Literature and Spirit Essays on Mikhail Bakhtin by David Patterson SIGNED Book
Title: Literature and Spirit Essays on Mikhail Bakhtin
Author: David Patterson
Year: 1988
ISBN-13: 9780813116471
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Format: Hardcover / Hardback
Vintage: Yes
Collectible: First Edition, 1st Printing; Signed / Autographed by Author
Condition: Signed by author on front flyleaf. First Edition / 1st Printing. In very good shape with light wear to cover and DJ. No markings. NOT ex library, remaindered, or price clipped. SHIPS IN A BOX! Packaged with care.
Genre: Literary Criticism
Book Summary:
"If
Bakhtin is right," Wayne C. Booth has said, "a very great deal of what
we western critics have spent our time on is mistaken, or trivial, or
both." In Literature and Spirit David Patterson proceeds from the
premise that Bakhtin is right.
Exploring Bakhtin's notions of
spirit, responsibility, and dialogue, Patterson takes his reader from
the narrow arena of literary criticism to the larger realm of human
living and human loving. True to the spirit of Bakhtin, he draws the
Russian into a vibrant dialogue with other thinkers, including Foucault,
Berdyaev, Gide, Lacan, Levinas, and Heidegger. But he does not stop
there. He engages Bakhtin in his own insightful and unique dialogue,
meeting the responsibility and taking the risk summoned by dialogue.
Literature and Spirit,
therefore, is not a typically cool and detached exercise in academic
curiosity. Instead, it is a passionate and penetrating endeavor to
respond to literature and spirit as the links in life's attachment to
life. The author demonstrates that in deciding something about
literature, we decide something about the substance and meaning of our
lives. Far from being a question of commentary or explication, he
argues, our relation to literature is a matter of spiritual life and
death. The reader who comes before a literary text encounters the human
voice. And Patterson enables his reader to hear that voice in all its
spiritual dimensions.
Unique in its questions and in its quest, Literature and Spirit
addresses an audience that goes beyond the ordinary academic
categories. It appeals not only to students of literature, philosophy,
and religion, but to anyone who seeks an understanding of spiritual
presence and meaning in life. Through his affirmation of what is dear,
Patterson responds to the needful question. And in his response he puts
the question to his audience: Where are you? Literature and Spirit thus speaks to those who face the task of answering, "Here I am."