The Possibility of Literature: The Novel and the Politics of Form

by Peter Boxall

The Possibility of Literature is an essential collection from one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in contemporary literary studies. Bringing together key compositions from the last twenty-five years, as well as several new pieces, the book demonstrates the changing fate of literary thinking over the first decades of the twenty-first century. Peter Boxall traces here the profound shifts in the global conditions that make literature possible as these have occurred in the historical passage from 9/11 to Covid 19. Exploring questions such as 'The Idea of Beauty', the nature of 'Mere Being', or the possibilities of Rereading, the author anatomises the myriad forces that shape the literary imagination. At the same time, he gives vivid critical expression to the imaginative possibilities of literature itself – those unique forms of communal life that literature makes possible in a dramatically changing world, and that lead us towards a new shared future.

408 pages, Hardcover

Published October 31, 2024

Reviews

[Megan Tee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book on at the Cambridge book store, endlessly fascinating ways to look at works some of whom I know and many of whom I do not and knowing that this is perhaps debating and reflecting on literature, in ways of thinking, seeing, and what is the limits of literature today, and where have we not been yet, but also where have we been from a literature professor. If anything, I want to check out all those works now too, and understanding oh so this is how it is to have this effect. Much to sit upon.