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The Paradoxes of Posterity / Benjamin Hoffmann.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublisher: University Park, PA : Penn State University Press, [2020]Copyright date: ©2020Description: 1 online resource (184 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780271088372
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 808 23
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Why Do People Write? -- The Paradoxes of Belief -- First Paradox: The Current Concert and the Distant Melody -- Second Paradox: The Lottery and the Ruse -- Third Paradox: The Renunciation and the Reward -- The Paradoxes of Identity -- Fourth Paradox: The Proper Noun and the Common Noun -- Fifth Paradox: The Flow and the Entity -- Sixth Paradox: The Distance and the Judgement -- The Paradoxes of Mediation -- Seventh Paradox: The Rosetta Stone and Agrippina’s Thrush -- Eighth Paradox: The Manuscript and the USB Key -- Ninth Paradox: The Comet and the Astronomer -- Conclusion: Why Do People (Still) Write? -- Notes -- Index
Summary: The impetus for literary creation has often been explained as an attempt to transcend the mortality of the human condition through a work addressed to future generations. Failing to obtain literal immortality, or to turn their hope towards the spiritual immortality promised by religious systems, literary creators seek a symbolic form of perpetuity granted to the intellectual side of their person in the memory of those not yet born while they write. In this book, Benjamin Hoffmann illuminates the paradoxes inherent in the search for symbolic immortality, arguing that the time has come to find a new answer to the perennial question: Why do people write?Exploring the fields of digital humanities and book history, Hoffmann describes posterity as a network of interconnected memories that constantly evolves by reserving a variable and continuously renegotiated place for works and authors of the past. In other words, the perpetual safeguarding of texts is delegated to a collectivity not only nonexistent at the moment when a writer addresses it, but whose nature is characterized by impermanence and instability. Focusing on key works by Denis Diderot, Étienne-Maurice Falconet, Giacomo Casanova, François-René de Chateaubriand, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Hoffmann considers the authors’ representations of posterity, the representation of authors by posterity, and how to register and preserve works in the network of memories. In doing so, Hoffmann reveals the three great paradoxes in the quest for symbolic immortality: the paradoxes of belief, of identity, and of mediation.Theoretically sophisticated and convincingly argued, this book contends that there is only one truly serious literary problem: the transmission of texts to posterity. It will appeal to specialists in literature, in particular eighteenth-century French literature, as well as scholars and students of philosophy and book history.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780271088372

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Why Do People Write? -- The Paradoxes of Belief -- First Paradox: The Current Concert and the Distant Melody -- Second Paradox: The Lottery and the Ruse -- Third Paradox: The Renunciation and the Reward -- The Paradoxes of Identity -- Fourth Paradox: The Proper Noun and the Common Noun -- Fifth Paradox: The Flow and the Entity -- Sixth Paradox: The Distance and the Judgement -- The Paradoxes of Mediation -- Seventh Paradox: The Rosetta Stone and Agrippina’s Thrush -- Eighth Paradox: The Manuscript and the USB Key -- Ninth Paradox: The Comet and the Astronomer -- Conclusion: Why Do People (Still) Write? -- Notes -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

The impetus for literary creation has often been explained as an attempt to transcend the mortality of the human condition through a work addressed to future generations. Failing to obtain literal immortality, or to turn their hope towards the spiritual immortality promised by religious systems, literary creators seek a symbolic form of perpetuity granted to the intellectual side of their person in the memory of those not yet born while they write. In this book, Benjamin Hoffmann illuminates the paradoxes inherent in the search for symbolic immortality, arguing that the time has come to find a new answer to the perennial question: Why do people write?Exploring the fields of digital humanities and book history, Hoffmann describes posterity as a network of interconnected memories that constantly evolves by reserving a variable and continuously renegotiated place for works and authors of the past. In other words, the perpetual safeguarding of texts is delegated to a collectivity not only nonexistent at the moment when a writer addresses it, but whose nature is characterized by impermanence and instability. Focusing on key works by Denis Diderot, Étienne-Maurice Falconet, Giacomo Casanova, François-René de Chateaubriand, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Hoffmann considers the authors’ representations of posterity, the representation of authors by posterity, and how to register and preserve works in the network of memories. In doing so, Hoffmann reveals the three great paradoxes in the quest for symbolic immortality: the paradoxes of belief, of identity, and of mediation.Theoretically sophisticated and convincingly argued, this book contends that there is only one truly serious literary problem: the transmission of texts to posterity. It will appeal to specialists in literature, in particular eighteenth-century French literature, as well as scholars and students of philosophy and book history.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Mrz 2023)