Reading into the Stars
Cosmopoetics in the Contemporary Novel
Published on 2. August 2018
X, 479 pages
978-3-8253-7809-7 (ISBN)
Description
(Mis-)readings of the stars and our place in the cosmos have long been used as a metaphor for reading fictional worlds: to speak of 'reading into the stars' is to acknowledge that the stargazer instils the otherwise empty sidereal text with meaning of their own making. By contrasting this activity with novel-reading, the trope of astro-eisegesis raises questions about the nature, potential, and functions of fiction.
This amounts to a self-reflexive cosmopoetics of the novel employed by authors such as Martin Amis, John Banville, Andrew Crumey, Zadie Smith, and Jeanette Winterson, among many others. Tracing the development of the trope in narrative fictions since Chaucer and its uses in British and Irish novels since the Apollo moon landings, the book explores the epistemological, ontological and anthropological dimensions of novelistic cosmopoetics.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
08/2018
1st Edition
Universitätsverlag Winter
€64.00
Shipment within 5-7 days
Content
- Cover
- Titel-Page
- Imprint
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations Used
- I Introduction
- II Metaphorized Cosmology and Literature
- II.1 Astroculture, Anthropicity, and Cosmology
- II.2 Cosmology as Metaphor
- II.3 Nonconceptuality and Literature
- II.4 Metaphorized Cosmology as a Transgressional Trope
- III The Cosmopoetics of the Novel
- III.1 From Metaphorized Cosmology towards a Cosmopoetics
- III.2 Epistemology and the Cosmopoetic Novel
- III.3 Ontology and the Cosmopoetic Novel
- III.4 Anthropology and the Cosmopoetic Novel
- IV Metaphorized Cosmology in English Literary History
- IV.1 Epic between Ptolemaism and Copernicanism
- IV.2 The Emergence of the Novel in the Newtonian World
- IV.3 The Novel in the Herschelian Universe
- V Metaphorized Cosmology in the Contemporary Novel
- V.1 The World in the Novel: Cosmopoetics and Epistemology
- V.1.1 Characterization
- V.1.2 Chronotope
- V.1.3 Perspective
- V.2 The Novel as World: Cosmopoetics and Ontology
- V.2.1 Text-as-World
- V.2.2 Meaning-making
- V.2.3 Inter-subjectivity
- V.3 The Novel in the World: Cosmopoetics and Anthropology
- VI Cosmopoetics in the Contemporary Novel
- Works Cited
- Index
- Backcover
