Reading with Hannah Arendt - by Andrea Timár (Hardcover)

About the Book

One of the first books to examine Hannah Arendt's work by putting it in conversation with a series of literary works from writers such as Melville, Brecht, and Sarraute, this book addresses the main puzzles of Arendt's work and offers nuanced and innovative analyses of her strengths and shortcomings

Book Synopsis

One of the first books to examine Hannah Arendt's work by putting it in conversation with a series of literary works from writers such as Melville, Brecht, Conrad, and Sarraute, this book addresses the main puzzles of Arendt's work and offers nuanced and innovative analyses of her strengths and shortcomings.

Hannah Arendt is one of the major political thinkers of the last century, and recently, scholars have started to engage with her relevance for the humanities. To date, though, her work has not been theoretically explored with a particular focus on literary and cultural studies. This book fills this gap by examining the relevance of Arendt's writings for 21st-century literary studies. It asks questions like: What could an Arendtian approach to literature mean? Can we establish a dialogue between Arendt's engagements with literature and her political thought? Can a rereading of Arendt's writings and imagined conversations between Arendt and her 21st-century interpreters inspire new, Arendtian readings of literary texts?

Revisiting some of Arendt's own discussions of literature, this book explores her own engagements with the practice of storytelling to extend, complicate, and challenge some of the contemporary arguments on the significance of narratives. It also reads Arendt against Arendt, demonstrating her enduring relevance for 21st-century literary scholarship.

Review Quotes

"Andrea Timár provides a thoughtful reinterpretation of the thorniest issues raised by Hannah Arendt's work. Placing Arendt in dialogue with literary works and important thinkers of our own day, Timár shows where Arendt still has much to teach us even while remaining acutely aware of Arendt's blind spots. A thrilling and enlightening read." --John McGowan, Hanes Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.

"Focusing on Hannah Arendt's writings about literature, Andrea Timar opens new perspectives on one of the most important thinkers of our era. With rigor and care, Timar shows how the main vectors of Arendt's thought run through and at times develop out of, or are deflected by, her literary engagements." --Marc Redfield, Florence Pirce Grant University Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Brown University, USA

"Written with clarity and verve, this insightful and important book takes a new step in the engagement between the work of Hannah Arendt and literature. Answering the question "What could an Arendtian approach to literature mean?", Timar's acute and thoughtful readings rethink the relationship between Arendtian politics and key concepts: compassion, storytelling, contagion, recognition, responsibility, exclusion and plurality. In so doing, it challenges many of our assumptions about both the literary and the political." --Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

About the Author