Now available in paperback, this exciting approach to literary theory will be of interest to lecturers and students of literary theory and criticism. -- .

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Andrew Bennett argues in this fascinating book that ignorance is part of the narrative and poetic force of literature and is an important aspect of its thematic focus: ignorance is what literary texts are about. He sees that the dominant conception of literature since the Romantic period involves an often unacknowledged engagement with the experience of not knowing. From Wordsworth and Keats to George Eliot and Charles Dickens, from Henry James to Joseph Conrad, from Elizabeth Bowen to Philip Roth and Seamus Heaney, writers have been fascinated and compelled by the question of ignorance, including their own. Bennett argues that there is a politics and ethics as well as a poetics of ignorance: literature's agnoiology, its acknowledgement of the limits of what we know both of ourselves and of others, engages with the possibility of democracy and the ethical, and allows us to begin to conceive of what it might mean to be human.This exciting approach to literary theory will be of interest to lecturers and students of literary theory and criticism.

Author Biography

Andrew Bennett is Professor of English at the University of Bristol

Table of Contents

AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Ignorance and philosophy2. Literary ignorance3. To see as poets do: Romanticism, the sublime, and poetic ignorance4. The opposite of epistemology: Keatsian nescience5. Our ignorance of others: Middlemarch and Great Expectations6. Joseph Conrad's blindness7. Children, death, and the enigmatic signifier: Wordsworth and Bowen8. Monsters and trees: Epistemelancholia in David Hume and Henry James9. American ignorance: Philip Roth's America trilogy10. The politics of authorial ignorance: Contemporary poetry

Promotional

This study argues that ignorance is a part of the narrative and poetic force of literature and is an important aspect of its thematic focus: ignorance is what literary texts are about. It sees that the dominant conception of literature since the Romantic period involves an often unacknowledged engagement with the experience of not knowing.

Long Description

This study argues that ignorance is a part of the narrative and poetic force of literature and is an important aspect of its thematic focus: ignorance is what literary texts are about. It sees that the dominant conception of literature since the Romantic period involves an often unacknowledged engagement with the experience of not knowing. From Wordsworth and Keats to George Eliot and Charles Dickens, from Henry James to Joseph Conrad, from Elizabeth Bowen to Philip Roth and Seamus Heaney, writers have been fascinated and compelled by the question of ignorance, including their own. There is a politics and ethics as well as a poetics of ignorance: literature's agnoiology, its acknowledgement of the limits of what we know both of ourselves and of others, engages with the possibility of democracy and the ethical, and allows us to begin to conceive of what it might mean to be human.Now available in paperback, this exciting approach to literary theory will be of interest to lecturers and students of literary theory and criticism.

Description for Sales People

Offers a new theory of / new ways of thinking about literature, with insights into literary theory. Offers an important rethinking of Romanticism and its influence on literary studies, from the C19th to the presentIncludes compelling new readings of a range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors, including Wordsworth, Keats, Dickens, George Eliot, Conrad, Henry James, Elizabeth Bowen, Philip Roth and Seamus HeaneyPresents a new way of thinking about the relationship between literature and philosophyAgnoiology, for those not in the know is 'the doctrine concerning those things of which we are necessarily ignorant', otherwise known as the study of human stupidity

Details ISBN0719097436 Author Andrew Bennett Pages 288 Publisher Manchester University Press Year 2015 ISBN-10 0719097436 ISBN-13 9780719097430 Format Paperback Imprint Manchester University Press Subtitle Literature and Agnoiology Place of Publication Manchester Country of Publication United Kingdom Short Title IGNORANCE Language English Media Book Illustrations black & white illustrations DEWEY 823.809 Publication Date 2015-06-30 UK Release Date 2015-06-30 NZ Release Date 2015-06-30 Audience General AU Release Date 2015-06-29 We've got this

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