Faux Pas
by Maurice Blanchot
On This Page
Description
Published in France in 1943, Faux Pas is the first collection of Maurice Blanchot's essays on literature and language, consisting of fifty-four short pieces that were originally issued as reviews in literary journals, and one long introductory meditation that defines the trajectory of the whole volume. These essays--like those collected in the other five books of criticism published over several decades--have established Blanchot as the most lucid and powerful French critic of the second show more half of the twentieth century. Sober reconstructions of the main tenets of both classical and modern, both literary and theoretical texts, they have attained the status of model readings for authors as diverse as da Vinci and Kierkegaard, Melville and Proust, Molière, Goethe, and Mallarmé. However, the book is not a miscellaneous collection of exquisite essays. The first section of the volume, "From Anguish to Language," indicates the relative unity of its trajectory and its special moment in the development of Blanchot's thought. "Anguish" was a prominent notion for the existentialist philosophies of the period of his first work, and in this book Blanchot reflects on the necessary transition from the paradoxes of anguish to a focus on the paradoxes of language. He does so without ever betraying the affective tensions that attach themselves to linguistic utterances, but he also insists that the pathos of anxiety is, in the last resort, comical. Whoever writes "I am lonely" can judge himself to be quite comical, as he evokes his solitude by addressing a reader and using means that make it impossible to be alone. This comedy of language is retraced in Blanchot's intensely luminous essays on poetry and narration, on silence and symbolism, the novel and morals, the stranger, the enigma, time, and the very possibility of literature in the works of Blake, Balzac, Rimbaud, and Gide, Bergson and Brice Parain, Rilke and Bataille, Sartre, Camus, Queneau, and so many others. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
126+ Works 4,328 Members
Maurice Blanchot, 1907 - Novelist and critic Maurice Blanchot was born in 1907. Some of his works in translation include "Death Sentence" (1978), "The Gaze of Orpheus" (1981), "Madness of the Day" (1988), "The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me" (1993), all of which were translated by Lydia Davis, and "Michel Foucault as I Imagine Him" (translated show more by Jeffrey Mehlman, 1987). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Faux Pas
- Original title
- Faux Pas
- Original publication date
- 1943
- Original language*
- French
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Literature Studies and Criticism, Fiction and Literature, Philosophy
- DDC/MDS
- 809 — Literature & rhetoric Literature, rhetoric & criticism History, description, critical appraisal of more than two literatures
- LCC
- PN710 .B57413 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Literary history By period Modern
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 65
- Popularity
- 480,620
- Rating
- (4.50)
- Languages
- 5 — English, French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 6
