Fordham University Press Merleau-Ponty's Poetic of the World: Philosophy and Literature (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)

Merleau-Ponty has long been known as one of the most important philosophers of aesthetics, yet most discussions of his aesthetics focus on visual art. This book corrects that balance by turning to Merleau-Ponty's extensive engagement with literature. Review "An excellent, long overdue study of an important but underdiscussed aspect of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. This is a book that Merleau-Ponty scholars and phenomenological readers of all sorts, as well as readers of modernist poetry and literature, will welcome. The authors of this volume have made a profound case for philosophical engagement with poetry, for 'philosophy as poetry, ' and for the centrality of poetry and literature to phenomenological ontology." ---Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei, Johns Hopkins University, "This book promises to become an indispensable resource not only for Merleau-Ponty scholars, but also for scholars in contemporary European philosophy as a whole, and in comparative literature, French, and literary theory. Creative, exciting, and visionary." ---Veronique Fóti, Pennsylvania State University, About the Author Galen A. Johnson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rhode Island. He has been General Secretary (Executive Director) of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle (2005–2015) and Jane C. Ebbs Endowed Professor of Philosophy (2016–2018). He is the author of The Retrieval of the Beautiful: Thinking through Merleau-Ponty’s Aesthetics (Northwestern University Press, 2010) and editor of The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting (Northwestern University Press, 1993). Mauro Carbone is Professor of Aesthetics at the Faculté de Philosophie of the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and an Honorary Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is the founder and the coeditor of the journal Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning Merleau-Ponty’s Thought. His present research focuses on the connections between philosophy and contemporary visual experience. Among his books are The Flesh of Images: Merleau-Ponty between Painting and Cinema (SUNY Press, 2015) and Philosophy-Screens: From Cinema to Digital Revolution (SUNY Press, 2019). Emmanuel de Saint Aubert is Research Director at the Husserl Archives in Paris (National Center for Scientific Research, École Normale Supérieure). His research bears most particularly on the work of Merleau-Ponty, rereading him through the lens of an overall knowledge of numerous unpublished writings. Among his books are Vers une ontologie indirecte: Sources et enjeux critiques de l’appel à l’ontologie chez Merleau-Ponty (Vrin, 2006) and Être et chair I: Du corps au désir―L’habilitation ontologique de la chair (Vrin, 2013).