Levinas and Nineteenth-Century Literature: Ethics and Otherness from Romanticism Through Realism

by Donald R. Wehrs (Editor), David P. Haney (Editor)

Levinas and Nineteenth-Century Literature presents nine essays that reread major British, American, and European nineteenth-century literary texts in light of the post-deconstruction ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. The first section pursues in essays on Wordsworth, Coleridge, De Quincey, and Baudelaire connections between Levinas's radical rethinking of subjectivity and Romantic generic, aesthetic, and conceptual innovation. The second section explores how Levinas's analysis of totalizing thought may illuminate how Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne, Douglass, Susan Warner, and Melville grapple with American experience and culture. The third section considers the relevance of Levinas's work for reassessments of the realist novel through essays on Austen, Dickens, and George Eliot. Essay authors are A.C. Goodson, David P. Haney, E.S. Burt, Alain Paul Toumayan, N.S. Boone, Lorna Wood, Donald R. Wehrs, Melvyn New, and Rachel Hollander. Donald R. Wehrs is Associate Professor of English at Auburn University. David P. Haney is Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Professor of English at Appalachian State University.

Genres: Nonfiction

298 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Donald R. "Don" Wehrs, Ph.D. (University of Virginia), is Hargis Professor of English Literature in the Department of English at Auburn University, Alabama. He specializes in novel genre and history, British eighteenth-century studies, literary theory, postcolonial studies, and comparative literature, and is the author of three books on African fiction.

Reviews

[Cocaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has to be said that this book was written specifically for students and academics to read. It is not for general consumption. So why did I select to read it? There are two reasons I did. The first, and probably the most important, is that it looked interesting. I knew nothing of Levinas nor what impact he may have had. I suspected the reading of this for me might prove difficult and it did. The other reason is that I know, by virtue of the worldwide web, one of the authors and also his wife.
Why was it such a difficult read for me?
To understand something like this you have to be in possession of certain tools; namely a wide vocabulary but also an intellect honed for such a purpose. These tools can only become yours after years of studying. My school life amounted to, if and when I was there, my organising intergalactic farting competitions; leading the assembly in a rousing bawdy version of Blake 19s Jerusalem or kicking footballs through the Geography class window. Without those prerequisite tools I was faced with something resembling carrying both the Sherpa and his back pack up the Himalayas.
The first essay I found hard to comprehend. A.C Goodson did not endear himself to me as I found his use of words laborious and heavy going. Not so the following academics, notably David Haney who writes with as much lucidity someone like me needs to even remotely understand this body of work. And I have to make mention here for fear of losing friends I have only just met, Don Wehrs (a gentleman and a scholar in the truest sense) and his wife, Lorna Wood.
Without going by route through each of the esteemed academics and authors, each of whom write an essay pertaining to the way Lithuanian born Emanuel Levinas 19 philosophy on 18otherness 19 impacts upon nineteenth century literature.
It was not easy. I struggled. At the end though, having had to re-read many a passage while feeling myself lost up my own, I came out the other side reasonably unscathed and with a modicum of understanding of what these chaps are on about. It has to be said, a caveat if you will, that I will need to re-read this several times over before, if I ever do, fully understand the full impact of it all. At times Don Van Vliet 19s (Captain Beefheart) famous quote sprang to mind 26 1Dsomeone has had too much to think. 1D
Central to this theory, or so It seems to me with my jaded self-esteem and woeful lack of tools that for me to define myself I need to express at, possibly a sub-conscious level, as though I am addressing 18a monkey on my shoulder or, if I were Levinas, God. If that is correct, and heaven knows if it is, then this theory is not dissimilar to the concept of 18within and without you. 19 It produces a connectivity that treads a fine line between conscious thought, sanity and divine ethic shaping, a sounding board of the interior, exterior mind. Like any word, certainly in the English language, meanings come multi-layered. 18Otherness 19 also implies 18the others 19 in society; the outsiders or more prosaically, tribal, indigenous peoples and the way by default we can patronise those people by suggesting that we all are the same. Of course I could be wrong, I often am.
There is more to this book than that though.

At the end of the day what this book did for me was to galvanize what intellect I have (my brain still hurts), to poke at the embers of my thinking capabilities, stretch them a bit before setting me off to learn more. No mean feat.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The introduction is excellent, and some of the essays make you see some modern works in a different, Levinasian light.