Overview

Ben Lerner, Edges of Genre: Poetry, Fiction, Artistic Collaborations is the first comprehensive academic study of a major contemporary author. Praised by The New York Times as “the most talented writer of his generation,” Lerner has often been read separately as poet or novelist, yet his work consistently transcends traditional boundaries. This groundbreaking volume, co-edited by Yannicke Chupin and Karim Daanoune, foregrounds Lerner's practice of ""generic dialogism,"" exploring the dynamic interplay between lyric and narrative, poetry and fiction, criticism and artistic collaboration. Gathering 14 chapters from leading international scholars, alongside Lerner's own unpublished piece Erring Together, the book offers a sustained, cross-generic reading of his oeuvre. It is the first study to situate Lerner's work within the broader field of contemporary intermedial writing, making it essential reading for scholars, students, and readers interested in the evolving landscape of 21st-century literature.

Full Product Details

Author:   Yannicke Chupin ,  Karim Daanoune
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
ISBN:  

9781032993027

ISBN 10:   1032993022
Pages:   294
Publication Date:   29 May 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations; List of Contributors; Acknowledgements; Erring Together; Introduction; Part I; Chapter 1 “Love // more avant-garde than shame”: Ben Lerner’s Ethical Aesthetics; Chapter 2 “Bodies, streetlights, mixed media”: 10:04 and the Mediated Experience; Chapter 3 Autofiction, Privilege, and Redemption; Chapter 4 Autofiction, Mediation, Parasocial Politics: Ben Lerner Against Authenticity; PART II; Chapter 5 The Stuttering Novel: Reading the Prosody of Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School with Gilles Deleuze; Chapter 6 “Heard melodies are sweet / but those unheard are sweeter”: Impossible Music and Poetic Voice in Ben Lerner’s Gold Custody; Chapter 7 Angle of Inclination / Angle of Yaw: Lerner’s Conversation with Celan; Chapter 8 “Between the Terrestrial and the Divine”: On Ben Lerner’s Poetics; Chapter 9 “Thrice removed”: Determining Art as Thrice Removed: Leveling Ben Lerner’s Tower of Representation; PART III; Chapter 10 The Instrument with Which It’s Cut: Ben Lerner’s Bildung and the Song of the Fungible; Chapter 11 “Crucial Betweens”: The Politics of Intermediality in Ben Lerner’s Artistic Collaborations; Chapter 12 Virtual Theory and Actual Practice: The Language of Critical Theory in the Novels of Ben Lerner; Chapter 13 Kansas and Effect: Critique, Causality and the Theoretical Forms in/of Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School; Chapter 14 Ben Lerner and Conspiracy Poetics

Reviews

Author Information

Yannicke Chupin is Associate Professor at CY Cergy Paris Université, specializing in North American literature and metafiction in 21st-century writing. She has published books on Vladimir Nabokov and edited Mutations of Metafiction (Revue Française d'Études Américaines, 2019). Karim Daanoune is Associate Professor of American Literature at Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry. His research centers on contemporary North American literature which includes Arab American and Arab Canadian writing. His work sits at the intersection of poetics, ethics, and politics.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions