1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910164954803321

Autore

Cameron Sharon

Titolo

The Bond of the Furthest Apart : Essays on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Bresson, and Kafka / / Sharon Cameron

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago : , : University of Chicago Press, , [2017]

©2017

ISBN

0-226-41406-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (279 pages) : illustrations

Disciplina

809

Soggetti

Bresson

Dostoevsky

Kafka

Tolstoy

aesthetic

categorical

counterpoint

ethical

ontology

LITERARY CRITICISM / General

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. Animal Sentience: Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar -- 2. "Outside Christ": Dostoevsky's Joy -- 3. The Sight of Death in Tolstoy -- 4. Robert Bresson's Pathos -- 5. Kafka's No-Hope Spaces -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

In the French filmmaker Robert Bresson's cinematography, the linkage of fragmented, dissimilar images challenges our assumption that we know either what things are in themselves or the infinite ways in which they are entangled. The "bond" of Sharon Cameron's title refers to the astonishing connections found both within Bresson's films and across literary works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Kafka, whose visionary rethinkings of experience are akin to Bresson's in their resistance to all



forms of abstraction and classification that segregate aspects of reality.  Whether exploring Bresson's efforts to reassess the limits of human reason and will, Dostoevsky's subversions of Christian conventions, Tolstoy's incompatible beliefs about death, or Kafka's focus on creatures neither human nor animal, Cameron illuminates how the repeated juxtaposition of disparate, even antithetical, phenomena carves out new approaches to defining the essence of being, one where the very nature of fixed categories is brought into question. An innovative look at a classic French auteur and three giants of European literature, The Bond of the Furthest Apart will interest scholars of literature, film, ethics, aesthetics, and anyone drawn to an experimental venture in critical thought.