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Literature and Evil
Series: Penguin Modern Classics
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Check link for latest rating. ( 1,503 ratings, 124 reviews)
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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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Eroticism
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My 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 Monday -
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$3500Unit 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$8500Unit 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
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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 -
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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 -
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