Literature in Our Time, or, Loving Literature to Bits. Issue 2 (August 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Callus, Ivan
• Is Part Of: CounterText. Volume 1:Issue 2(2015:Aug.)
• Page Start: 232
• Page End: 269
• Publication Date: 2015-08
• Subjects: English literature -- 21st century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Culture -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; 820.9
• DOI: 10.3366/count.2015.0019
• Languages: German
• ISSNs: 2056-4406

Abstract

<abstract xml:lang="de"> <title> <x content-type="archive" xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>In this essay Ivan Callus provides some reflections on literature in the present. He considers the tenability of the <italic>post-literary</italic> label and looks at works that might be posited as having some degree of countertextual affinity. The essay, while not setting itself up as a creative piece, deliberately structures itself unconventionally. It frames its argument within twenty-one sections that are self-contained but that also echo each other in their attempt to develop an overarching argument which draws out some of the challenges that lie before the countertextual and the post-literary. Punctuating the essay and contributing to its unconventional take on the practice of literary criticism is a series of exercises for the reader to complete, if so wished; the essay makes no attempt, however, to suggest that a countertextual criticism ought to make a routine of such devices. The separate sections contain reflections on a number of texts and writers, among them, and in order of appearance, <italic>Hamlet</italic>, Anthony Trollope, Jacques Derrida, <italic>The Time Machine</italic>, Don <italic>Quixote</italic>, Mark Z. Danielewski, Mark B. N. Hansen, Gunter Kress, Scott's <italic>Reliquiae Trotcosienses</italic>, W. B. Yeats, Kate Tempest, David Jones, Anne Michaels, Bernice Eisenstein, Paul Auster, J. M. Coetzee, Billy Collins, Deidre Shauna Lynch, Tim Parks, Tom McCarthy – and <italic>Hamlet</italic> again. The essay's length fulfils a performative function but also facilitates as extensive a catalogue of aspects of the countertextual in literature and elsewhere as is feasible or as might be dared at this stage.</p> </abstract>