The Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory

by Dillon, Sarah

• ISBN13: 9780826495457
• ISBN10: 0826495451
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-12-25
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Drawing together diverse literary, critical and theoretical texts in which the palimpsest has appeared since its inauguration by Thomas De Quincey in 1845, Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory provides the first ever genealogy of this metaphor. Sarah Dillon's original theorisation argues that the palimpsest has an involuted structure which illuminates and advances modern thought. While demonstrating how this structure refigures concepts such as history, subjectivity, temporality, metaphor, textuality and sexuality, Dillon returns repeatedly to the question of reading. This theorisation is interwoven with close readings of texts by D. H. Lawrence, Arthur Conan Doyle, Umberto Eco, Ian McEwan and H.D. Clearly written, and negotiating a range of critical theories and modern literary texts, it provides a reference point and critical tool for future employment of the concept of ‘palimpsestuousness', and makes a significant contribution to the debate surrounding the relationship between theoretical and critical writing on literature.

Author Biography

Sarah Dillon is Lecturer in Contemporary Fiction at the University of St Andrews, UK

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction: The Palimpsest	p. 1
A Brief History of Palimpsests	p. 10
The Archimedes Palimpsest	p. 11
Creation: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages	p. 13
Resurrection: From the eighteenth to the twenty-first century	p. 16
The Palimpsest of the Mind	p. 23
De Quincey's Fantasies of Resurrection	p. 24
Spectrality: Subjectivity and Temporality	p. 32
Inventive Reading	p. 38
Palimpsestuous Tropographies	p. 42
On Poetry and Metaphor	p. 44
'Belonging Together': Heidegger and Metaphor	p. 48
Metaphors of Metaphor	p. 52
Poetry of the Present: Lawrence	p. 56
Risky Reading	p. 63
On classical detective fiction	p. 63
On structuralism	p. 68
On modern detective fiction	p. 76
On poststructuralism	p. 82
Refiguring Intertextuality	p. 85
Genette's Palimpsest	p. 88
Atonement (1999/2001)	p. 92
Queering the Palimpsest: H. D.	p. 102
Queer Frills: 'Murex'	p. 108
Palimpsestuous Choreographies: 'Secret Name'	p. 116
Conclusion: Queering Palimpsestuousness	p. 124
Notes	p. 127
Bibliography	p. 147
Index	p. 161
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