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This book investigates the crucial question of 'restitution' in the work of W. G. Sebald. Written by leading scholars from a range of disciplines, with a foreword by his English translator Anthea Bell, the essays collected in this volume place Sebald's oeuvre within the broader context of European culture in order to better understand his engagement with the ethics of aesthetics. Whilst opening up his work to a range of under-explored areas including dissident surrealism, Anglo-Irish relations, contemporary performance practices and the writings of H. G. Adler, the volume notably returns to the original German texts. The recurring themes identified in the essays - from Sebald's carefully calibrated syntax to his self-consciousness about 'genre', from his interest in liminal spaces to his literal and metaphorical preoccupation with blindness and vision - all suggest that the 'attempt at restitution' constitutes the very essence of Sebald's understanding of literature. "This book investigates the crucial question of 'restitution' in the work of W. G. Sebald. Written by a range of leading scholars from fields as various as translation studies, English, German, and comparative literature, photography, critical theory, psychoanalysis, poetry, and art theory, the essays collected in the volume place Sebald's oeuvre within the broader context of European culture in order better to understand his engagement with the ethics of aesthetics. Whilst opening up his work to a range of under-explored areas - including dissident surrealism, Anglo-Irish relations, contemporary performance practices, and the writings of H. G. Adler - the volume also brings renewed impetus to the standard view of Sebald as a 'Holocaust writer'; following the lead established by his English translator Anthea Bell in her foreword, the essays all share a close attention to linguistic detail, returning to the original German texts in an attempt to do justice to Sebald's complex literary style. The recurring themes identified over the course of the collection - from Sebald's carefully calibrated syntax to his self-consciousness about 'genre', from his interest in liminal spaces to his literal and metaphorical preoccupation with blindness and vision - all suggest that the 'attempt at restitution' is both a thematic preoccupation and a narrative technique, and that as such it arguably constitutes the very essence of Sebald's understanding of literature. The volume will thus appeal not only to students and scholars of Sebald, but to anyone with a serious interest in the problems and possibilities of postwar European writing." --Back cover.

Sebald, W. G. --- זבאלד, וו. --- Sebald, Max, --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Literature --- Prose: Non-Fiction --- LITERARY CRITICISM / General --- Germany --- Anglo-Irish history. --- Austerlitz. --- Corsica Project. --- English translations. --- Franz Kafka. --- H.G. Adler. --- Holocaust. --- Surrealism. --- The Emigrants. --- The Rings of Saturn. --- Vertigo. --- W. G. Sebald. --- blindness. --- collective memories. --- imagination. --- individual memories. --- photographic images. --- restitution. --- unwords.

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This book is about reading practice and experience in late medieval and early modern England. It focuses on the kinds of literatures that were more readily available to the widest spectrum of the population. Four case studies from many possibilities have been selected, each examining a particular type of popular literature under the headings 'religious', 'moral', 'practical' and 'fictional'. A key concern of the book is how we might use particular types of evidence in order to understand more about reading practice and experience, so issues of method and approach are discussed fully in the opening chapter. One distinctive element of this book is that it attempts to uncover evidence for the reading practices and experiences of real, rather than ideal, readers, using evidence that is found within the material of a book or manuscript itself, or within the structure of a specific genre of literature. Salter attempts to negotiate a path through a set of methodological and interpretive issues in order to arrive at a better understanding of how people may have read and what they may have read. This, in turn, leads on to how we may interpret the evidence that manuscripts and early printed books provide for the ways that medieval and early modern people engaged with reading. This book will be of interest to academics and research students who study the history of reading, popular culture, literacy, manuscript and print culture, as well as to those interested more generally in medieval and early modern society and culture.

English literature --- Books and reading --- Appraisal of books --- Books --- Choice of books --- Evaluation of literature --- Literature --- Reading, Choice of --- Reading and books --- Reading habits --- Reading public --- Reading --- Reading interests --- Reading promotion --- History and criticism. --- History --- Appraisal --- Evaluation --- Great Britain --- Intellectual life --- Prose: Non-Fiction --- LITERARY CRITICISM / General --- Biography & non-fiction prose --- English. --- early modern England. --- fictional literature. --- literary form. --- literary voice. --- manuscript. --- material evidence. --- moral reading. --- page layout. --- popular reading. --- practical texts. --- printed book. --- reading experience. --- reading practice. --- religious texts.