×


 x 

Shopping cart
Robert A. Chodat - Worldly Acts and Sentient Things: The Persistence of Agency from Stein to DeLillo - 9780801446788 - V9780801446788
Stock image for illustration purposes only - book cover, edition or condition may vary.

Worldly Acts and Sentient Things: The Persistence of Agency from Stein to DeLillo

€ 63.66
FREE Delivery in Ireland
Description for Worldly Acts and Sentient Things: The Persistence of Agency from Stein to DeLillo Hardback. Num Pages: 272 pages, black & white illustrations. BIC Classification: 1KBB; 2AB; DSBH. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 166 x 243 x 26. Weight in Grams: 540.

Ants, ghosts, cultures, thunderstorms, stock markets, robots, computers: this is just a partial list of the sentient things that have filled American literature over the last century. From modernism forward, writers have given life and voice to both the human and the nonhuman, and in the process addressed the motives, behaviors, and historical pressures that define lives—or things—both everyday and extraordinary.

In Worldly Acts and Sentient Things Robert Chodat exposes a major shortcoming in recent accounts of twentieth-century discourse. What is often seen as the "death" of agency is better described as the displacement of agency onto new and varied ... Read more

Drawing on a philosophical tradition exemplified by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Wilfrid Sellars, Chodat shows that the death of the Cartesian ego need not entail the elimination of purposeful action altogether. Agents do not dissolve or die away in modern thought and literature; they proliferate—some in human forms, some not. Chodat distinguishes two ideas of agency in particular. One locates purposes in embodied beings, "persons," the other in disembodied entities, "presences." Worldly Acts and Sentient Things is a an engaging blend of philosophy and literary theory for anyone interested in modern and contemporary literature, narrative studies, psychology, ethics, and cognitive science.

Show Less

Product Details

Format
Hardback
Publication date
2008
Publisher
Cornell University Press United States
Number of pages
272
Condition
New
Number of Pages
272
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9780801446788
SKU
V9780801446788
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1

About Robert A. Chodat
Robert Chodat is Assistant Professor of English at Boston University.

Reviews for Worldly Acts and Sentient Things: The Persistence of Agency from Stein to DeLillo
Intervening in debates about agency in modern thought, Robert Chodat argues that accounts of agency's dissolution in 20th-century literature and theory overlook agency's proliferation, its 'gradual displacement... onto new and varied forms.' Attuned to how language posits 'forms of life,' Chodat traces patterns of family resemblances in works by Gertrude Stein, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, and Don DeLillo that ascribe ... Read more

Goodreads reviews for Worldly Acts and Sentient Things: The Persistence of Agency from Stein to DeLillo


Subscribe to our newsletter

News on special offers, signed editions & more!