1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910154310103321

Autore

Newton Adam Zachary

Titolo

To make the hands impure : art, ethical adventure, the difficult, and the holy / / Adam Zachary Newton

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Fordham University Press, , [2015]

©2015

ISBN

0-8232-6647-8

0-8232-6355-X

Edizione

[First edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (508 p.)

Disciplina

190

Soggetti

Philosophy, Modern - 20th century

Philosophy, Modern - 21st century

Art and morals

Ethics in literature

Reader-response criticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Machine generated contents note: -- Prologue: Meaningful Adjacencies -- Introduction: Laws of Tact and Genre -- Part one / Hands -- 1. Pledge, Turn, Prestige: Worldliness and Sanctity in Edward Said and Emmanuel Levinas -- 2. Sollicitation and Rubbing the Text: Reading Said and Levinas Reading -- 3. Henry Darger, Blaise Pascal, and the Book in Hand -- Part two / Genres -- 4. Ethics of Reading I: Levinas and the Talmud -- 5. Ethics of Reading II: Bakhtin and the Novel -- 6. Ethics of Reading III: Cavell and Theater/Cinema -- Part three / Languages -- 7. Abyss, Volcano, and the Frozen Swirl of Words: The Difficult and the Holy in Agnon, Bialik, and Scholem -- Epilogue: The Book in Hand, Again -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index of Proper Names -- Index of Topics.

Sommario/riassunto

"How can cradling, handling, or rubbing a text be said, ethically, to have made something happen? What, as readers or interpreters, may come off in our hands in as we maculate or mark the books we read?  For Adam Zachary Newton, reading is anembodied practice wherein "ethics" becomes a matter of tact in the doubled sense of touch and



regard. With the image of the book lying in the hands of its readers as insistent refrain, To Make the Hands Impure cuts a provocative cross-disciplinary swath through classical Jewish texts, modern Jewish philosophy, film and performance, literature, translation, and the material text.  Newton explores the ethics of reading through a range of texts, from the Talmud and Midrash to Conrad's Nostromo and Pascal's Le Mémorial, from works by Henry Darger and Martin Scorsese to the National September 11 Memorial and a synagogue in Havana, Cuba. In separate chapters, he conducts masterly treatments of Emmanuel Levinas, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Stanley Cavell by emphasizing their performances as readers a trebled orientation to Talmud, novel, and theater/film. To Make the Hands Impure stages the encounter of literary experience and scriptural traditions he difficult and the holy through an ambitious, singular, and innovative approach marked in equal measure by erudition and imaginative daring"--