Adorno and Literature

Despite the recent upsurge of interest in Theodor Adorno's work, his literary writings are generally under-represented. However, literature is a central element in his aesthetic theory. Bringing together original essays from a distinguished international group of contributors, this book offers a wide ranging account of the literary components of Adorno's thinking. It is divided into three sections, dealing with the concept of literature, with poetry, and with modernity and the novel respectively. At the same time, the book provides a clear sense of the unique qualities of Adorno's philosophy of literature by critically relating his work to a number of other influential theorists and theories including contemporary postmodernist theory and cultural studies.

Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction, David Cunningham (University of Westminster, UK) and Nigel Mapp (University of Tampere, Finland) Part I: Philosophy, Aesthetics and Literature 1. Literature, and the Modern System of the Arts: Sources of Criticism in Adorno, Stewart Martin (Middlesex University, UK) 2. Adorno's Critical Presence: Cultural Theory and Literary Value, Martin Ryle (University of Sussex, UK) and Kate Soper (London Metropolitan University, UK) 3. Interpretation and Truth: Adorno on Literature and Music, Andrew Bowie (Royal Holloway, UK) 4. Adorno and the Poetics of Genre, Eva Geulen (University of Bonn, Germany) Part II: Poetry and Poetics 5. Lyric Poetry Before Auschwitz, Howard Caygill (Goldsmiths, UK) 6. The Truth in Verse? Adorno, Wordsworth, Prosody, Simon Jarvis (University of Cambridge, UK) 7. Lyric's Expression: Musicality, Conceptuality, Critical Agency, Robert Kaufman (Stanford University, USA) 8. Returning to the 'House of Oblivion': Celan Between Adorno and Heidegger, Iain Macdonald (University of Montreal, Canada) Part III: Modernity, Drama and the Novel 9. Forgetting - Faust: Adorno and Kommerell, Paul Fleming (New York University, USA) 10. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory and Lukács's Theory of the Novel, Timothy Hall (University of East London, UK) 11. No Nature, No Nothing: Adorno, Beckett, Disenchantment, Nigel Mapp (University of Tampere, Finland) 12. Late Style in Naipaul: Adorno's Aesthetic and the Postcolonial Novel, Timothy Bewes (Brown University, USA) 13. After Adorno: The Narrator of the Contemporary European Novel, David Cunningham (University of Westminster, UK) Index

About the Author :
David Cunningham is Principal Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Westminster and an editor of the journal Radical Philosophy. Nigel Mapp is Lecturer in English at the University of Tampere, Finland.

Review :
mention- The Chronicle of Higher Education/ October 20, 2006 'This elegant and finely argued collection of essays...sends the reader back to the Notes to Literature, in particular, with a sharpened appetite...' 'In a series of scrupulous readings of Adorno's reflections on literature, which have been noticeably neglected in the recent reconsideration of his thought among anglophone scholars, they communicate the sophistication of his criticism and its own critical and utopian potential for literary studies. ' Radical Philosophy, 2007