Blanchot and his writings on three major poets, Mallarmé, Hölderlin, and Char, provide a decisive new point of departure for English language criticism of his philosophical writings on narrative in this study by leading Blanchot scholar, Kevin Hart.

Connecting his work to later leading figures of 20th-century French philosophy, including Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil, and Jacques Derrida, Hart highlights the importance of Jewish philosophy and political thought to his overall conception of literature. Chapters on community and negation reveal Blanchot’s emphasis on the relationship between narrative and politics over the more commonly connected narrative and aesthetics. By fully discussing Blanchot’s elusive concept of “the Outside” for the first time, this book progresses scholarly understandings of his entire oeuvre further. This central concept engages Franz Rosenzweig’s work on Abrahamic faiths, enabling a reckoning on the role of suffering and literature in the wake of the Shoah, with significant implications for Jewish studies more generally.

One gets from this book a strong sense of Blanchot’s thought and his placement among a unique cast of thinkers. Fitting for readers already familiar with the French writer, Maurice Blanchot on Poetry and Narrative
will be of interest to readers curious to learn more about any of Blanchot’s various literary, philosophical, political, and theological influences and interlocutors.

Kevin Hart is Jo Rae Wright University Distinguished Professor in the School of Divinity at Duke University, USA. He also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of English at Duke University, USA.