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Literature and Evil
Series: Penguin Modern Classics
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See moreA collection of essays that explores subjects such as violence, eroticism, childhood, myth and transgression.
Literature is not innocent,' stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957 collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with the knowledge of evil can literature communicate fully and intensely.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
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Description
An extraordinary collection of essays arguing for literature's complicity with evil, new to Penguin Modern Classics.
Literature is not innocent, stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957 collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with the knowledge of evil can literature communicate fully and intensely.
These literary profiles of eight authors and their work, including Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, and the writings of Sade, Kafka, and Sartre, explore subjects such as violence, eroticism, childhood, myth, and transgression, in a work of rich allusion and powerful argument.
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Literature and Evil by Georges Bataille explores the complex relationship between transgression and creativity in literature. It delves into how literary works intersect with themes of excess and taboo. Critics have noted Bataille's ability to intellectualise the erotic and view his approach as both intellectually stimulating and provocatively unsettling.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780141195575
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 07 June 2012
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Contributors:
- Translated by Alastair Hamilton
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 11.0mm
Width: 130.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 150g
Pages: 192
About the Author
Georges Bataille, French essayist and novelist, was born in 1897. He converted to Catholicism, then to Marxism, and was interested in psychoanalysis and mysticism. As curator of the municipal library in Orleans, he led a relatively simple life, although he became involved, usually on the fringes, with the surrealist movement. He founded the literary review Critique in 1946, which he edited until his death in 1962, and was also a founder of the review Documents, which published many of the leading surrealist writers. His writing is a mixture of poetry and philosophy, fantasy and history, and his first novel, Story of the Eye, was written under the pseudonym of Lord Auch. Bataille's other works include the novels Blue of Noon, L'Abbe C and My Mother, and the volumes of essays Eroticism and Literature and Evil.
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Buy to WinEroticism
An influential exploration of sex and its surrounding taboos. A philosopher, essayist, novelist, pornographer, and fervent Catholic who came to regard the brothels of Paris as his true 'churches', Georges Bataille ranks among the boldest and most disturbing of twentieth-century thinkers. In this influential study, he links the underlying sexual basis of religion to death, offering a dazzling array of...Paperback$2700Elsewhere:$3000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Buy to WinMy Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man
Three works of erotic prose fusing sex and spirituality, new to Penguin Modern Classics. In these three works of erotic prose, Georges Bataille fuses sex and spirituality in a highly personal and philosophical vision of the self. My Mother is a frank and intense depiction of a young man's sexual initiation and corruption by his mother, where the profane becomes...Paperback$2700Elsewhere:$3000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips tomorrow -
Story of the Eye
In 1928, Georges Bataille published this first novel under a pseudonym, a legendary shocker that uncovers the dark side of the erotic by means of forbidden obsessive fantasies of excess and sexual extremes. A classic of pornographic literature, Story of the Eye finds the parallels in Sade and Nietzsche and in the investigations of contemporary psychology; it also forecasts Bataille's...Paperback$3600Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Critical Essays
An introduction for English-language readers to Georges Bataille's postwar philosophical and critical writings. In the aftermath of World War II, French thinker and writer Georges Bataille forged a singular path through the moral and political impasses of his age. In 1946, animated by "a need to live events in an increasingly conscious way," and to reject any compartmentalization of intellectual...Hardback$5499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The Accursed Share
The three volumes of The Accursed Share address what Georges Bataille sees as the paradox of utility: namely, if being useful means serving a further end, then the ultimate end of utility can only be uselessness. The first volume, the only one published before Bataille's death, treated this paradox in economic terms, showing that "it is not necessity but its...Paperback$8700Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Correspondence – Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris
Including a number of short essays by Bataille and Leiris on aspects of the other's work as well as excerpts on Bataille from Leiris' diaries, this collection of correspondence throws new light on two of Surrealism's most radical dissidents. In the autumn of 1924, just before André Breton published the Manifeste du surréalisme, two young men met in Paris for...Paperback$4699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Critical Essays – Volume 1, 1944–1948
This first book in a three-volume collection of Georges Bataille’s essays introduces English readers to his philosophical and critical writings. In the aftermath of the Second World War, French thinker and writer Georges Bataille forged a singular path through the moral and political impasses of his age. In 1946, animated by "a need to live events in an increasingly conscious...Hardback$5699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
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Theory of Religion brings to philosophy what Bataille's earlier book, The Accursed Share, brought to anthropology and history; namely, an analysis based on notions of excess and expenditure. Bataille brilliantly defines religion as so many different attempts to respond to the universe's relentless generosity. Framed within his original theory of generalized economics and based on his masterly reading of archaic...Paperback$7499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
The Accursed Share
Most Anglo-American readers know Bataille as a novelist. The Accursed Share provides an excellent introduction to Bataille the philosopher. Here he uses his unique economic theory as the basis for an incisive inquiry into the very nature of civilization. Unlike conventional economic models based on notions of scarcity, Bataille's theory develops the concept of excess: a civilization, he argues, reveals...Paperback$7000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
The Cradle of Humanity
A radically interdisciplinary inquiry into the origins of human consciousness, community, and potential. The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture collects essays and lectures by Georges Bataille spanning 30 years of research in anthropology, comparative religion, aesthetics, and philosophy. These were neither idle nor idyllic years; the discovery of Lascaux in 1940 coincides with the bloodiest war in history—with...PaperbackSold Out -
Visions of Excess
Since the publication of Visions of Excess in 1985, there has been an explosion of interest in the work of Georges Bataille. The French surrealist continues to be important for his groundbreaking focus on the visceral, the erotic, and the relation of society to the primeval. This collection of prewar writings remains the volume in which Bataille's positions are most...PaperbackSold Out -
Unfinished System of Nonknowledge
This volume collects the most intimate writings of one of the foremost French thinkers of the twentieth century on the central topic of his oeuvre. These essays, aphorisms, notes, and lectures on nonknowledge, sovereignty, and sacrifice clarify and extend Bataille's radical theology, his philosophy of history, and his ecstatic method of meditation. The "system" that emerges from his body of...PaperbackSold Out
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