Redeeming Words: Language and the Promise of Happiness in the Stories of Döblin and Sebald (SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory) Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:
Probing study of how literature can redeem the revelatory, redemptive powers of language.

In this probing look at Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and the stories of W. G. Sebald, Redeeming Words offers a philosophical meditation on the power of language in literature. David Kleinberg-Levin draws on the critical theory of Benjamin and Adorno; the idealism and romanticism of Kant, Hegel, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schelling; and the nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. He shows how Döblin and Sebald—writers with radically different styles working in different historical moments—have in common a struggle against forces of negativity and an aim to bring about in response a certain redemption of language. Kleinberg-Levin considers the fast-paced, staccato, and hard-cut sentences of Döblin and the ghostly, languorous, and melancholy prose fiction of Sebald to articulate how both writers use language in an attempt to recover and convey this utopian promise of happiness for life in a time of mourning.

“Redeeming Words is an elegant, highly learned, and incisive exploration of how language—and thus the greatest literature of our time—both registers the experience of the loss of utopia and affirms hope by making the loss more clear. It takes as its theme the most profound reflections on the role of words in a time of abandonment and disenchantment. Kleinberg-Levin argues not only that words communicate this sense of loss but constitute it by failing to achieve total mastery and transparency and self-consciously thematizing the corruption and also affirmative power of words. At the deepest level, this study analyzes words and what the very existence of words can confer to individuals and communities.” — Peter Fritzsche, author of The Turbulent World of Franz Göll: An Ordinary Berliner Writes the Twentieth Century

David Kleinberg-Levin is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Northwestern University. His many books include Gestures of Ethical Life: Reading Hölderlin’s Question of Measure After Heidegger; Before the Voice of Reason: Echoes of Responsibility in Merleau-Ponty’s Ecology and Levinas’s Ethics, also published by SUNY Press; and Redeeming Words and the Promise of Happiness: A Critical Theory Approach to Wallace Stevens and Vladimir Nabokov.

Redeeming Words: Language and the Promise of Happiness in the Stories of Döblin and Sebald (SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory) by David Michael Kleinberg-Levin

From reader reviews:

Willie Hickox:

Have you spare time for any day? What do you do when you have a lot more or little spare time? Yes, you can choose the suitable activity to get spend your time. Any person spent their spare time to take a wander, shopping, or went to typically the Mall. How about open or maybe read a book entitled Redeeming Words: Language and the Promise of Happiness in the Stories of Döblin and Sebald (SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory)? Maybe it is being best activity for you. You realize beside you can spend your time with the favorite's book, you can more intelligent than before. Do you agree with its opinion or you have some other opinion?

Jessica Nakagawa:

Why? Because this Redeeming Words: Language and the Promise of Happiness in the Stories of Döblin and Sebald (SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory) is an unordinary book that the inside of the book waiting for you to snap it but latter it will distress you with the secret it inside. Reading this book beside it was fantastic author who also write the book in such remarkable way makes the content on the inside easier to understand, entertaining way but still convey the meaning entirely. So , it is good for you for not hesitating having this any longer or you going to regret it. This phenomenal book will give you a lot of rewards than the other book include such as help improving your skill and your critical thinking way. So , still want to hesitate having that book? If I were you I will go to the reserve store hurriedly.

Hal Clemens:

Don't be worry in case you are afraid that this book may filled the space in your house, you might have it in e-book means, more simple and reachable. This kind of Redeeming Words: Language and the Promise of Happiness in the Stories of Döblin and Sebald (SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory) can give you a lot of buddies because by you considering this one book you have matter that they don't and make you more like an interesting person. This kind of book can be one of one step for you to get success. This guide offer you information that maybe your friend doesn't understand, by knowing more than some other make you to be great folks. So , why hesitate? Let me have Redeeming Words: Language and the Promise of Happiness in the Stories of Döblin and Sebald (SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory).

Lisa Westra:

As a pupil exactly feel bored to help reading. If their teacher requested them to go to the library or to make summary for some book, they are complained. Just little students that has reading's soul or real their passion. They just do what the trainer want, like asked to go to the library. They go to right now there but nothing reading very seriously. Any students feel that examining is not important, boring and can't see colorful photographs on there. Yeah, it is to get complicated. Book is very important for you. As we know that on this age, many ways to get whatever you want. Likewise word says, ways to reach Chinese's country. So , this Redeeming Words: Language and the Promise of Happiness in the Stories of Döblin and Sebald (SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory) can make you really feel more interested to read.