XClose

Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS)

Home
Menu

IAS Book Launch: The Price of Literature - The French Novel’s Theoretical Turn

29 January 2020, 4:00 pm–6:00 pm

the price of literature

by Patrick Bray. Respondents: Nick White (Emmanuel College, Cambridge) and Ian Maclachlan (Merton College, Oxford)

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

Institute of Advanced Studies

Location

IAS Common Ground
Ground floor, South Wing, UCL
London
WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom

This book examines the presence of theory in the nineteenth-century French novel, something Proust likened to leaving a price tag on a gift. Literature’s freedom to represent anything at all has meant, paradoxically, that it cannot articulate a coherent theory of itself—unless this theory is a necessarily subversive literary representation, or “the novel’s theoretical turn.”
The Price of Literature analyses how novels from the nineteenth century (by Mme de Staël, Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, and Proust) perform a theoretical turn to claim the freedom to represent anything in the world, but also literature’s ability to transform the world it represents.

This book is published by Northwestern University Press.

All welcome. Please note that there may be photography and/or audio recording at some events and that admission is on a first come first served basis. Please follow this FAQ link for more information. All our events are free but you can support the IAS here.