Reviews

The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

readouid's review against another edition

5.0

One of the lines that most struck me in The Literary Absolute was the Jean-Luc Nancy and Phillippe Lacaue-Labarthe's explanation of what was so absolute about Romantic literature, “Rather, it is theory itself as literature or, in other words, literature producing itself as it produces its own theory. The literary absolute is also, and perhaps above all, this absolute literary operation.” This perhaps best sums up what they attempt to do with this work-- that is, the authors don't so much present their own theories around German Romanticism, but investigate what the romantics theorized about their own work as they were writing it. They distill the poems, essays, fragments, etc. into their crystalized theoretical content. It's intentionally dense and requires you to sit with the concepts, much like the approach you need to take with good poetry. This only reenforces the point Nancy and Lacaue-Labarthe make about the alignment of literature and theory in the German Romantics' work. Overall an excellent work that provided a lot of food for thought and really good insight into the fundamental romantic texts.