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7%OFFFrancis Ponge - Soap - 9780804729550 - V9780804729550
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Soap

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Description for Soap Paperback. In this work, begun during the German occupation, the eminent French poet and philosopher began to turn away from the small, perfect poem toward a much more open form, a kind of prose poem that recounted its own process of coming into being along with the final result. Editor(s): Hamacher, Werner; Wellbery, David E. Translator(s): Dunlop, Lane. Series: Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics. Num Pages: 104 pages. BIC Classification: 2ADF; DCF; DSC. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 200 x 123 x 9. Weight in Grams: 130.

". . . And now, dear reader, for your intellectual toilet, here is a little piece of soap. Well handled, we guarantee it will be enough. Let us hold this magic stone."

The poet Francis Ponge (1899-1988) occupied a significant and unchallenged place in French letters for over fifty years, attracting the attention and admiration of generations of leading intellectuals, writers, and painters, a notable feat in France, where reputations are periodically reassessed and undone with the arrival of new literary and philosophical schools.

Soap occupies a crucial, pivotal position in Ponge's work. Begun during the German occupation when he ... Read more

There is a blurring of boundaries between Soap and soap (which was hard to come by during the Resistance and is also, of course, metaphorical for a larger social restitution). Soap contains the sum of Ponge's aesthetics and materialist ethics and his belief in the supremacy of language as it becomes the object of the text. In the words of Serge Gavronsky, "this work, perhaps one of the longest running metaphors in literature, slowly unwinds, bubbles in verbal inventions, and finally evaporates, leaving the water slightly troubled, slightly darker, but the hands clean, really clean. . . . Out of murky literary habits, Ponge has devised a way of cleaning his text, and through it, man himself, his vocabulary, and as a consequence, his way of being in the world."

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Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
1998
Publisher
Stanford University Press United States
Number of pages
104
Condition
New
Series
Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics
Number of Pages
104
Place of Publication
Palo Alto, United States
ISBN
9780804729550
SKU
V9780804729550
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-50

About Francis Ponge
Francis Ponge (b. 1899) became known in French literary circles in the wake of the First World War, but commenced his most important work during the German Occupation. His fame began to reach its present height with the respect shown him by Tel Quel in the late fifties.

Reviews for Soap
“This text manages to be whimsical, political and philosophical all at once by behaving like its subject—soap—and slipping between modes.”—Matthea Harvey, Boston Review

Goodreads reviews for Soap


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