Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
Jacques Rancière, Mallarmé: The Politics of the Siren New York: Continuum, 211,0 xvi + 94 pp. Mallarmé is a dic ffi ult poet, and this book, like many others on the nineteenth- century French poet, readily attests to the fact. But he is not, claims Rancière, a hermetic poet, willfully and self- indulgently complex, singing a siren’s song to the virtues of poetic Enigma. Nor is he a poet floating far above the everyday world, writing poetry too “pure” to oe ff r any relevant engagement with social or political matters. The argument of Rancière’s book is that, on the contrary, there is a politics to be discerned in Mallarmé—a politics of the siren. If Rancière begins, therefore, on the acknowledgement that Mallarmé is a diffi- cult poet, it is in order to declare that what is dic ffi ult about this poet is appreciating the political task Mallarmé sets himself. That task is to inspect the possibilities of imagining new forms of social community. “Imagining” is not quite the right word, however, and Rancière would probably reject the criticism that literary visions of a new polity can only be experiments in idealism—literary fantasies, not exercises in real- world
The Comparatist – University of North Carolina Press
Published: May 12, 2013
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.