Education
Doctor of Philosophy Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley, 1975
Master of Arts Comparative Literature, University of California, San Luis Obispo, 1971
Bachelor of Arts Universität Freiburg in Breisgau, 1969.
( But is it original? The question, on which so much of w...)
But is it original? The question, on which so much of writing stakes its claim to greatness, may be more interesting than the answer. In this provocative book, Francoise Meltzer takes a subtle and incisive look at the anxiety of origins at the heart of the literary enterprise. Using four case studies, Meltzer reveals the shaky status of originality as a founding principle of the critical establishment. Freud, inventor of "dream work," turns a blind eye upon the dreams that were the starting point of his predecessor Descartes's famous methode, the one man's obsession with originality mirroring the other's fear of plagiarism. The Holocaust poet Paul Celan, whose sense of identity and place resided in his work, is devastated by a charge of plagiarism. Colette's husband Willy outdoes himself, and his "lazy" wife as well, with his enactment of literary seriousness. Walter Benjamin's early interpreters, notably Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno, insidiously undermine the originality of his project . In each of these cases, Meltzer shows how a threat to a writer's status as creator betrays the larger fraud of the originality myth itself. Fascinating for its insights into the ways originality is both at risk and at work in Western literary culture, Hot Property will engage all those who have an interest in questions of authorship, textual soveriegnty, and the legitimacy of the critical establishment.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226519759/?tag=2022091-20
( Why are contemporary secular theorists so frequently dr...)
Why are contemporary secular theorists so frequently drawn to saints, martyrs, and questions of religion? Why has Joan of Arc fascinated some of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century? In a book that faces crucial issues in both critical and feminist inquiry, Françoise Meltzer uses the story of Joan as a guide for reading the postmodern nostalgia for a body that is intact and transparent. She argues that critics who place excessive emphasis on opposition and difference remain blind to their nostalgia for the pre-Cartesian idea that the body and mind are the same. Engaging a number of theorists, and alternating between Joan's historical and cultural context, Meltzer also explores the ways in which postmodern thinkers question subjectivity. She argues that the way masculine subjects imagine Joan betrays their fear of death and necessitates the role of women as cultural others: enigmatic, mysterious, dark, and impossible. As such, Joan serves as a useful model of the limits and risks of subjectivity. For Meltzer, she is both the first modern and the last medieval figure. From the ecclesial jury that burned her, to the theorists of today who deny their attraction to the supernatural, the philosophical assumptions that inform Joan's story, as Meltzer ultimately shows, have changed very little.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226519821/?tag=2022091-20
professor of Philosophy of Religion
Doctor of Philosophy Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley, 1975
Master of Arts Comparative Literature, University of California, San Luis Obispo, 1971
Bachelor of Arts Universität Freiburg in Breisgau, 1969.
She is also the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities and Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago.
( Why are contemporary secular theorists so frequently dr...)
( But is it original? The question, on which so much of w...)