The Puritan and the Cynic: Moralists and Theorists in French and American LettersWhy do Americans, and so often, American writers, profess moral sentiments and yet write so little in the traditionally "moralistic" genres of maxim and fable? What is the relation between "moral" concerns and literary theory? Can any sort of morality survive the supposed nihilism of deconstruction? Jefferson Humphries undertakes a discussion of questions like these through a comparative reading of the ways in which moral issues surface in French and American literature. Humphries takes issue with the "amoral" view of deconstruction espoused by many of its detractors, arguing that the debate between the theory's advocates and opponents comes down to two opposing literary and moral traditions. While the American tradition views morality as a rigid system capable of being enforced by injunctions along the lines of "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not," the French tradition conceives of morality as a function of a relentless and unsentimental pursuit of truth, and finally, an admission that "truth" is not a static thing, but rather an ongoing process of rigorous thought. |
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Page 24
... fact , to data , to the materially real , which never allows any doubt of the metaphysical grounding of such reality , which never accounts , for instance , for the subjectivity of data or the relativity of perception . This concern with ...
... fact , to data , to the materially real , which never allows any doubt of the metaphysical grounding of such reality , which never accounts , for instance , for the subjectivity of data or the relativity of perception . This concern with ...
Page 57
... facts , and the images of the facts will designate the facts themselves , and we shall employ the localities and images respectively as a wax writing tablet and the letters written on it . ( I , 467 ; my emphasis ) 99 The teacher is ...
... facts , and the images of the facts will designate the facts themselves , and we shall employ the localities and images respectively as a wax writing tablet and the letters written on it . ( I , 467 ; my emphasis ) 99 The teacher is ...
Page 71
... fact they have discovered is the classical nature of deconstruction . De Man's aphoristic statements are of a very particular semantic nature , and self - descriptive even as they are self - erasing : Each is a small , self - contained ...
... fact they have discovered is the classical nature of deconstruction . De Man's aphoristic statements are of a very particular semantic nature , and self - descriptive even as they are self - erasing : Each is a small , self - contained ...
Contents
The Golden Age of Aphorism | 3 |
Blaise Pascal | 26 |
Deconstruction | 56 |
Copyright | |
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allegory American aphorism aphoristic appears autre believe Blanchot Brer Bruyère C'est Chamfort chiasmus chunes Cicero classical common commonplace concept Cotton Mather critics death deconstruction desire discourse divine Edited Edwards embrace enact epigram epigrammatic Èsù fable fact fait Fontaine fragment fragmentary Franklin French genre grapes Harris human illusion integrity involuntary memory irony knowledge La Bruyère La Rochefoucauld Lacan language Lentricchia less literary literature Logos Man's masks Mather Maurice Blanchot meaning metaphor moral moralist n'est nature never original paradox Pascal perception pleasure poem poet poetry Poor Richard possible Proust pure puritan qu'il question Quintillian rabbit reader reading reflects René Char repeated repetition represent rhetoric Rochefoucauld Rubin signifying story subject and object temporal temps tension thing thought tout translation trope truth Uncle Remus universal Vauvenargues virtue witchcraft words writer of maxims Young Goodman Brown