Overview

This book gives original readings of Proust and Quignard to elaborate a novel theory of literary naturalism. Drawing on contemporary biological perspectives, the book argues that, despite their opposition to traditional naturalism, both understand human experience, meaning-making, and creativity as being immanent to, and as emerging from, shared biological life. Rethinking Literary Naturalism reads contemporary biosemiotic theory, Proust, and Quignard alongside each other in the context of a shared genealogy that leads back into nineteenth-century philosophical and literary visions of natural life that are inherited from German Romanticism and Idealism. Here biological theory and forms of literary practice are recast as distinct techniques of thought that aim to situate themselves in relation to biological life. Each in its own way is shown to adopt an interpretative posture that ‘steps back’ into the immanence of sense and meaning that is constitutive of qualitatively lived existence. Each produces a different kind of knowledge (scientific, literary, literary-philosophical) of shared biological life that can be understood as distinctive variations of a saying ‘after life’. The novel literary naturalism that is rethought here can be understood as ‘post-dicative’ and as being entirely distinct from that of Émile Zola, Maupassant, or the Goncourt brothers.

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9781836243151

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Reviews

“Rethinking Literary Naturalism is an innovative study that brings into dialogue scientific speculation and enquiry on the one hand and the work of two leading figures in the field of modern and contemporary French literature on the other. Its author argues for a new form of literary naturalism (one that is radically distinct from the model of naturalism prevalent in late nineteenth-century French thought and literature) and in the process shows very ably how the field of biosemiotics may be seen to intersect with the arts and humanities.” Edward J. Hughes, Emeritus Professor of French at Queen Mary, University of London. “Ian James is one of the most cutting-edge thinkers of French philosophy and modern French literature in the UK today… As such, this book represents an extensive amount of preparation and thought that elaborates a sophisticated intellectual programme that seeks to reframe how we think about life, semiotics, philosophy and literature.” Professor Patrick Bray, University College London

Author Information

Ian James completed his PhD on Pierre Klossowski at Warwick University in 1996. He has written extensively on contemporary French philosophy and on the reception in France of German thought.

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