{"title":"Maurice Blanchot: ‘Theorist’ of the Diary?","authors":"Sam Ferguson","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0346","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Maurice Blanchot’s writing on the diary has been presented as ignorant and contemptuous of its object, and as misrepresenting the diary by focusing on its literary qualities. This article rehabilitates Blanchot as a critic and theorist of the diary, and moreover, as a pivotal figure in realising the diary’s literary potential. Blanchot’s discussion of particular diarists (including Benjamin Constant, Joseph Joubert, Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, and André Gide), together with his critical reflections, were instrumental in his creation of conceptions of literature that exerted a strong influence on the avant-garde movements of the following decades, even though these avant-gardes rejected the introspective aspect of intimate writings. Furthermore, Blanchot produced a programme for how the diary might become a literary work, which was picked up again by Roland Barthes in 1979, and casts light on experimental uses of the diary in recent decades.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Nottingham French Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0346","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, ROMANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Maurice Blanchot’s writing on the diary has been presented as ignorant and contemptuous of its object, and as misrepresenting the diary by focusing on its literary qualities. This article rehabilitates Blanchot as a critic and theorist of the diary, and moreover, as a pivotal figure in realising the diary’s literary potential. Blanchot’s discussion of particular diarists (including Benjamin Constant, Joseph Joubert, Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, and André Gide), together with his critical reflections, were instrumental in his creation of conceptions of literature that exerted a strong influence on the avant-garde movements of the following decades, even though these avant-gardes rejected the introspective aspect of intimate writings. Furthermore, Blanchot produced a programme for how the diary might become a literary work, which was picked up again by Roland Barthes in 1979, and casts light on experimental uses of the diary in recent decades.
期刊介绍:
Nottingham French Studies is an externally-refereed academic journal which, from Volume 43, 2004, appears three times annually, with at least one special and one general issue each year. Its Editorial Board is drawn from members of the Department of French and Francophone Studies of the University of Nottingham, with the support of an International Advisory Board.