03856nam 22005295 450 991015633510332120200930204743.03-319-42171-910.1007/978-3-319-42171-1(CKB)3710000000985587(DE-He213)978-3-319-42171-1(MiAaPQ)EBC4773497(EXLCZ)99371000000098558720161222d2016 u| 0engurnn|008mamaatxtrdacontentcrdamediacrrdacarrierThe Aesthetics of Clarity and Confusion[electronic resource] Literature and Engagement since Nietzsche and the Naturalists /by Geoffrey A. Baker1st ed. 2016.Cham :Springer International Publishing :Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan,2016.1 online resource (XIV, 279 p.) Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature,2634-64783-319-42170-0 Includes bibliographical references and index.Introduction: Literary Activism, Clarity and Confusion -- Chapter 1: “For Love of Clarity”: Émile Zola, Practice, and the Political Potential of Realistic Literature -- Chapter 2: Grounds for Confusion: Nietzsche, Theory, and the Political Potential of Anti-Realism -- Chapter 3: Between Theory and Practice: Matthew Arnold, Thomas Mann, Julien Benda, and the Purpose of the Intellectual -- Chapter 4: “Different Kinds of Clarity”: Science, Sense, and Utilitarian Realism in Bertolt Brecht -- Chapter 5: Pressing Engagement: Jean-Paul Sartre and the Aesthetic Problem of the Political -- Chapter 6: An Other Engagement: Simone de Beauvoir and the Ethical Problem of the Political -- Conclusion: Contemporary Engagements with Clarity and Confusion -- Works Cited.What should literature with political aims look like? This book traces two rival responses to this question, one prizing clarity and the other confusion, which have dominated political aesthetics since the late nineteenth century. Revisiting recurrences of the avant-garde experimentalism versus critical realism debates from the twentieth century, Geoffrey A. Baker highlights the often violent reductions at work in earlier debates. Instead of prizing one approach over the other, as many participants in those debates have done, Baker instead focuses instead on the manner in which the debate itself between these approaches continues to prove productive and enabling for politically engaged writers. This book thus offers a way beyond the simplistic polarity of realism vs. anti-realism in a study that is focused on influential strands of thought in England, France, and Germany and that covers well-known authors such as Zola, Nietzsche, Arnold, Mann, Brecht, Sartre, Adorno, Lukács, Beauvoir, Morrison, and Coetzee.Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature,2634-6478Comparative literatureLiterature—PhilosophyEuropean literatureComparative Literaturehttps://scigraph.springernature.com/ontologies/product-market-codes/811000Literary Theoryhttps://scigraph.springernature.com/ontologies/product-market-codes/812000European Literaturehttps://scigraph.springernature.com/ontologies/product-market-codes/832000Comparative literature.Literature—Philosophy.European literature.Comparative Literature.Literary Theory.European Literature.809Baker Geoffrey Aauthttp://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut1060536BOOK9910156335103321The Aesthetics of Clarity and Confusion2514082UNINA