Expectation: Philosophy, Literature

Expectation is a major volume of Jean-Luc Nancy`s writings on literature, written across three decades but, for the most part, previously unavailable in English. More substantial than literary criticism, these essays collectively negotiate literature`s relation to philosophy. Nancy pursues such questions as literature`s claims to truth, the status of narrative, the relation of poetry and prose, and the unity of a book or of a text, and he addresses a number of major European writers, including Dante, Sterne, Rousseau, Holderlin, Proust, Joyce, and Blanchot. The final section offers a number of impressive pieces by Nancy that completely merge his concerns for philosophy and literature and philosophy-as-literature. These include a lengthy parody of Valery`s "La Jeune Parque," several original poems by Nancy, and a beautiful prose-poetic discourse on an installation by Italian artist Claudio Parmiggiani that incorporates the Faust theme. Opening with a substantial Introduction by Jean-Michel Rabaté that elaborates Nancy`s importance as a literary thinker, this book constitutes the most substantial statement to date by one of today`s leading philosophers on a discipline that has been central to his work across his career.